om Paris to the smallest towns on the front, one must have his
flash-light. The streets of the cities and towns of France are a
hundred times more crooked than those of Boston. If Boston's streets
followed the cow-paths, the streets of the cities of France followed
cows with the St. Vitus dance. Around these streets one had to find
his way by night with a flash-light, especially during an air-raid.
One must have a flash, too, for the houses and hotels when an air-raid
is on, and one must have it when one is driving a big truck or an
automobile down along the front lines, for no lights are permitted on
any machines, official or otherwise, after a certain point is reached.
One of the favorite outdoor sports of this preacher for a month was to
lie on his stomach on the front mud-guard of a big Pierce-Arrow through
the war-zone roads, bumping over shell-holes, with a little pocket
flash-light playing on the ground, searching out the shell-holes, and
trying to help the driver keep in the road. It is a delightful
occupation about two o'clock in the morning, with a blizzard blowing,
and knowing that the big truck is rumbling along within sight and sound
of the German big guns. Trucks make more noise on such occasions than
a Twentieth Century Limited. "No lights beyond divisional
headquarters" was the order, and night after night we travelled along
these roads with only an occasional flash of the Ever Ready to guide.
And so it is that the flash-light has come to its own, and every
private soldier, officer, and citizen in France is equipped with one.
He would be like a swordfish without its sword if he didn't have it.

LADDER OF LIGHT

Then suddenly you see a strange finger of light reaching into the sky.
Or you may liken it to a ladder of light climbing the sky. Or you may
liken it to a lance of light piercing the darkness. Or you may just
call it a good, old-fashioned search-light, which it is. It is
watching for Hun planes, and it plays all night long from north to
south, from east to west, restlessly, eagerly, quickly, like a "hound
of the heavens" guarding the earth. First it sweeps the horizon, and
then it suddenly shoots straight up into the zenith like another sun,
and it seems to flood the very skies. No German plane can cut through
that path of light without being seen, and one night I had the rare
privilege of seeing a plane caught by the search-light on its
ever-vigilant patrol. It was a thrilling sigh