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 commissioned by France for this undertaking, as her Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement spread in front of my breakfast roll shows to me and all of the Allies. A shipper has to have a license like this in these days. It is what secures for her her export permit from the London Board of Trade. Now she sets down her coffee cup and folds her newspaper and is off for India House in Kingsway where foregather other merchants who have confidential appointments with the War Office and the English Government. Upon her decisions to-day will depend so much more than the selection of a ribbon to match the blue of her eyes or the choice of the card to win at an afternoon bridge whist party. Her care and her forethought, her planning and her enterprise must outwit even the German submarines and get the goods across the English Channel to keep the transportation lines of a nation open for communication with the front. And there will be no superior at her elbow to tell her how.

"I like big ventures. I like to do things myself. I'd sell flowers on the curb before I'd consent to be any one's else employé," the new woman in commerce flashed back at me as she buttoned her coat collar and started out in a ten o'clock morning fog.

You see, it's like that. The big venture is the fascinating field that lies beyond humdrum directed routine. We have by now forgotten the stir that was created when perhaps thirty years ago the first