I understood. I had spent an evening in the grand boulevards of Paris and had watched a "Y" girl, under the escort of a member of the American Military Police, save foolish doughboys and their still more foolish officers--from themselves. In a few minutes after ten o'clock that evening an overcrowded hotel of one of our largest American war-relief organizations had regretfully turned away sixteen of our soldiers and in this time there were fifteen French girls waiting to give the hospitality that the sadly overburdened hotel had been compelled to refuse them. No wonder that our Red Cross was forced into the building of the great Tent City there on the Champs de Mars. As these French girls of the Paris streets came up to the doughboys the job of the "Y" girl began. In a few more minutes she had convinced the boys that it was not too late to give up hope of securing lodgings in overcrowded Paris; and was quick with her suggestions as to where they might be found. It was not a pleasant job. I hardly can imagine one more unpleasant. But the girl had her reward, in the looks of gratitude which the doughboys gave her. One or two of them cried like babies. * * * * * This was an unusual job to be sure. But our American Red Cross also was filled with unusual jobs for women as well as for men; jobs that took not merely endurance and courage, but in many, many cases rare wit and tact and diplomacy, and these were rarely lacking, and sometimes came where they were least expected. I am not all anxious to over-glorify these women. It would hardly be fair; for, after all, they were very human indeed--witness one young widow on our ship to Europe who not merely confessed but actually boasted that she had received three proposals of marriage upon that stormy voyage. And one little secretary girl from the Middle West, who was of our ship's company, wanted to be a canteen worker, although she was specifically enrolled for the office work for which she was particularly qualified, but when she found that the canteen to which she was to be assigned was located in a lonely railroad junction town in the middle of France, demanded that she be sent to Coblenz, where the Army of Occupation had its headquarters; she said quite frankly that she did not want to be robbed of all her opportunities of meeting the nice young officers of the army. She was very human, that young secretary, and eventually she got to Coblenz. Insistence counts. And she was both insistent and consistent. But at the Rhine her lot, oddly enough, was not thrown in with officers but with the doughboys--the enlisted men of our most amazing army. She fed them, walked with them, danced with them, wrote their letters, and finally began to understand. And so slowly but surely came to the fullness of her real value to the country that she served.