Before the war broke out, it was the writer's privilege to make an extended tour for work among students in Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece, and to visit Germany. Since the declaration of war, he has visited France, Italy, and Egypt, and has observed the effect of the war throughout Asia, in tours extending over nearly the whole of China and India. Last year he was in the British camps among the soldiers of England, Scotland, and Wales. Since America declared war he has been working with the various divisions of the British and American armies in France, from the great base camps, where hundreds of thousands of men are in training, up to the front with the men in the trenches. For the sake of those who will follow with deep interest the boys who are already in France, or who will shortly be there, brief accounts are given of the various phases of a soldier's life in the base camps, the training school of the "Bull Ring," at the front, and in the hospitals. CHAPTER I AT THE FRONT In the midst of our work at a base camp, there came a sudden call to go "up the line" to the great battle front. Leaving the railway, we took a motor and pressed on over the solidly paved roads of France, which are now pulsing arteries of traffic, crowded with trains of motor transports pouring in their steady stream of supplies for the men and munitions for the guns. Now we turn out for the rumbling tank-like caterpillars, which slowly creep forward, drawing the big guns up to the front; then we pass a light field-battery. Next comes a battalion of Tommies swinging down the road, loaded like Christmas trees with their cumbrous kits, sweating, singing, whistling, as they march by with dogged cheer toward the trenches. We have crossed the Somme with its memories of blood, on across northern France, and now we have passed the Belgian frontier and are in the historic fields of Flanders, where the creaking windmills are still grinding the peasants' corn, and the little church spires stand guard over the sleeping villages. A turn of the road brings us close within sound of the guns, which by night are heard far across France and along the coasts of England. Soon we enter villages, which lie within range of the enemy's "heavies," with their shattered window glass, torn roofs, ruined houses, tottering churches, and deep shell holes in the streets. Now we are in the danger zone and have to put on our shrapnel-proof steel helmets, and box respirators, to be ready for a possible attack of poison gas.