"Weren't you fighting all that time?" demanded Earl.
"Oh, yes, but somehow I feel so much safer up in the air than I do in the trenches."
"There aren't many safe spots left in Europe now anyway, I guess," remarked Earl.
"Nor any other place in the world, for that matter," added Leon. "Just stop a minute and think where there have been battles fought in this war."
"Pretty nearly every place you can think of," said Earl.
"I know it; in France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Austria, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, China--"
"Kiao Chau. Don't you know that port the Japanese and English took from the Germans?"
"That's right. Then there is or has been fighting in Armenia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Africa, the Marshall Islands and all those islands down around Australia; Zeppelins have raided England."
"Yes," exclaimed Leon, "and sea fights in the Atlantic and Pacific, the Mediterranean, in the North Sea and the Baltic, the Indian Ocean and the Carribean Sea and I don't know where else."
"It's awful, isn't it?" said Earl. "And right at home in America the Germans have been blowing up factories that were making arms for the Allies; they've also been putting bombs on ships."
"Why doesn't your country stop that?" asked Jacques.
"Don't ask me," exclaimed Earl. "I wish they would; if they'd deal with some of those plotters the way any European government would, I think all that trouble would end. We're too good to people in the United States."
"That's right," agreed Leon. "We offer them our hospitality and give them a chance to earn a good living and then they turn on us."
"Some day the people of the United States will turn on them," said Jacques solemnly.
"That's just what will happen," exclaimed Earl. "They will stand for a lot over there and they don't get angry easily; people like that are the worst kind when they do lose their tempers. One of these days they'll all get mad and those trouble makers will wake up to find that they've been playing with fire."
"There's our ambulance," said Jacques suddenly. "Come along."
"A gas attack," said a soldier to Jacques as he and his two companions hastened out of the cottage and started to climb into the ambulance.
"The Boches using gas again?" exclaimed Jacques. "That's bad."