way, but in a manner very natural and real. The war was
always in the background of one's musings, and while we were far
removed from actual contact with it, every depopulated country village
brought to mind the sacrifice which France has made for the cause of
all freedom-loving nations. Every roadside cafe, long barren of its
old patronage, was an evidence of the completeness of the sacrifice.
Americans, for the most part, are of an unconquerably healthy cast of
mind; but there were few of us who could frequent these places
light-heartedly.

Paris was our emotional storehouse, to use Kipling's term, during the
time we were at B----. We spent our Sunday afternoons there, mingling
with the crowds on the boulevards, or, in pleasant weather, sitting
outside the cafes, watching the soldiers of the world go by. The
streets were filled with _permissionnaires_ from all parts of the
Western front, and there were many of those despised of all the rest,
the _embusques_, as they are called, who hold the comfortable billets
in safe places well back of the lines. It was very easy to distinguish
them from the men newly arrived from the trenches, in whose eyes one
saw the look of wonder, almost of unbelief, that there was still a
goodly world to be enjoyed. It was often beyond the pathetic to see
them trying to satisfy their need for all the wholesome things of life
in a brief seven days of leave; to see the family parties at the
modest restaurants on the side streets, making merry in a kind of
forced way, as if every one were thinking of the brevity of the time
for such enjoyment.

Scarcely a week went by without bringing one or two additional
recruits to the Franco-American Corps. We wondered why they came so
slowly. There must have been thousands of Americans who would have
been, not only willing, but glad to join us; and yet the opportunities
for doing so had been made widely known. For those who did come this
was the legitimate by-product of glorious adventure and a training in
aviation not to be surpassed in Europe. This was to be had by any
healthy young American, almost for the asking; but our numbers
increased very gradually, from fifteen to twenty-five, until by the
spring of 1917 there were fifty of us at the various aviation schools
of France. Territorially we represented at least a dozen states, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. There were rich men's sons and poor men's
sons among our number; the sons of very old famil