on Fifth Avenue. For the cowboy, the residents of the dreary
side streets simply did not exist. We have been wont to think of all
the British as aristocrats, while they have returned the compliment by
visualizing all Americans as plutocrats--despite the fact that one-tenth
of our population is said to own nine-tenths of all our wealth!

But the war will change that, is already changing it.

'Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner'. We have been soaked in the same
common law, literature, and traditions of liberty--or of chaos, as one
likes. Whether we all be of British origin or not, it is the mind that
makes the true patriot; and there is no American so dead as not to feel
a thrill when he first sets foot on British soil. Our school-teachers
felt it when they began to travel some twenty years ago, and the
thousands of our soldiers who pass through on their way to France are
feeling it today, and writing home about it. Our soldiers and sailors
are being cared for and entertained in England just as they would be
cared for and entertained at home. So are their officers. Not long ago
one of the finest town houses in London was donated by the owner for
an American officers' club, the funds were raised by contributions
from British officers, and the club was inaugurated by the King and
Queen--and Admiral Sims. Hospitality and good-will have gone much
further than this. Any one who knows London will understand the
sacredness of those private squares, surrounded by proprietary
residences, where every tree and every blade of grass has been jealously
guarded from intrusion for a century or more. And of all these squares
that of St. James's is perhaps the most exclusive, and yet it is
precisely in St. James's there is to be built the first of those hotels
designed primarily for the benefit of American officers, where they can
get a good room for five shillings a night and breakfast at a reasonable
price. One has only to sample the war-time prices of certain hostelries
to appreciate the value of this.

On the first of four unforgettable days during which I was a guest
behind the British lines in France the officer who was my guide stopped
the motor in the street of an old village, beside a courtyard surrounded
by ancient barns.

"There are some of your Americans," he remarked.

I had recognized them, not by their uniforms but by their type. Despite
their costumes, which were negligible, they were eloquent of college
campuses