nin' like rab-
s' trench. I
that was all.
knee with a
orne stopped
carefully un-
Between the
Hage, already

the centre of
was showing.
you better be
or you won't
used, staring
s in a bewil-
e was lucky,
y with mur-
ourse it was
he wanted to
podwin could
as something
rience that
Ls almost an
soldiery that
be arrested,
deliberately
on-com, and
thing. But
lesson; no
›r old Haw-
n bad if he

y one of the

n in.

s record, he He never n this escaknown the But betted him, im to keep of the M. nestly, "I Paris. It's uess it's a

ht to see it

sides, they'll see us at the station we go out at, anyways."

"Yeh," considered Goodwin. "But they don't bother yuh if you're goin'; it's only when you're comin' in that they pick yuh up."

"I thought you wanted to see Paris, soldier?"

"I did." How strongly he wanted to see Paris, how long he had been fascinated by tales of the Café de la Paix and the Folies Bergère, the Apache district! For a moment he weakened, but a moment only, for at the end of this merriment he saw Hawthorne in Saint Anne's Prison, with a service record that was black as ink, and charged with being absent without leave. "I don't want to now, though."

"Cold feet?" asked Hawthorne. Goodwin culped: Cold feet! But tha

Before them was a five-foot fence which terminated in a gate beside the brick wall of the station. The sign "Sortie" was above the gate, and before it stood the ticket-collector taking slips of pasteboard from the passengers.

"Don't let 'im stop us," cautioned Goodwin. Stepping quickly, with a sense of onslaught, they approached the gate, smiled at the collector, and-were halted. A ticket was demanded.

"Americain soldat," answered Hawthorne.

The explanation did not serve. Barring the exit, the collector repeated his demand.

"What?" asked Hawthorne, leaning over the Frenchman, as if he thought distance to be all that prevented him from understanding.

"Ticket, comme ça, comme ça!" The

"No savvy. I don't git ya, mister." Hawthorne slowly shook his head.

The collector danced in his exasperation over these Americans. "Ticket, ticket," he shouted.

"I don't know what you mean!" Hawthorne's voice was yet louder. "Here, how's this?" He reached in his pocket, withdrew his hospital order for a wound chevron, and held it forth.

The Frenchman violently shook his head.

"Tell 'im we're goin' back to our outfit, Hawthorne. Mussear, Boche! Bing, bing! Toot sweet! Allemande. Knock hell out of the whole bunch!" Goodwin gritted his teeth at imaginary Germans, lunged with an imaginary bayonet, pressed an imaginary trigger, and smiled ingratiatingly.

The Frenchman cursed, waved his hands, and despaired. They passed out into the street, gay in their achievement. No street-cars were to be seen, but an English soldier whom Goodwin hailed piloted them to the Métro and gave them directions to the Gare de l'Est. And so, while the stage of the Folies Bergère was a tantalizing mist of gauze and flesh, while a field clerk paid for the dinner of a cocotte at the Moulin Rouge, while a respectable line officer lay prone on a bench by the Sacre-Coeur, and while the military police sleuthed the streets, Goodwin and Hawthorne rumbled through the bowels of Paris-the city of their latter dreamsto take the train for Toul.

Goodwin saw the dawn from a thirdclass coach in which he sat half-smothered by a detachment of French soldiers. He wondered how it was possible for Hawthorne to sleep. His charge was sprawled on the floor of the coach, his head resting on the feet of a snoring poilu and his legs serving as a pillow for another. Not that Hawthorne's position was too uncomfortable for rest. Goodwin himself had lain that way innumerable times. His wonder was that Hawthorne could forget about his peril. He was, as Goodwin saw it, in a dangerous position. If the least thing happened to him to cause his arrest, his past record would certainly be the cause of his going to jail. At this instant, if they were seen by a military police, a

commissioned man, Hawthorne wo arrested, and when the court-r board saw his record he might be tr desertion. How could he explain t was going back to the front? G worried, looking out the window green and brown rectangular field gray farmhouses, the villages cluste the quiet hilltops.

