all over the United States; the names of those leaders who are
soldiers may not be mentioned. They have dropped out of American
civilian life so quietly that they are scarcely missed. Yet for
weeks we lived in the hotel with one of the prominent figures in
American finance who is working eighteen hours a day buying supplies,
assembling war material--food, fuel, clothing--putting up scores
of miles of barracks, building a railroad from tidewater to the
American headquarters, equipping it with American engines, freight
cars, and passenger coaches; sinking piles for the first time in a
harbour which has been occupied for two thousand years, and unloading
great ships there which were supposed to be too big for that port.
He is the marvel of the French. Hundreds like him are over there
lending a hand. They are about to handle in a year an army half as
large as the other allies have been three years building. Houses,
furniture, fuel, food, guns, ammunition, clothing, transportation,
communication, medicine, surgeons, recreation--the whole routine
of life for a million men and more must be provided in advance
by these organizing men. This work, so far as these men consider
it, is purely altruistic. They are sacrificing comforts at home,
money-making opportunities at home, and they are working practically
for nothing, paying their own expenses, and under the censor's
wise rules these men can have not even the empty husks of passing
fame. For their names may not be mentioned in the news of what
the Americans are doing in Europe. Yet wherever one goes in Europe
he is running across these first-class men. Their sincerity and
patriotism may not be questioned.

But they are getting something real out of it all. The renewal of
youth in their faces through unstinted giving is beautiful to see.
They are going into a new adventure--a high and splendid adventure,