Its flavour is wonderful. Mainly it is found in ancient Normandy; and, among strangers, eating it—or, when it is in an especially fluid state, drinking it—comes under the head of outdoor sports. But the natives take it right into the same house with themselves.

   And, no matter where we were—in Picardy, in Brittany, in the Vosges or the Champagne, as the case might be—we had

   wonderful crusty bread and delicious butter and a good light wine to go along with our meal. We would sit at a bare table in the smoky cluttered interior of the old kitchen, with the rafters just over our heads, and with the broken tiles—or sometimes the bare earthen floor—beneath our feet, and would eat our fill.

   More times than once or twice or thrice I have known the mistress of the house at settlement time to insist that we were overpaying her. From a civilian compatriot she would have exacted the last sou of her just due; but, because we were Americans and because our country had sent its sons overseas to help her people save France, she, a representative of the most canny and thrifty class in a country known for the thriftiness of all its classes, hesitated to accept the full amount of the sum we offered her in payment.

   She believed us, of course, to be rich—in the eyes of the European peasant all Americans are rich—and she was poor and hard put to it to earn her living; but here was a

   chance for her to show in her own way a sense of what she, as a Frenchwoman, felt for America. Somehow, the more you see of the French, the less you care for the Germans.

   Moving on up a few miles nearer the trenches, we would run into our own people; and then we were sure of a greeting, and a chair apiece and a tin plate and a tin cup apiece at an American mess. I have had chuck with privates and I have had chow with noncoms; I have had grub with company commanders and I have dined with generals—and always the meal was flavoured with the good, strong man-talk of the real he-American.

   The food was of the best quality and there was plenty of it for all, and some to spare. One reason—among others—why the Yank fought so well was because he was so well fed between fights.

   The very best meals I had while abroad were vouchsafed me during the three days I spent with a front-line regiment as a guest of the colonel of one of our negro out

   fits. To this colonel a 

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