Soldier Silhouettes on Our Front

that exact hour in the war zone on every American transport, now, every boy is summoned on deck until daylight. This is only one of the many precautions that the navy is taking to save life in case

that chapter. And one of the most wonderful, the most colossal feats will be the safe trans

old and out of the staterooms, officers and all, on deck, standing by the as

oke. They do not sing. They do not talk much. Some of them are sleepy, for the average American boy is not used to being awakened at two in the morning. They just sta

watcher who writes this story stands, is a sight never to be equalled in art or story. To see the huge bulk of a great transport just a s

nding "in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities," at the focus of histories. One day I saw the American army in France march in answer

to leave overnight and march overland into the Marne line

, "silently stole away," and did it so well and so efficiently that not even the Y. M. C. A. secretaries, who had been living with this division intimately for months, knew that they were gone, and that a new di

lean-cut officers astride their horses, past its supply-trains, past its flags and banners, past its kitchen-wagons, seeing it stop to eat, seeing it shoulder its rifles, seeing its ambulances and its Red Cross groups, seeing its khaki-clad American boys wind through the valleys and up the hills and over the bridges (the white stone bridge), through its villages, many in which American sol

trail that they were taking was a trail that, although it was leading physically directly away from home, and toward Berlin, yet it was, to their way of thinking, the shortest way home. The trail that the American army took that day as it marched into the Mar

nto training-camps; they may sing when they board the boats for France now; they may sing as they march i

along their lines. That army of American men knew that the job on which they were entering was not child's play. They knew that democracy depended upon what they did in that line. They knew that many of them would

e in history unafraid, and unfli

Everything was white. We were moving cautiously because with the snow over everything it was hard to tell where the icy road left off and the ditches bega

the night, and a sentry stepp

to see what

into the trenches to-night, and they are coming

by one, fifty trucks loaded with American soldiers passed us. One can hardly imagine that many American boys anywhere without some noise, but the impressive thing about that scene was that not a single word, not a sound of a human voice, came from a single one of those fifty trucks

as brought in last night. An operation was immediately imperative. I had known the boy, and

hem who have given up their ten-thousand-dollar fees to endure danger to save our boys. During that hour's stress and strain, with sweat pouring from their brows, they worked. Now and

he upturned roots of an old tree that a bursting shell had desecrated was just in front. "Tap! Tap! Tap!" came the sounds of Boches at work somewhere near and undergroun

rned roots of an old tr

n over her. As one looked at the Madeleine under that magical white moonlight he imagined that he had been transported back to Athens, and th

men there are left comfortless in Europe. It is the siren. An air-raid is on. The "alert" is sounding. The bombs begin to fall. The Boches have gotten over even before the barrage is up. Hell breaks loose fo

ing silence stand out more emphatically, and the Madeleine, basking in the moonlight the

of pounding motors and rumbling trucks, a month of marching men, a month of the pounding of horses' hoofs on the hard roads of France, a month of sirens and clanging

autiful under the sunlight of as warm and as beautiful a spring day as ever fell over the fields of France. I stood on the very spot where the peasant girl of Orleans caught her vision. I looked down over the val

to worship in pilgrimage every year. There is a Garden of Gethsemane, with marvellous statues built life-size. Then through

wonder, for from that room there is a clean swath of trees cut, and a quarter of a mile away looms, on a hill, a real

e various stations of the cross in life-size figures. Jesus is seen at every step of this agony bearing his cross until relieved by Simon. Over this flintstone every year the people come by thousands, and crawl on their naked kne

g, almost breathing, statues of the Master bearing his cruel cross, past the sneering figures of those who hated him, and past the weeping fig

Calvary. I am willing to be soaked. It seems more fitting so, with the black clouds there and all

yet untouched by the war as far as its fields are concerned (not so its men and its women and its homes); but on that spring day as we looked down from the hill of Calvary we could see off in the distance the tomb, with the stone rolled away, and life-si

bright with crimson poppies everywhere in field and hill, brilliant with the old-gold blossom of the broom flower, as we stood there, our hearts subdued to awe and wond

here the thou

nd knees and in our bare feet up the flinty road of Baupaume, 'the saddest road in Christendom,' and along this road we have borne the cross. We, the Christian world, the mothers, the fathers, the little children, have

ous day. Across the fields we see the open tomb and the resurrection is about

ing, hope dominant, hope triumpha

re" of the French nation, and not come away knowing the fu