a sense of what she, as a Frenchwoman, felt for America. Somehow, the
more you see of the French, the less you care for the Germans.

Moving on up a few miles nearer the trenches, we would run into our
own people; and then we were sure of a greeting, and a chair apiece
and a tin plate and a tin cup apiece at an American mess. I have had
chuck with privates and I have had chow with noncoms; I have had grub
with company commanders and I have dined with generals--and always the
meal was flavoured with the good, strong man-talk of the real
he-American.

The food was of the best quality and there was plenty of it for all,
and some to spare. One reason--among others--why the Yank fought so
well was because he was so well fed between fights.

The very best meals I had while abroad were vouchsafed me during the
three days I spent with a front-line regiment as a guest of the
colonel of one of our negro outfits. To this colonel a French
general, out of the goodness of his heart, had loaned his cook, a
whiskered poilu, who, before he became a whiskered poilu, had been the
chef in the castle of one of the richest men in Europe.

This genius cooked the midday meals and the dinners; but, because no
Frenchman can understand why any one should require for breakfast
anything more solid than a dry roll and a dab of honey, the
preparation of the morning meal was intrusted to a Southern black boy,
who, I may say, was a regular skillet hound. And this gifted youth
wrestled with the matutinal ham and eggs and flipped the flapjacks for
the headquarters mess.