n, however, that, somewhere in that nebulous region
known as somewhere in France, the Red Cross has gone in a bit for what
has generally been considered the Y. M. C. A.'s own particular
game--that of running the festive army canteen.

So far as can be found out at present writing, this canteen is the only
one operated by the Red Cross in France. It is run primarily for the
benefit of the young American aviators whose training station is hard
by. And, because aviators, breathing rarer and higher ozone than most of
the rest of us, are in consequence always as hungry as kites and
cormorants, this particular Red Cross canteen does a rushing business.

It is situated in a long barrack-like building of the familiar type,
which is partitioned off into a social room and a combination officers'
dining room and a storeroom kitchen. The kitchen--as always in anything
pertaining to the army--is the all-important part. This kitchen is
noteworthy for two things: It has a real stand-up-and-sit-up lunch
counter, and its products are cooked and served by the deft hands of
American women.

Girls Worked All Night.

No dinners are served at this canteen for the airmen. Those favors are
reserved for the convalescents in the hospital nearby. But the airmen
are dropping in all the time for sandwiches and hot coffee, particularly
after coming down, chilled and chattering, from a flight into the upper
regions of the sky. If they don't drop in to get warmed up in that
fashion, they know they are in for a scolding by the head of the
canteen, an Englishwoman possessed of all an American mother's motherly
instincts and all of the English army's ideals of discipline.

There was one night that the little Red Cross canteen was put to a
severe test. Eighteen hundred Americans arrived at the aviation camp
after a thirty-hour trip punctuated by no saving hot meal. The
manager-matron and her girl helpers, however, stayed up nearly all
night, minting hot coffee and sandwiches so that the hardships of
sleeping on the cold bare ground of the hangars was somewhat mitigated
for the 1,800 unfortunates.

A Repair Shop For Clothes.

In all the canteen disburses about 2,000 sandwiches a day, with mugs of
coffee to match. In addition to that, its workers, equipped with
Norwegian fireless cookers, sally forth to the aviation fields in the
mornings long before dawn so that the men who are going up may have
something