XXXIII. AMERICA TRANSFORMED BY WAR…

XXXIII. AMERICA TRANSFORMED BY WAR

When Germany threw down the gauge of battle to the civilized world, the German High Command calculated that the long, rigorous and thorough military training to which every male German had submitted, would make a military force invincible in the field. The High Command believed that a nation so trained would carve out victory after victory and would end the World War before any nation could train its men sufficiently to check the Teutonic rush.

To that theory was opposed the democratic conception that the free nations of earth could train their young men intensively for six months and send these vigorous free men into the field to win the final decision over the hosts of autocracy.

These antagonistic theories were tried out to a finish in the World War and the theory of democracy, developed in the training camps of America, Canada, Australia, Britain, France and Italy, triumphed. Especially in the training camps of America was the German theory disproved. There within six months the best fighting troops on earth were developed and trained in the most modern of war-time practices. Everything that Germany could devise found its answer in American ingenuity, American endurance and American skill.

The entrance of America into the tremendous conflict on April 6, 1917 was followed immediately by the mobilization of the entire nation. Business and industry of every character were represented in the Council of National Defense which acted as a great central functioning organization for all industries and agencies connected with the prosecution of the war. Executives of rare talent commanding high salaries tendered their services freely to the government. These were the "dollar a year men" whose productive genius was to bear fruit in the clothing, arming, provisioning, munitioning and transportation of four million men and the conquest of Germany by a veritable avalanche of war material.

Out of the ranks of business and science came Hurley, Schwab, Piez, Coonley to drive forward a record-breaking shipbuilding program, Stettinius to speed up the manufacture of munitions, John W. Ryan to coordinate and accelerate the manufacture of airplanes, Vance C. McCormick and Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor to solve the problems of the War Trade Board, Hoover to multiply food production, to conserve food supplies and to place the army and citizenry of America upon food rations while maintaining the morale of the Allies through scientific food distribution and a host of other patriotic civilians who put the resources of the nation behind the military and naval forces opposed to Germany. Every available loom was put at work to make cloth for the army and the navy, the leather market was drained of its supplies to shoe our forces with wear adapted to the drastic requirements of modern warfare.

German capital invested in American plants was placed under the jurisdiction of A. Mitchell Palmer as Alien Property Custodian. German ships were seized and transformed into American transports. Physicians over military age set a glorious example of patriotic devotion by their enlistment in thousands. Lawyers and citizens generally in the same category as to age entered the office of the Judge Advocate General or the ranks of the Four Minute Men or the American Protective League which rendered great service to the country in exposing German propaganda and in placing would-be slackers in military service. Bankers led the mighty Liberty Loan and War Savings Stamp drives and unselfishly placed the resources of their institutions at the service of the government.

Women and children rallied to the flag with an intensity of purpose, sacrifice and effort that demonstrated how completely was the heart of America in the war. Work in shops, fields, hospitals, Red Cross work rooms and elsewhere was cheerfully and enthusiastically performed and the sacrifices of food rationing, higher prices, lightless nights, gasolineless Sundays, diminished steam railway and trolley service were accepted with a multitude of minor inconvenience without a murmur. Congress had a free hand in making appropriations. The country approved without a minute's hesitation bills for taxation that in other days would have brought ruin to the political party proposing them. Billions were voted to departments where hundreds of thousands had been the rule.

[Illustration: Map of the United States] THE UNITED STATES AN ARMED CAMP The map shows the location of the camps where the National Army and the National Guard were trained for war. Afterwards the entire forces were known as the United States Army

The true temper of the American people was carefully hidden from the German people by the German newspapers acting under instructions from the Imperial Government. Instead of the truth, false reports were printed in the newspapers of Berlin and elsewhere that the passage of the American conscription law had been followed by rioting and rebellion in many places and that fully fifty per cent of the American people was opposed to the declaration of war. The fact that the selective service act passed in May, 1917, was accepted by everybody in this country as a wholly equitable and satisfactory law did not permeate into Germany until the first American Expeditionary Force had actually landed in France.

America's fighting power was demonstrated conclusively to the Germanic intellect at Seicheprey, Bouresches Wood, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, and in the Forest of the Argonne. Especially was it demonstrated when it came to fighting in small units, or in individual fighting. The highly disciplined and highly trained German soldiers were absolutely unfitted to cope with Americans, Canadians and Australians when it came to matching individual against individual, or small group against small group.

This was shown in the wild reaches of the Forest of the Argonne. There the machine-gun nests of the Germans were isolated and demolished speedily. Small parties of Germans were stalked and run down by the relentless Americans. On the other hand, the Germans could make no headway against the American troops operating in the Forest. The famous "Lost Battalion" of the 308th United States Infantry penetrated so far in advance of its supports that it was cut off for four days without food, water or supplies of munitions in the Argonne. The enemy had cut its line of communication and was enforced both in front and in the rear. Yet the lost battalion, comprising two companies armed with rifles and the French automatic rifle known as the Chauchat gun, called by the doughboys "Sho Sho," held out against the best the overpowering forces of the Germans could send against them, and were ultimately rescued from their dangerous position.

