country as those who wear the insignia of the combatant. After the service that morning one of these slipped his arm into mine as I steadied myself against a particularly heavy sea, and said, "I've just had a great time, old man."

I knew by the eager look in his eyes that he wanted to talk about it, and so I led him over to a sheltered spot on the deck where we could be alone. The secretary was a college professor with a wife and two babies in the "States," and he had been a very nervous man all the way across the ocean; but now he was quite himself and very happy.

"I've just had a good hour with a lieutenant from S——," he continued. "He came to me in trouble. The story is the old one, one God knows we'll hear many times in the next few months. The chap is paying the price of his sin, rather the price of his ignorance, for he is just an overgrown country boy. He never saw the ocean until this ship carried him out upon it, and New York was too big and bad and attractive for him. Well, things might be worse. I helped him, and started him in the right direction; and then I said: 'Say, lad, you've got a stiff battle before you in France, stiffer than any the Germans can give you, stiffer than New York; and I know what you need. Do you want it?' and the chap looked me in the eye, and said, 'I do.' Well," the secretary continued, "we were on our knees presently, and God helped me first, and then helped him, to pray. Now Jesus Christ has another follower on this transport."

There was silence between us for a moment, and then the secretary concluded: "Last night I slept with my clothes on; I suppose we all did. I listened to the steady pound of the engines, and waited, tense and anxious, for the crash of the torpedo I knew might come; and then I got a grip on myself. I said: 'What are you here for? Who sent you? Whose are you?' and I promised God to stop being a coward. I asked Him to give me a chance to make amends for the time I had lost on this voyage looking for a submarine that is not likely to come. I asked God to give me a man out of these hundreds in uniform, to give me a man for Christ.

"And how quickly God has answered my prayer! Now I know why I'm here, and I have the first-fruit of my ministry."

A great thing it is to know why you are here! The man who has a reason for his journey, and the evidence of his decision in his own heart, has the peace that passeth understanding, and that not even U-boats can take away.

Chapter II
WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES

The war capitals of the Allies, Paris and London, have much in common. Soldiers in many-colored uniforms, from the brilliant red and black and blue of the French headquarters to the faded, mud-caked khaki of the helmeted "Tommy" just back from the trenches; Y. M. C. A. secretaries and nurses; wounded—streets filled with battle-marked and cheerful men; women in black, who turn neither to the right nor to the left as they hurry along with eyes that search for that which they will never see again; and shouting boys.

Of course London and Paris have many other things in common, but these are at once apparent. I suppose that I mentioned the boys because there are so many of them, the little fellows, and they are so shrill of voice. They are doing so many things that the "elders" used to do and with which we have never before associated them that they are quite impressive. But London and Paris do not have a monopoly of them.

In their spirit, too, they are part of the stern and stirring time. On the sea one morning I was awakened by "Billy Buttons"—I was his christener. His "Hot water, sir," was shrill and cheery; and his smile was the map of Ireland. On this particular morning I sat up in bed and said sternly, very sternly, "Billy Buttons, what are you doing here, anyhow?" and like a shot the sturdy lad sent back the answer, "Doing my bit, sir; doing my bit."

His daddy sailed the sea bringing bread to Britain until his ship went down unwarned; a brother died in France; a brother-in-law was killed in the battle of Jutland; another brother was then recovering from a wound received in a submarine attack; a sister was a nurse, but Billy seemed quite as proud, I am ashamed to say, of another sister who was an "actress"; and Billy himself, Billy of the sixteen blazing buttons, whose years entitled him to only fourteen, was "doing his bit." Blessed Billy Buttons!

London is massive and slow to arouse. During an air raid I saw women knitting in the basement of the hotel whither the management had tried to hurry its guests, and the trams only slightly quickened their pace. London has learned in the years of this war that "haste makes waste" and that "direct hits" from airplanes respect not even the stoutest buildings anyhow. Of course, shrapnel is a different proposition, and one is very foolish to walk abroad when the "barrage" is under way.

One day I saw an aviator "loop the loop" directly above Piccadilly Circus. He did the trick repeatedly while not more than four hundred feet above the hotel roof. Scores of people in the streets did not turn away from staring into shop windows. At another time I saw two "silver queens"; beautiful beyond words these dirigibles were when they manœuvred in the still air above St. Paul's. For these the crowds did turn from their mundane pursuits.

My first war visit to London almost convinced me that it was a city of the "woman of the cigarette," and that she had few sisters, if any, who were not victims of her habit. In the dining-room of my hotel I found literally scores of women, perhaps as many as three hundred, smoking. The young, the middle-aged, and the old, were all at it. I saw a young mother calmly blow smoke over the head of her eight-year old son, who displayed only a mild interest.

And what I saw in the hotel I witnessed in every down-town eating-place that I visited. During my entire journey across England I witnessed a wild nicotine debauch, for in every public place tobacco was king, and his throne of smoke filled everywhere. English railway-carriages are marked "smoking" or left undesignated, but nowadays (this does not apply to Scotland) every compartment is in reality a smoker. A man in uniform, particularly, wherever he finds himself, brings forth the inevitable "pill-box"; and there is none to say him nay.

Out of Hull one morning I found myself chatting with a delightful company, several gentlemen and a lady; and modesty forbids my telling who was the one person who did not burn up any cigarettes! Later in the day a modest young woman, carrying every air of gentle breeding, was seated directly across from me at dinner. She smoked—languidly, but nevertheless smoked—between courses. And, by the way, one sees much more smoking in public among women in London than he sees in Paris.

For a man who is old-fashioned enough to prefer womanhood à la his wife and mother the "woman of the cigarette" is very disquieting, to say the least. But not all the women of England smoke. Only a superficial observer would take a London hotel, or London down-town dining-rooms, or any number of mere incidents, as a warrant for charging English womanhood universally with the cigarette habit. I have found the mother and wife of the average Englishman quite as simple and "unmodernized" as our own American mothers and wives. New York hotel life will perhaps approach the hotel life of London; and London, we should remember, has the whole world to contend with. Her allies and their families are