their friendliness was by smiling whenever they met.

He was a dull, good-natured fellow, blond and mild of manner. "Seems a pity to have to bring all these boys away from their homes and their mothers and sweethearts to plant them down in this desert in the heat of summer," he remarked to his companion, after he had bitten off a large hunk of sour bread and was slowly chewing on it like a cud. Finally, taking out his soiled handkerchief, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"I have not been in the West very long, and it is sure enough God's country?" the blond workman went on. "But what a lot of waste land waiting for men to water and then plough and sow it! I thought all this desert land was soon to be redeemed and now all the young men have to go away from their own country into another land to fight. Sometimes it's a hard thing for a dull, common man to understand the good of war."

Billy stopped eating and slid over a few feet nearer. His blue eyes were beginning to shine.

"Wouldn't it be great if each man who has pledged his life to serve his country would do some deed which would save life instead of taking it?" he demanded. Then Billy paused and grew hot and cold by turns. He was not very sure of what he was trying to argue except in a vague fashion, and there was something about his last remark which held a suggestion of treason. He did not intend being disloyal. It was only that his preconceived ideas of right and wrong had been greatly troubled by the present war, and Billy was not willing to accept conditions as he found them, possessing the spirit which must solve its own problems.

He reddened as he found his new acquaintances staring at him suspiciously.

"Then you think peace brings the great mass of the people better fortune than war?" asked the other man, who had been quiet until now. He was a little, dark man, probably of Italian origin.

Billy hesitated. "I don't know," he answered, "I only believe peace should make men wiser and kinder to each other. But recently everything has gotten so dreadfully mixed in my mind, I can't be sure of anything. Perhaps I am mistaken."

"War has to be, young man," Billy's mild-mannered friend announced, nodding his head.

"Yes, that is what everybody says," the boy agreed.

Then the somewhat pointless conversation was obliged 

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