of the barracks. Presently, without so much as a bugle-note for warning,
the two battalions formed, picked up their arms, and defiled out of
sight, back of a screen of shade-trees.

A quarter of an hour later a rumor came to the bluejacket ball-players
that the marines were boarding ship. The jacky beside the home plate
dropped his bat and ran toward the street, his team-mates close behind
him. They were too late to catch even a glimpse of the rear-guard. The
marines, just as swiftly and quietly as if they were on their way to
Hayti, Santo Domingo, Vera Cruz, or Nicaragua, had departed.

We all know what they did and what subsequent regiments of marines sent
to the front has done. Their fighting in the region of Torcy in the
German drive of last June, when the Teutonic shock troops got a reverse
shock from the marines, has already become a part of our brightest
fighting tradition. The marines are fighters, have always been so--but
it took their participation in this war to bring them prominently before
the public.

"Who and what are the marines?" was the question frequently asked when
the communiques began to retail their exploits. Ideas were very hazy
concerning them, and indeed, while we all are by this time quite
familiar with what they can do, there are many of us even now who do not
quite know what they are.

[Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by International Film
Service._ AMERICAN MARINES WHO TOOK PART IN THE MARNE OFFENSIVE ON
PARADE IN PARIS, JULY 4, 1918.]

Be it said, then, that the United States Marine Corps was authorized by