Soon they would arrive in Toul, they got off the train and through t without being challenged, Haw would be comparatively safe. Bu was a divisional headquarters. and soldiers would be at the static would be useless to attempt to pa ticket-collector. But they could, b ing the train by the left side instead right and walking across the tracks the collector completely. So Go schemed for the welfare of his friend the friend slept on, in a mass betwe seats, ignorant of Goodwin's schen

Toul tells its mediæval story thick walls, the moat which surrou the turrets, with long slits for the a rising above the walls and looki over the calm, fertile country of wo farm. Goodwin saw it from the w shook Hawthorne by the shoulder. up, Hawthorne, here we are," he c

"Huh! Where?" Hawthorne tangled himself and sat up, star Goodwin.

"We'll be at Toul in a minute ar have to git off the minute the train s Hawthorne grinned. "All righ dier, I guess I kin say 'No savvy' Frogs."

"I gotta stunt, Hawthorne. Wh train stops we'll get off on the wron an' beat it while the coaches an standin' between us an' the statio

The train slackened, jerked, the bu of the coaches struck and recoiled. win raised the latch and opened the

With Goodwin leading, they t across the tracks, cleared the fenc followed the street which led throu outer gate at the north. Suddenly thorne halted.

"I don't know about you, soldie my laig hurts and I want some cho

"Come on, Hawthorne," Go coaxed. He was hungry too, but h

ne would be ourt-martial be tried for plain that he ? Goodwin ndow at the ar fields, the clustered on

Toul, and if ough the city Hawthorne e. But Toul ers. Officers e station. It t to pass the ould, by leavinstead of the tracks, avoid So Goodwin s friend while 5 between the ; scheming. story by the surrounds it, r the archers, looking out of wood and the window; ulder. "Get " he called. horne disen', staring at

outfits by noon. Maybe we can find a farmhouse along the way."

"Hell," said Hawthorne sceptically, "we won't see our outfit afore night, an' you know it. Besides, it's nearly all evacuated district between here an' the front." "Come on, Hawthorne. The streets'll be full of soldiers in a minute an' we'll git run in," Goodwin pleaded.

Hawthorne resigned himself. "An' me with a gimpy laig," he said.

They walked under the heavy gateway to the road, a white ridge bending along green slopes past the walled town and through a wood where the ground levelled. There, the road was straight, with an appearance of coolness beneath the overhanging boughs. They walked without speaking. Hawthorne, because of the not-quite-healed wound in his leg, employed a kind of ploughing gait, and from time to time Goodwin would regard him stealthily, jealously, then look straight ahead again to the point where the road narrowed into nothingness. He was satisfied with himself, pleased with his success in bringing Hawthorne back to his outfit safely. If it hadn't been for him, Hawthorne would certainly have been arrested. And with his record! He would have been thrown in jail for the rest of his life. But now Hawthorne could go back to his outfit and live down his attack on the mess sergeant. At any rate, Hawthorne had learned his lesson.

In rear of them the revolutions of a motor sounded, and as they looked back they saw an ambulance speeding toward them. The brakes tightened, the rubber seared, skidding on the gravel, and an obliging driver stopped.

At the back of the car they sat facing each other on the long, leather-covered seats. Signs of the front grew more numerous each moment. The evacuation hospital, the camouflaged supply dump, the long-range guns hidden in a cellar and covered with leaves, the mended road, the concrete machine-gun emplacementthey passed all of them.

At a crossroad the ambulance stopped. To the left was a shell-raked farmhouse, headquarters of the brigade to which Hawthorne belonged. To the right, far beyond the blue-black woods, lay Goodwin's troops. Goodwin held out his hand.

"Well, Hawthorne, what'll you do when you git back to your outfit?"

"Hell," said Hawthorne, tightening his webbed belt and grinning, "I'll report for duty an' then carve my name all over the face of that Lentz."

