nd practical value to the other
countries.

A striking example of this was the experience of Serbia with typhus
fever. Typhus is conveyed from man to man through the bites of lice
infected through biting some one who already has the disease. Serbia
had had a tremendous epidemic of the disease both in the army and in
the civilian population, and had had to resort to all kinds of
improvised means of controlling lice when their regular disinfecting
apparatus had been lost or destroyed during their retreat. Naturally
the experience of Serbia was of the greatest interest to all the other
armies which were also lice-infected but had had no typhus fever as
yet.

All the discussions were conducted in French, and curious to relate
the non-French Allies understood one another more readily if possible
than they did the French themselves, largely due to the fact that the
latter talked so rapidly. Many scientists of great note were present,
among them being M. Roux who had succeeded M. Pasteur as chief of the
Pasteur Institute in Paris. He was by far the easiest speaker of all
to follow,--so easy in fact that I constantly congratulated myself on
my knowledge of French when he was speaking, only to sadly admit when
the next Frenchman began that I had still a long, long way to go.

Every morning the five of us who were representatives of the British
army, Australia and Canada, met and drafted our joint report of the
previous day's meeting for submission to our respective governments
when the Congress would be over; many days of labor were thereby saved
since the report was complete when the meetings ended. This used up
the mornings, and the regular meetings took up the afternoons till
five o'clock. Every evening I took a lesson in French conversation so
that there was not much time for sight seeing even if there had been
anything to see. It was in reality three weeks of hard work yet I
managed to see quite a bit of Paris and of what was going on in our
spare half hours and the two or three half days during which no
meetings were held.

Some of the delegates were very remarkable men. The Frenchmen were all
scientists of note. One of the Serbian delegates had been continuously
in the battle field for four years and was thoroughly tired of war. He
was a handsome and very interesting man. In fact all the Serbs whom I
saw in Paris were big, fine-looking men.

The chief Russian delegate was a prince, a lieutenant-general of
cavalry,