"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams."

We were Argonauts--even the Red Cross ladies on their way to establish
rest camps behind the lines and brave the mud and rains of a winter in
eastern France. None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring
spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered,
comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a question.
And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to provide
for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction they
gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities with
which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even the
possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the sun
fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins below
were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled themselves for
the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the remark of M. le
Commissaire that it was a good "season" for submarines. The moonlight
filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding the deck. About
3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became communicative, the Red
Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the genial hour before the final
nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the sound of squeegees and brooms
to find the deck a river of sea water, on whose banks a wild scramble for
slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably ensued. No experience could have
been more socializing.

"Well, it's a relief," one of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be travelling
with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize what I'm
doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses with
twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months, but it's
better than thrashing around looking for something to do and never