of the strange confusion that is in everybody's mind ever since
the war...what are we all doing anyhow!"

[Illustration: They were standing on the running board all this
time with the train going forty miles an hour]

"Here are some of the things the fluent Paris 'cockney' said...for
the type corresponds in Paris to the lower-class cockney of London.

"'See here, you know, we've had enough of it...WE CAN'T STAND
IT ANY MORE! I'm just back from the Chemin des Dames...you know
what that's been for the last month'...then he gave me a terrible
description of that battle...'how do you expect men to go back to
that...do you know what happens to you when you live for twenty-thirty
days like that?...you go mad! Yes, THAT'S what happens to you...that's
what's the trouble with me now...I know I sound wild. I am wild...I
CAN'T stand any more...it's more than flesh and blood can endure
to go back into that! Why don't the Americans GET in it if they are
going to? Oh, yes, I know they can't any sooner...but why didn't
they get IN, before! Oh, yes, I know why. I know...but when you are
mad you can't stop to reason. We look at it this way...When we're
not mad, from having been too many days under fire...we say, as we
talk it over...There are the English...they've done splendidly...they've
taken two years, it is true, to get their army really in shape...but
they didn't have anything to begin with...they're fine...all that
we could expect. But all the same, during the two years, Frenchmen were
dying like flies...just watering the whole North with blood...yes,
I've seen a brook run red just like the silly poems that nobody
believed. And the Americans...yes...suppose this man and I should
get to quarrelling. Of course you can't jump right in and decide