Of course our American Red Cross was not primarily represented in canteen work in the actual zones of fighting; this function, by the ruling of the United States Army and the War Department, you will perhaps remember, was given almost entirely to the Young Men's Christian Association and to the Salvation Army. There were, however, a few exceptions to this general rule. For instance, at Colombes-les-Belles, an important aviation station, ten or twelve miles south of Toul, I saw a very complete Red Cross equipment at a field camp which at no time was far removed from the front-line fighting. It consisted of a canteen, which served as high as from two thousand to three thousand men a day, and even as late as March, 1919, was still serving from seven to eight hundred; an officers' club, to which was attached an officers' mess, feeding some seventy men a day, and a billeting barracks for the nine Red Cross women stationed at the place. There also was a huge hangar which, with a good floor and appropriate decorations, had been transformed into a corking amusement center. This last was not under the direct charge of the American Red Cross, yet our Red Cross girls were the chief factors in making it go. They danced there night after night with our boys. In fact, in order to have sufficient partners, it was necessary to scour the country for twenty miles roundabout with motor cars and bring in all the Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. girls that were available. It seems that it really is part of a Red Cross girl's job to be on her feet eight hours a day and then to dance full ten miles each night. This Colombes-les-Belles canteen originally had been established in the very heart of the grimy little village, but when the Twenty-eighth (Pennsylvania) Division came to the place on the thirteenth of January, 1919, it took the old canteen structure for division headquarters, but squared the account by building the Red Cross a newer and bigger canteen group in the open field. "I can't give too much praise to the Red Cross personnel that have been assigned to this particularly isolated spot," the colonel in charge of the flying field told me on the occasion of my visit to it. "I know that the women must have been fearfully lonely out here; but they have never complained. On the contrary, they have given generously and unstintingly of their own time and energies in order that time should not hang heavily upon the hands of the men. The problem of amusement for the aviator is a peculiarly difficult one. He has actually only two or three hours of service each day, and the rest of his waking hours he must be kept ready and fit, mentally as well as physically, for his job, which requires all that a man may possess of nerve and judgment and quick wit. The Red Cross women quickly came to sense this portion of our problem and in helping in its assistance they have been of infinite assistance." * * * * *