NEVER an offensive again, from the French...you SEE, Madame--Never
again an offensive from the French! They've done their share!
They've done more than their share. Never an offensive. We'll hold
till the Americans get here, but not more!'

"We were pulling into the station at Meaux by this time, and as the
train stood there waiting, I heard a sound that brought my heart
up into my mouth...the sound of a lot of young men's voices singing
an American College song! Everybody sprang to the windows and there
was a group of American boys, in their nice new uniforms, singing
at the tops of their voices, and putting their heads together like
a college glee-club. Their clear young voices completely filled
that great smoky station and rang out with the most indescribably
confident inspiriting effect! 'Good God!' cried the dingy, battered
soldier at my elbow, 'how little they know what they are going into!'
The soldier from Bourgogne said nothing, but looked very stern and
sad. The contrast between those two men, one so rebellious, the
other so grimly enduring, both so shabby and war-worn, and those
splendidly fresh boys outside, seemed to me the most utterly symbolic
episode imaginable. There was America--there was France.

"It changed the current of the talk. After that we talked all
together, the two bourgeois joining in...sober talk enough, of
probabilities and hopes and fears.

"As I walked home at one o'clock in the morning through the silent
black streets of Paris, turning over and over what that poor
disinherited slum-dweller had said as we parted, quite as earnestly
and simply as he had poured out all his disgust and revolt, 'Good-bye,
Ma'ame, I never met an American before. I hope I'll meet many more.