"War is a business," the Germans have said. The Americans, with an
ideal shining in their eyes, have replied, "Very well. We didn't want
to fight you; but now that you have forced us, we will fight you on
your own terms. We will make war on you as a business, for we are
businessmen. We will crush you coldly, dispassionately, without
rancour, without mercy till we have proved to you that war is not
profitable business, but hell."

The American, as I have met him in France, has not changed one iota
from the man that he was in New York or Chicago. He has transplanted
himself untheatrically to the scenes of battlefields and set himself
undisturbedly to the task of dying. There is an amazing normality
about him. You find him in towns, ancient with châteaux and wonderful
with age; he is absolutely himself, keenly efficient and irreverently
modern. Everywhere, from the Bay of Biscay to the Swiss border, from
the Mediterranean to the English Channel, you see the lean figure and
the slouch hat of the U.S.A. soldier. He is invariably well-conducted,
almost always alone and usually gravely absorbed in himself. The
excessive gravity of the American in khaki has astonished the men of
the other armies who feel that, life being uncertain, it is well to
make as genial a use of it as possible while it lasts. The soldier
from the U.S.A. seems to stand always restless, alert, alone,
listening--waiting for the call to come. He doesn't sink into the
landscape the way other troops have done. His impatience picks him
out--the impatience of a man in France solely for one purpose. I have
seen him thus a thousand times, standing at street-corners, in the
crowd but not of it, remarkable to every one but himself. Every man
and officer I have spoken to has just one thing to say about what is
happening inside him, "Let them take off my khaki and send me back
to America, or else hurry me into the trenches. I came here to get