When the resources of the amateur Thespians of Vichy had become well-nigh exhausted, a New York professional actress--Miss Ida Phinney--who not only had real dramatic ability but considerable experience in staging and producing, was enlisted in the Red Cross service there. With her aid, the attractive little cinema theater--with its blue upholstery, its tiny boxes, and its complete and up-to-date stage equipment, even to the scenery--became a full-fledged playhouse. Stage hands and property men were assigned from the army, and Vichy began seriously to stage, costume, and produce and criticize plays. Soldiers with a knack for design took keen delight in advising as to "creations" for the wardrobes of the cast and themselves watched the garments grow into reality from inexpensive stuffs in the sewing room. A clever artist wrought a full set of stage jewelry--even to the heavy bracelets and the inevitable snake rings of the Oriental dancers--from stray scraps of shells and other metals that came to his hungry fingers, while the Red Cross sent a full complement of musical instruments down from Paris. And so the Vichy A. E. F.-A. R. C. Playhouse came into the fullness of its existence--and night after night hung out the S. R. O. sign. After all, what _is_ the doughboy's idea of a good time? That is the very question our Red Cross asked itself--again and again. And because the correct answer could not be evolved in a moment, established not only after it had arrived in France a Bureau of Recreation and Welfare whose real job was, after plenty of practical experimentation, to establish the correct solution of the problem. For a long time this Bureau consisted of a small desk at the Paris headquarters, a Ford camionette, and Major Harold Ober. The camionette and Ober went from village to village along the lines from Bar-le-Duc to Gondrecourt with books, magazines, tobacco, writing material, and a small moving-picture show. These efforts many times furnished the only amusement to our early troops, billeted in quiet villages, where the quaintness of French pastoral life soon lost its novelty.