“'Do you think it makes ye better or worse--this game of war?' I asked. “'Well, sir, I'd say better,' he answered. 'Ye get things measured up right, over here. Ye learn how to use yer thinker. Nobody knows what peace and home and friends are worth 'til they're gone and ye don't know whether you're ever going to see 'em again or not It ain't a bad thing to live the all he life a while and see the family in dreams. They look so gol durnably different. I reckon it's helped me. Maybe I better tell ye a little story and you'll see what I mean. It'll be a Christmas story. “'We were in the ruined city of Peronne that Christmas Day. My friend and I were homesick and had tramped across country from the camp of our engineering corps to send a message to our wives in Kansas City, and to blow ourselves to a good dinner with a bottle of wine and cigars if money could buy 'em. We were a little over beaned and tea!--gosh! we were soaked in it, and that French tobacco reminded me of my father's cure for the epizootic. We had been gander-dancing on a new railroad for weeks. We were shovel tired and kind o' man weary. By thunder! we hadn't seen a woman in three months. “'You who see women every day don't realize that they're a pretty necessary part of the scenery. Oh, you don't miss 'em for a week or so, but by and by you begin to find out there's something wrong. Things don't look right. The hole in the doughnut is too big. You'd be kind o' glad to hear what somebody said at the Woman's Club, and all about Betsey Baker's new pink silk, and how shabby that one old dress of your wife's was getting to be. You'd like to see a set o' skirts come along--I _guess._ It would kind o' comfort you. If you didn't have pretty good self-control you'd get up and wave your hat and holler. “'Then--_children_--that's another thing you miss. We don't see 'em on the battle front--ne'er a one! What a hole they make in the world when you take 'em out of it!--especially if you've got some of your own. They come to me in my dreams--the wife and babies! I'll bet ye there's more'n a thousand of 'em crowding into that big camp every night, about dream-time, and looking for theirs. “'Oh, I wouldn't have ye get the idea that we set and sob and talk mush and look sorrowful there. If you just grabbed a look at us and went on you'd say we were no Hamlets. Gosh, no! We play cards and joke and laugh and tell stories a plenty. You wouldn't get what's down under it all unless some feller kind o' confessed and turned state's evidence. No, sir--I don't believe you would. “'I'm just telling ye enough to make ye understand why We went out to Peronne that Christmas Day and what happened to us there. I speak French pretty glib--that's another reason why we went. My mother was a Louisiana French woman. I got it from her when I was a little chap--never forgot it--and I bossed a gang of Frenchmen for two years.