In the months of its greatest activities, the Red Cross in France used an average of 25,000 gallons of gasoline. To have secured and transported this great quantity of oil even in normal, peaceful years would have been a real problem. To secure it, to say nothing of transporting it, in the hard years toward the end of the war, was a surpassing problem; for gasoline seemingly was the most precious of all the precious things in France. If you did not believe it, all you had to do was to ask a Paris taxi driver--even after taxis had become fairly plentiful once again upon the streets of the capital--to take you to distant Montmartre or Montparnasse--and then hear him curse Fate and lack of "essence" in his fuel reservoirs. But the Red Cross, thanks to the French and American army authorities as well as to its own energies, did get the "essence." How it did it at times is a secret that only Osborne knows. And he probably never will tell. Remember, if you will, that gasoline was the vitalizing fluid of the war; therefore, in France, it was guarded and conserved with a miser's care. For without it one knew that there could be little mobility of troops, little transport of supplies and ammunition, and no tanks or aëroplanes! Therefore every liter of it which came into France had to be accounted for. And in the years of fighting the private motor practically disappeared. Only the militarized car remained mobile and was permitted to retain access to the diminished gasoline stores of the Republic. Throughout the entire nation, the French Army established gasoline supply stations. In its zones of special activity the American Expeditionary Forces had their own great stations in addition. On the presentation of a properly signed _carnet_ or book of gas tickets, a military or Red Cross driver was permitted to obtain from any of these depots such an amount of gas or kerosene or lubricating oil as he might really need. The _carnet_ slips were in triplicate, so that three records might be kept of the dispensation. No money was paid by the driver; his slip signed and delivered to the depot superintendent was sufficient. And by this method every gallon of gas so obtained was eventually paid for.