there in its place.

The turmoil continued to increase. At least a thousand motor-ambulances,
mobilized from all over the region of Paris, were now on hand to carry
away the human wreckage of the great offensive. Ignorant of the ghastly
army at its doors, Paris slept. The rain continued to fall heavily.

"Eh la, comrade."

A soldier in the late thirties, with a pale, refined face, hailed me
from his stretcher.

"You speak French?"

I nodded.

"I am going to ask you to do me a favor--write to my wife who is here in
Paris, and tell her that I am safe and shall let her know at once what
hospital I am sent to. I shall be very grateful."

He let his shoulders sink to the stretcher again and I saw him now and
then looking for me in the crowd. Catching my eye, he smiled.

A train full of Algerian troops came puffing into the station, the
uproar hardly rising above the general hubbub. The passengers who were
able to walk got out first, some limping, some walking firmly with a
splendid Eastern dignity. These men were Arabs and Moors from Algeria
and Tunisia, who had enlisted in the colonial armies. There was a great
diversity of size and racial type among them, some being splendid, big
men of the type one imagines Othello to have been, some chunkier and