I'm a home-loving man. I don't ask anything better of life than my little house in the country, with the wife bustling about and the kids waiting for a game of ball or a tramp in the woods.

Yes, I'm a peace-lover, but I'm the kind of peace-lover who wouldn't quit this war a minute before the German empire is wiped off the map. I'm going to stand by until that day comes to pass—as come it will!

I'd like to tear the heart out of every German for the work they have done to the French and British and Scotch and Irish—oh, I know what I'm talking about. Yes, you do, if you stay in Havre long enough. You can get all your facts first hand.

Just wander down to the station every other evening when the big seven-thirty express thunders in with her load of returned British prisoners. Yes, you can see with your own two eyes what German methods are, and I tell you it makes a man, who is a man, ready to give the last drop of blood in him to stamp out a nation that treats men that way—and what's worse—women and children....

I'd been in the navy five years as a bugler. You are on the bridge all the time, standing by for duty. We were assigned to one of the prettiest yachts afloat. It was originally the famous pleasure boat of a great New York multi-millionaire. She certainly was a nifty craft—about three hundred feet long, almost as big as a destroyer, and graceful as a swan in the water.

There must have been great parties aboard her in the old days, and I wonder how she felt when they knocked out her mahogany staterooms and hauled down her real lace curtains and tore up her fine saloons, for transport duty.

Nothing classy about her then—just dirt and grease and the smell of pork and beans. As for her color, she was gray, same as any little ten-cent tug. But her lines didn't change. She was like a fine lady who takes off her ball gown and puts on rags, and in spite of it you can tell she's a fine lady through and through.

We carried the first American troops to land in France. The very first. That was making history, wasn't it? It seemed right and fit that the proud little yacht should have the glory of taking the first batch of Yankees to foreign shores.

It was a rough trip, though, and we felt sorry for the boys whose sea travels had been limited to the ferryboat between Hoboken and New York. Rough weather on shipboard is no joke. You can talk about the hardships of the trenches, but how about being aboard a pitching vessel, when you can't even get a light in your galley ranges, which means no food can be cooked and a steady diet of hard tack and bully beef?

Oh, we hadn't any kick coming. It was all part of the game, but we did wish the sea would calm down a bit and the fog lift. I never saw such a fog in all my days. From the minute we left, it wrapped itself around us like a damp blanket. You could hardly see your hand before your face. We didn't need a smoke curtain that trip—nature provided one for us, all made to order.

Our first taste of excitement was on the thirteenth day out. We were just wishing for something, when we saw, through the mist that had let up a little, a strange ship ahead of us. We signalled her to make her colors, but instead she started off as though she were trying to run away. That promised hot excitement, so we went after her. We chased her for five hours—now losing her in the fog, now sighting her again, gaining on her inch by inch. We were sure she was a blamed German merchant vessel trying to sneak back to her base, and we had the guns primed to send her straight to the place all Germans come from.

When we got within a few hundred yards of her we hauled up the battle ensign on the foremast. We meant business. The gunners stood by. Just as they expected to hear the command, "Fire when ready," up came the British Jack to her mast!

Say, but we felt foolish, chasing one of our own allies all over the broad Atlantic. We asked her why the deuce she hadn't made her colors before, and she signalled back that she was under the impression we were an enemy raider.

We calmed down after that and made port without pursuing the rest of the British navy to cover.

The base we established was the first naval base in France. We kind of like to think that some day, when our grandchildren cross the Atlantic on a pleasure trip—it having been made safe by us from those German vipers—they'll hunt out the little harbor, tucked away in a corner, where their grandfathers landed that June day, and went ashore with the first handful of American soldiers to set foot in France. They were there for just one purpose—to show what red, white and blue blood could do toward making the world a safe place to live in.

No fogs in France—just yellow sunshine and soft air and eager crowds waiting for us with open arms. Flags everywhere. It certainly made you catch your breath to see your own star-spangled banner flying from the windows of the little French town.

We went ashore pretty flush. Some of us had as much as a couple of hundred dollars, I suppose. We made our way to the railroad station. We wanted to get up to the "gay Paree" we'd been hearing about all our lives. We couldn't believe we were within hailing distance of it. It had always been a bright red spot on the map that we hoped to visit some day—and here we were just a few hours away from the liveliest city of Europe.

We made for the railroad station double quick. It was there I had my first real taste of French big-heartedness. In the crowd I noticed a beautifully dressed woman. She had all the French zip about her, but when she saw us she began to cry, and she just let the tears roll down her cheeks as though she didn't know she was doing it.

She stepped forward as we were passing, and the crowd let her through. They seemed to know who she was, for they whispered together and pointed her out. She hurried toward us and began to talk in broken English.

"You must be careful," she begged us. "All this money you have—it may tempt some of these poor people. Put it away, I implore you. Use only as much as you need...."

Then she caught my hands. "Oh, how glad I am that you have come at last! How I bless you and your country!"

