We are in a typical French farming village of a thousand people, and here a thousand American soldiers are quartered.  A sergeant and a score of men are in each shed or stable or barn loft.  The Americans are stationed in a long string of villages down this railway line.  Indeed it is hard to tell for the moment whether we are in France or in the States.  Here are Uncle Sam’s uniforms, brown army tents, and new wooden barracks.  The roads are filled with American trucks, wagons, motors, and whizzing motorcycles, American mules, ammunition wagons, machine guns, provisions, and supplies, and American sentinels down every street.

These are the men of the First Division, scattered along behind the French lines, being drilled as rapidly as possible to take their place in the trenches for the relief of the hard-pressed French.  The nucleus is made up of the men of the old army, who have seen service in Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, Texas, or along the Mexican border.  And with them are young boys of nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one, with clear faces, fresh from their homes, chiefly from the Middle West—­from Illinois to Texas.

The first thing that strikes us as we look at these men is their superb kit and outfit.  From the broad cowboy hat, the neat uniform close fitting at the waist, down to their American shoes; from the saddles, bits, and bridles to the nose bags of the horses; from the guns, motors, and trucks down to the last shoe lace, the equipment is incomparably the best and most expensive of all that we have seen at the front.  The boys themselves are live, clean, strong, and intelligent fellows, probably the best raw material of any of the fighting forces in Europe.  The officers tell us that the American troops are natural marksmen and there are no better riflemen in the war zone.  The frequency of the sharpshooters’ medals, among both the officers and the men, shows that many of them already excel in musketry.

The second impression that strikes us is the crudeness of the new men, and the lack of finish in their drill, as compared with the veteran troops of Britain and France.  The progress they have made, however, in the past few weeks under their experienced American officers of the regular army has been truly remarkable.

The next impression we receive is the enormous moral danger to which these men are exposed in this far-away foreign land.  During the whole war it is the Overseas Forces, the men farthest from home influences, who have no hope of leave or furlough, who are far removed from all good women and the steadying influence of their own reputations, that have fared the worst in the war.  The Americans not only share this danger with the Colonials and other Overseas Forces, but they have an additional danger in their high pay.  Here are enlisted men who tell us that they are paid from $35 to $90 a month, from the lowest private to the best paid sergeants.  When you remember that