Mildred Aldrich was an American journalist, editor, writer and translator. She spent her early career as a journalist and editor in Boston before moving to Paris, where she continued working as a foreign correspondent and translator. In 1914, shortly before the start of World War I, she retired to a house in the French countryside overlooking the Marne River valley. She published a novel and four accounts of her life based on collections of her letters written during the war years. In 1922, she was awarded the French Legion of Honour in recognition of her assistance to soldiers and refugees and the influence her books apparently had in persuading the United States government to declare war on Germany. Biography Mildred Aldrich was born on November 16, 1853, in Providence, Rhode Island, to Edwin and Lucy Ayers (Baker) Aldrich. She grew up in Boston and graduated from Everett High School in 1872. After teaching elementary school for a short time, she began her career in journalism. She worked for 12 years as secretary to the manager of the Boston Home Journal and contributed articles using the pseudonym H. Quinn. In 1892, she founded and edited The Mahogany Tree, a weekly journal of ideas containing fiction, poetry, and drama and book reviews. She joined The Boston Journal in 1894 and moved the following year to the Boston Herald as a drama critic. Aldrich moved to France in 1898, joining the circle of writers associated with fellow American expatriates Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Here she found a mixed portfolio of work as a foreign correspondent, a translator and an agent for US theatre producers, as well as a writer of articles for American magazines. In July 1914 she moved to a house called La Creste (Hilltop) at Huiry, thirty miles east of Paris. "I have come to feel the need of calm and quiet - perfect peace" she wrote. Ironically, the First World War began three months later, and this site, with its clear view of the Marne River valley, would provide her greatest writing success. She had a birds-eye view of the first Battle of the Marne and began to write a series of letters about her life during the war. The letters were collected in four volumes. A Hilltop on the Marne (1915) was based on her journal entries and on letters she wrote to Gertrude Stein. It first