Page:The history and achievements of the Fort Sheridan officers' training camps.djvu/397

 which you have shown me, it is the welcome you have given me here. I will never forget the sight of you as an audience when I addressed you. Your eyes were so bright and so clear, your smiles were so frank, your appreciation was so loyal and so spontaneous, that fearful at the begin- ning of my speech to hurl myself before you "over the top," I felt at ease in the middle of it, and toward the end I did not want to stop. I have come to love you as 1 have loved my officers and my chassesurs. And it is not without a heart wrench that I say to you"adieu." I do not think there is any people more hospitable than yours. In the circle of our work, in the atmosphere of the post, you have proved it to me, as I have felt it with emotion in the larger frame of the social life of America.

And now, continue to work until the end, until victory. The date is inimaterial, since it will come. I have even heard it said here through courtesy to me that the United States owed a debt to France, because France had assisted at its birth and at the beginning of its formidable entrance into contemporary history. Be that as it may, if it were true as those pretend who do not know us, that France before this war was very ill, was already dead, if this were true, then you may be sure that the great American Republic will assist in the near future to the rebirth of the old, but always glorious France.

CAPTAIN G. E. BERTRAND, Sixth Battalion de Chasseurs Alpine, On Mission to the United States of America.

During the last week, which might be fittingly entitled "Worry Week," there w^ere many minor happenings. There w^as a review^ by the Governors of Kansas and Michigan and the Commanding Officer. There was the farewell reception in the Gymnasium on the last Sunday evening with addresses by the Commanding Officer, Colonel James A. Ryan, Major E. J. Vattman, Chaplain of both Camps; W. F. Hypes, representing the Y. M. C. A., and Myron E. Adams, Director of Morale.

Those who had a chance to look the three regiments in the face that Sunday night as one after another they marched into the hall and took their places, will not soon forget, the wonderful good spirit, the high purpose or the strong manliness of these men. It was the privilege of a lifetime to have had these associations — to have been even for a time part of an organization that w^as made up of the best men ever.

There w^ere 4,000 nervous, anxious men trying to smile and w^ork and sleep that last w^eek, but "Their minds had but a single thought. ' Those w^ho had been at the First Camp will recall the same experience. All pride, con- fidence and assurance seemed to depart. There were no exceptions. It w^as a week of real humiliation.

The state of mind was hard to describe. Probably it was much harder inside than even the outside impression. It might be compared to a man just about to hear the decision of a jury that is to acquit or convict him; a man waiting to hear what his beloved is going to say to his proposal, or the man who hesitates to open the business letter on his desk which w^ill make or break him.

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