How quickly time has rolled the film since those early autumn days
when the man who went to France was a hero in his town's eyes.
Processions and parades and pageants interminable have passed
down America's main streets, all headed for France. And what proud
pageants they were! Walking at the head of the line were the little
limping handful of veterans of the Civil War. After them came the
middle-aged huskies of the Spanish War, and then, so very young, so
boyish and so very solemn, came the soldiers for the great war--the
volunteers, the National Guard, the soldiers of the new army; half
accoutred, clad in nondescript uniforms, but proud and incorrigibly
young. There had been banquets the week before, and speeches and
flag rituals in public, but the night before, there had been tears
and good-byes across the land. And all this in a few weeks; indeed
it began during the long days in which we two sailed through the
gulf stream, we two whose departure from our towns had seemed such
a bold and hazardous adventure. When one man leaves a town upon
an unusual enterprise, it may look foolhardy; but when a hundred
leave upon the same adventure, it seems commonplace. The danger in
some way seems to be divided by the numbers. Yet in truth, numbers
often multiply the danger. There was little danger for Henry and me
on the good ship Espagne with Red Cross stenographers and nurses and
ambulance drivers and Y. M. C. A. workers. No particular advantage
would come to the German arms by torpedoing us. But as the Espagne,
carrying her peaceful passengers, all hurrying to Europe on merciful
errands, passed down the river and into the harbour that afternoon,
we had seen a great grey German monster passenger boat, an interned
leviathan of the sea in her dock. We had been told of how cunningly the
Germans had scuttled her; how they had carefully relaid electric
wires so that every strand had to be retraced to and from its source,