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wayside stations, particularly the larger towns like Orange, Valence etc. where girls sprang up from nowhere with baskets of oranges, cakes, sweets etc. French soldiers are everywhere. Down in the South they are mainly on guard duty and are dressed just like the French soldiers we see in the old Comic Operas - bright red trouser very loose and tucked into their boots, blue coats and a blue cap with a red band. The fighting French soldier is dressed in a sky blue uniform which is certainly an improvement on the old Comic Opera affair but is still very conspicuous. The way the French railway people handle the traffic is an eye-opener. The Railways are privately owned but at present of course, are under national control. All the Companies interchange their rolling stock so that no delays occur in changing over from one Company's Lines to another Our journey was 650 miles and with the train of 350 yards they did the journey in 48 hours which for a troop train is very good travelling. They use the lines to the utmost; ahead of us was always a train 2 miles away and the same astern, and yet with all this traffic we were never blocked for longer than a quarter of an hour. Their goods trains travel at the pace of our passenger trains and their expresses fly, everything gets out of their way. We passed through Lyon, Dijon, Tonnerre, and other big places south of Paris, but Paris itself was not touched at, the train making a detour which took us round the outskirts of the city. North of Paris we began to see places which came under our notice during the Germans dash on Paris back in August 1914, St. Denis, Beauwaix, also Amiens, Abbeville, etc We crossed the Seine, the Marne, the Oise, the Somme rivers whose names we laboriously learnt in our school days, little dreaming that