She bought our tickets to Paris for us and saw us safely on the train, putting us wise to the ropes. Nothing was too much trouble for her to do for us. I tell you we never forgot it. Even after the train pulled out of the station we could see her standing a little apart from the rest, waving her lace handkerchief to us until we rounded a curve and lost her from sight.

Now that we were started on our journey we felt great and I began to tune up. I can sing a little, my mates say, so I let out a few songs that made us think of home. While I was giving them "'Way Down upon the Suwanee River" the door of the compartment opened and a big chap in a British uniform stood there grinning.

"Don't stop, boys," he said. "It sounds bully!"

It was Paul Rainey, the great hunter. Say, we certainly were glad to meet him, not only because he spoke our language, but because we knew from hearsay that he wasn't afraid of man or beast, and that's the kind of a fellow you like to know. He stayed with us the rest of the journey, and as he was to be in Paris a day on his way to Belgium, he took us with him to the American Ambulance Quarters, where he was stationed.

We arrived there in the evening. Next day he had to go on, so we found ourselves wandering around the Place de la Concorde and the Place VendÔme and the Champs ElysÉes without compass or rudder.

It was a pretty city, but all of a sudden I felt awfully blue. Everywhere you turned somebody hollered something at you in a language you couldn't make head or tail of—even the hack drivers and little kids in the street talked French.

I took a room at the Continental, and say, they almost robbed the shirt off me. Next morning I was wishing so hard for home you could almost hear me coming down the street. I found the American Express office and lingered there listening to people speaking English. I wondered where the gay part of "Paree" came in. It looked busy and prosperous and warlike to me—but gay? Nothing doing.

Just then someone spoke in my mother tongue and I whirled to see a French army officer at my elbow.

"If you have not already seen the sights of Paris, it will give me great pleasure to show them to you," he said.

I hadn't, so he proceeded to do the honors, and, like everything the French do—be it big or small—he made a thorough job of it. He was my host for two days and a half, and I'll guarantee I saw every little thing in Paris from the Apaches up. I wouldn't have missed that sight-seeing trip for all the gold in Europe. That's the French for you. Their hearts and their homes were opened wide to us. I bet there isn't a Yank living who wouldn't fight to the last breath for them.

Next I fell in with two French privates on furlough. They took me home with them and to show my gratitude I sang our songs for them and taught them some real live United States slang. They were good pupils, too, and were proud as peacocks of startling a crowd by calling out, "Wash you step!"

It was from them that I bought my best little souvenir—a German officer's helmet one of the Frenchies had picked up after shooting his man. It was a peach of a helmet, slashed across the patent leather crown, and still stained with blood. Inside was stamped the officer's name and regiment. He was of the Death Head Huzzars—the Kaiser's own.

I asked Frenchie if he didn't want to keep it, but he shrugged. He could get plenty more, I made out he meant. He was going back to the front soon; they'd be picking helmets off the trees once the French got really started. So I bought it from him for forty francs.

Our boat lay in the harbor. They were coaling it, and, once ready, we started our work of patrolling the coast. It was on one early afternoon that we got sudden orders to put to sea, and we started out at a fast clip. Somebody passed the word that we were on a rescue party and to keep a sharp watch out for rafts or lifeboats.

Rescue party! Ever see men who have faced death in a leaky boat all through a black night? I'll never forget their faces—something was stamped there that will never come out—a grim, strained, white look you don't like to see. The few boats we spotted bobbed about like corks on the waves. The men were too numb to pull on their oars. They had been rowing all night. Some of them were half dressed.

Once we pulled them in and helped fit them out with clothes we heard their story. They had been struck amidships by a blasted torpedo along about midnight. Their boat was a yacht something like our own; the impact of the shell blew her to a thousand bits. The men asleep were killed like rats in a trap. The few on deck managed to launch some boats and rafts before they were sucked down with the vessel.

That midnight attack made our score against the Hun a little higher, not that I needed any incentive to hate him another notch. I had a vision stamped on my mind I could never forget. I could still see that black snake of a train crawling into the crowded station at Havre—hear the long-drawn grinding of the brakes and hissing of steam—see the guards keeping back the mob surging forward for a chance to welcome home its sons. There was endless noise and confusion—but occasionally you would find a silent watcher—a woman and sometimes a man, who stood motionless, staring at the cars—muscles taut, waiting for God knows what horror.

Yes, you don't forget the first sight of the returned prisoners, in their worn uniforms. White-faced boys looking about eagerly for the face of friends—friends at last, after three long years! No, you never forget those battle-scarred men, with here an arm gone, or a leg—or worse, the eyes blinded forever.

Oh, my God! you dream of it nights afterward; you see that endless line of maimed and broken men....

Hate Germans! I tell you I'm a peace-loving man and all I want is my little home, with the wife and the kids, but do you think I'd stop fighting in this war while there is yet a drop of blood left in me? Not much! I love my own too well to let them suffer as those French and Belgian women have—that's the answer!

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