l do," I replied.

This good-natured raillery goes on all over the army, for it is a
cosmopolitan crowd, such as never before wore the uniform of the United
States, and each group, the negro group, the Italian group, the Jewish
group, the Slav group, the Western group, the Southern group, the
Eastern group, all have their little fun at the expense of the others,
and out of it all comes much sunshine and laughter, and no bitterness.

The Jewish boy loves to repeat a good joke on his own kind as well as
the others. I myself saw the letter that a Jewish boy was writing to
his uncle in New York, eulogizing the Y. M. C. A. He was not an
educated lad, but he was a wonderfully sincere boy, and he pleaded his
cause well. He had been treated so well by the "Y" that he wanted his
uncle to give all his spare cash to that great organization. This is
the letter:

"DEAR UNCLE:

"This here Y. M. C. A. is the goods. They give you chocolate when
you're goin' into the trenches and they gives you chocolate when you're
comin' out and they don't charge you nothin' for it neither. If you
are givin' any money don't you give it to none of them Red Crosses nor
to none of them Salvation Armies, nor to none of them Knights of
Columbuses; but you give it to them Y. M. C. A.'s. They treat you
right. They have entertainments for you and wrestlin' matches, and
they give you a place to write. And what's more, Uncle _they don't
have no respect fer no religion_.

"Yours,

"BILL."

Yes, France is full of Silhouettes of Sunshine. There was the eloquent
Y. M. C. A. secretary. And while he didn't exactly know it, he too was
adding his unconscious ray of light to a dull and desolate world.

The Gothas had come over Paris the night before, and so had a group of
some one hundred and fifty new secretaries. The Gothas had played
havoc with two blocks of buildings on a certain Paris street because of
the fact that the bombs they dropped had severed the gas-mains. The
result did have a look of desolation I'll have to admit. So far the
new secretaries had done no damage.

Now there is one thing common to all the newly arrived in France, be
they Y. M. C. A. secretaries, Knights of Columbus workers, Red Cross
men, or just the common garden variety of "investigators," and that is
that for about two weeks they are alert to hear the bloodiest, most
drippy, and desolate-with-danger stories that they can hear, for the
high and holy purp