mostly Red Cross or Y. M. C. A. or American ambulance or Field Service
uniforms. We did not don our uniforms, though Henry believed that
we should at least have a dress rehearsal. The only regular uniforms
on board were worn by a little handful of French soldiers, straggling
home from a French political mission to America, and these French
soldiers were the only passengers on the boat who had errands
to France connected with the destructive side of the war. So not
until the uniforms blazed out gorgeously did we realize what an
elaborate and important business had sprung up in the reconstructive
side of war. Here we saw a whole ship's company--hundreds of busy
and successful men and women, one of scores and scores of ship's
companies like it, that had been hurrying across the ocean every
few days for three years, devoted not to trading upon the war, not
to exploiting the war, not even to expediting the business of "the
gentle art of murdering," but devoted to saving the waste of war!

As the days passed, and "we sailed and we sailed," a sort of
denatured pirate craft armed to the teeth with healing lotions to
massage the wrinkled front of war, Henry kept picking at the ocean.
It was his first transatlantic voyage; for like most American men,
he kept his European experiences in his wife's name. So the ocean
bothered him. He understood a desert or a drouth, but here was a
tremendous amount of unnecessary and unaccountable water. It was
a calm, smooth, painted ocean, and as he looked at it for a long
time one day, Henry remarked wearily: "The town boosters who secured
this ocean for this part of the country rather overdid the job!"

One evening, looking back at the level floor of the ocean stretching
illimitably into the golden sunset, he mused: "They have a fine
country here. You kind of like the lay of it, and there is plenty