"Who?" asked Goodwin.
"Lentz, the mess sergeant."

"Oh," said Goodwin dully, far down in his throat. "Well, so long, Hawthorne." As he turned to the right he was sickeningly aware of the distance he had yet to go and the fact that he was very hungry.

No mention has been made in this article of the Uniwas unable to visit. I hear from Americans who have studied there that it offers good opportunities of instruction

versity of Algiers, a French state university, which the writer

hu an avrellent faculty It has about 1500 students.

alike in a certain impression they upon one who, like the writer, visi all within a few months. It is the ing experience of meeting in their sors a body of men devoted to the of truth and the great task of han the deposit of the world's knowl the next generation, who live with under narrow material conditions, their chief pleasures in the things mind and the consciousness of a rendered to their country.

The French universities are n the universities of the United separate and independent instit On the contrary, while each retain tain individual liberty of mana and action, they form integral

the French system of national education -they are, so to speak, important wheels in that great machine. They all have the same chief, the Minister of Education and Fine Arts, and are under the direction and inspection of the Director of Higher Education. At regular intervals their rectors assemble at Paris to take counsel together, and with the central authorities, upon their common task. They have a common organ of communication with educational institutions outside of France in "The National Office of French Universities and Schools"-a sort of Foreign Office for the French educational system, which has representatives in New York and London.

Their common task can most easily be understood by noticing the fact that the Rector of Poitiers, for example, is sometimes spoken of as Rector of the Academy of Poitiers and sometimes as Rector of the University of Poitiers. This means that he has a double duty. He is the central executive of the university, conducting its affairs with the aid of the deans of the various faculties, and he is also the executive head of the entire school system-from primary school to normal school-in the district included by the Academy of Poitiers.

For all the state institutions of learning in that district the Rector of the university is a sort of educational archbishop, and the size of the province, which is the academy, has no necessary relation to the size of the university. Thus the University of Rennes in 1921 was the fifth in France in the number of its students; it was the second in France for the number of students of the schools forming part of the Academy of Rennes examined for the baccalaureate or graduation certificate from the secondary schools. This baccalaureate examination is conducted by a mixed commission of the Faculties of Letters and of Science and teachers in the lycées (somewhat like our high schools but receiving tuition fees). The student who has passed it in any academy has the key to the entrance gates of any university.

Once inside the university he is free to choose his faculty and, within that

faculty his studies excent that if he wants

35

course differing in different universities) or the degree of doctor (necessary to the higher teaching posts and the learned professions), he must be ready to pass examinations, less frequent than ours, but more comprehensive and difficult. These examinations normally consist of two: the licence, sometimes divided into several examinations but more often comprised in one, and the doctorate. In addition there are competitive examinations, extremely severe, called aggregations, which are the entrance gates to professorships either in the lycées or the universities. In the faculty of medicine there are a number of examinations leading up to the doctorate.

This comparative liberty to do as he pleases without having his work controlled and checked at frequent intervals, in each of his various courses, does not lead to that neglect of regular work which might be feared from its immediate application to our American universities. A régime of liberty which treats the university student as a man capable of being left to his own responsibility to prepare himself by continued and regular daily effort for a distant and difficult test of his knowledge and attainments, is the ideal toward which our American universities ought to work. Its ruthless application as a theory without regard to the hard facts of the psychology of the youth which now enters our American universities, would result in much disillusionment to students and to their parents. The word "ruthless" is carefully chosen, for it is certainly a cruelty to force upon youths a responsibility which demands a larger ability for unaided selfcontrol and a maturer judgment of the comparative value of things than they possess or are willing to use.

The average French student is more serious in his attitude toward what he comes to college to get and works very much harder than the average American student. Of the reasons for this, three may be noted.

First, what is known as college life, which, as it exists in many of our colleges and universities, is a very beautiful thing, exists in so much feebler a degree in