One evening a large Pierce Arrow pulls up beside our cars, parked in a walnut grove. Three American medical officers step out with clanking spurs, and we are all attention. The _chef_ is called and we assemble. The officer in command makes a short speech. The section is to be taken over, he says, and those who remain must enlist as privates in the American army for the duration of the war. These men, having signed up, are then at the disposal of the Army, but will probably be kept in the Ambulance Service. The new officers are to be an American lieutenant, who will be our present _chef_, two sergeants, and a corporal. The section is to continue to serve with the French army, but may be transferred to the new American front. We form small circles and discuss the situation. All the freedom and romance are gone, but many are going to stay. The rest have chosen aviation or artillery, and one or two may return home. The old volunteer Ambulance Service is dead, but the days we have lived with it are golden, and nothing can ever take them away from us, or bring them back again. There is a little lump in each man’s throat as he turns in tonight, but from now on we serve America, and any sacrifice is worth that. And for the rest—“_C’est la guerre._” * * * * * THE participation of the United States in this war marks the time of this country’s coming of age, and the real beginning of its work as one of the great world powers. Up to the War of the Revolution the thirteen colonies had more than enough on their hands in managing their own affairs. In the throes of that war the country was born, and slowly grew, feeling its increasing power which was never quite secure until the Civil War was at an end. Then, year by year, reaching out over the two continents of America, guiding and helping our weaker brothers in their affairs, gave us a foundation of courage and experience in the adolescent period before we were ready to stand forth staunch in our beliefs and secure in our power to uphold them. That that time has come, and that the Old World, throwing down the gauntlet to the New, has found it unexpectedly ready, is shown by the presence of the Stars and Stripes on the battlefields of France. The mask of our isolation by the ocean, that time-worn excuse, has been rudely torn aside by modern inventions, and the affairs of Europe have become by their intimacy our own. In mingling with them as we were forced to do, one side was bound to transgress sooner or later—Germany did. And when Germany transgressed, America stepped across the bridge from youth to manhood, and picking up the iron gauntlet proceeded to settle the question by force of arms,—the one indisputable argument. This war is to make Democracy secure only in that it is the continual struggle between the new and the old, a struggle whose issue is certain before the start—civilization moves to the west.