One's introduction into the war zone and into war-zone cities and
villages, and one's visits "down the line" to the front by night, will
always be filled with the thrill of the unusual because of the Lights
of War. Where lights used to be, there are no lights now, and where
they were not seen before the war, they are radiant and rampant now.
The first place that an American traveller notices this absence of
lights is on the boat crossing over the Atlantic. From the first night
out of New York the boats travel without a single light showing. Every
light inside of the boat is covered with a heavy black crape, and the
port-holes and windows are so scrupulously and carefully chained down
that the average open-air fiend from California or elsewhere feels that
he will suffocate before morning comes, and even in the bitterest of
winter weather I have known some fresh-air fiends to prefer the deck of
the ship, with all of its bitter winds and cold, to the inside of a
cabin with no windows open. I stood on the deck of an ocean liner
"Somewhere on the Atlantic" a few months ago as the great ship was
ploughing its zigzag course through the black waters, dodging
submarines. There was not a star in the sky. There was not a light on
the boat. Absolutely the only lights that one saw was when he leaned
over the railing and saw the splash of innumerable phosphorescent
organisms breaking against the boat. I have seen the like of it only
once before, and this was on the Pacific down at Asilomar one evening,
when the waves were running fire with phosphorescence. It was a
beautiful sight there and on the Atlantic too.