War Service Letters 



453 



wonder I'm so scared that I'm wobbly in the knees ! Nobody seems to 

 know just how many. One record says 8500 and the other 13,000, so 

 I'm striking an average. I am (or will be tomorrow) within three 

 hours or so of Irving Clark at Pau, but understand that Mont de Mar- 

 san, my headquarters, is flatter than a pancake. Hard luck for a moun- 

 tain maniac, isn't it, when there are so many mountains in France? 

 They held out the department of Jura before me just long enough to 

 get my appetite up and then snatched it away." . . . 

 August 4, 1918. 



. . . "Therej are two little rivers, the Midon and the Douze, that come 

 sauntering through the woods near Mont de Marsan and join to make 

 the Midouze, My town rambles about the banks of all three, a rather 

 picturesque, very dirty town of tall bare white houses with red-tiled 

 roofs. Some of the buildings are very old — of dull gray stone these — 

 brightened by lichens as varied and beautiful as those on the Yosemite 

 cliffs. The streets are crooked and narrow, many of them without side- 

 walks, and the closely shuttered houses fairly elbow you off the curb. 

 You wouldn't think to look down such a street that behind the blank 

 houses lovely high-walled gardens stretch right down to the little riv- 

 ers. . . . 



"Geographically, I regret to say, the Landes is the most uninteresting 

 part of all France. It is flat as a pancake for the most part, wooded 

 with a scrubby kind of pitchy, two-leaved pine — 'pin maritime,' they call 

 it — a planted forest set out seventy-five years or more ago to reclaim 

 the sand-dunes of the coast and the sandy desert just behind. Practical- 

 ly all the industry of the coast half of the department centers about this 

 forest. There are several turpentine distilleries, and all the trees are 

 disfigured by longitudinal gashes which bleed them of their resin. Each 

 tree has a little tin basin tied to it to catch its gore. When a district 

 is to be lumbered they 'bleed the trees to death,' gashing them on all 

 sides to catch every drop. Before they are quite dead the lumberman 

 comes along and chops them down. Not very gay these forests. 



"Near Mont de Marsan and farther to the east and south lies a flat 

 agricultural country, rather pretty in a quiet way. It has a few very 

 beautiful trees, especially near-sycamores, 'plantains,' and quiet little 

 overshadowed brooks, but for a hill-lover its whole effect is depress- 

 ing." . . . 



August 14, 1918. 



... "I wish you could have seen Paris last Wednesday night. It 

 was full moon and misty, and not an artificial light was to be seen. 

 Most of the Red Cross had been present at the War Service mass meet- 

 ing, and on coming out I suggested to my companion that it was our 

 bounden duty to walk along the Seine and see Notre Dame by moon- 

 light. Of course, it was just the kind of night for air raids, but the 

 Germans were awful busy elsewhere, and they seldom begin before 11 130 