The training of the Americans was also in modern efficiency that made America prominent in the world of industry. The reduction of the German salient at St. Mihiel was an object lesson to the Germans in American methods. General Pershing commanding that operation in person, assembled the newspaper correspondents the day before the drive. Maps were shown, giving the extent and locale of the attack. The correspondents were invited to follow the American troops and a time schedule for the advance was given to the various corps commanders.

In that operation, 152 square miles of territory and 72 villages were captured outright. For the reduction of the German defenses and for the creeping barrage preceding the American advance, more than 1,500,000 shells were fired by the artillery. Approximately 100,000 detail maps and 40,000 photographs prepared largely from aerial observations, were issued for the guidance of the artillery and the infantry. These maps and photographs detailed all the natural and artificial defenses of the entire salient. More than 5,000 miles of telephone wire was laid by American engineers immediately preceding the attack, and as the Americans advanced on the morning of the battle, September 12, 1918, 6,000 telephone instruments were connected with this wire. Ten thousand men were engaged in operating the hastily constructed telephone system; 3,000 carrier pigeons supplemented this work.

During the battle American airplanes swept the skies clear of enemy air-craft and signaled instructions to the artillery, besides attacking the moving infantry, artillery and supply trains of the enemy. So sure were the Americans of their success that moving-picture operators took more than 10,000 feet of moving picture film showing the rout of the Germans. Four thousand eight hundred trucks carried food, men and munitions into the lines. Miles of American railroads, both of standard and narrow gauge, carrying American-made equipment, assisted in the transportation of men and supplies. Hospital facilities including 35 hospital trains, 16,000 beds in the advanced sector, and 55,000 other beds back of the fighting line, were prepared. Less than ten per cent of this hospital equipment was used.

As the direct consequence of this preparation, which far outstripped anything that any other nation had attempted in a similar offensive, the Americans with a remarkably small casualty list took 15,188 prisoners, 111 guns, many of them of large caliber, immense quantities of munitions and other supplies, and inflicted heavy death losses upon the fleeing Germans.

Two selective service laws operated as manhood conscription. The first of these took men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one years inclusive. June 5, 1917, was fixed as registration day. The total number enrolled was 9,586,508. The first selective army drawn from this number was 625,000 men.

The second selective service legislation embraced all citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 inclusive, not included in the first draft. Over 13,000,000 men enrolled on September 12, 1918.

The grand total of registrants in both drafts was 23,456,021. Youths who had not completed their 19th year were set apart in a group to be called last and men between thirty-six and forty-five were also put in a deferred class. The government's plan was to have approximately 5,000,000 men under arms before the summer of 1919. The German armistice on November 11th found 4,000,000 men actually under arms and an assignment of 250,000 made to the training camps.

A most important factor in the training plans of the United States was that incorporated in the organization of the Students' Army Training Corps, by which 359 American colleges and universities were taken over by the government and 150,000 young men entered these institutions for the purpose of becoming trained soldiers. The following are the conditions under which the S. A. T. C. was organized:

The War Department undertook to furnish officers, uniforms, rifles, and equipment, and to assign the students to military duty, after a few months, either at an officers' training camp or in some technical school, or in a regular army cantonment with troops as a private, according to the degree of aptitude shown on the college campus.

At the same time a circular letter to the presidents of colleges arranged for a contract under which the government became responsible for the expense of the housing, subsistence, and instruction of the students. The preliminary arrangement contained this provision, among others:

The per diem rate of $1 for subsistence and housing is to govern temporarily, pending examination of the conditions in the individual institution and a careful working out of the costs involved. The amount so fixed is calculated from the experience of this committee during the last five months in contracting with over 100 collegiate institutions for the housing and subsistence of over 100,000 soldiers in the National Army Training Detachment. This experience indicates that the average cost of housing is 15 to 20 cents per day; subsistence (army ration or equivalent), 70 to 80 cents per day. The tuition charge is based on the regular per diem tuition charge of the institution in the year 1917-18.

A permanent contract was arranged later under these governing principles:

The basis of payment will be reimbursement for actual and necessary costs to the institutions for the services rendered to the government in the maintenance and instruction of the soldiers with the stated limitation as to cost of instruction. Contract price will be arrived at by agreement after careful study of the conditions in each case, in conference with authorities of the institution.

The War Department will have authority to specify and control the courses of instruction to be given by the institution.

The entity and power for usefulness of the institutions will be safeguarded so that when the contract ends the institutions shall be in condition to resume their functions of general education.

The teaching force will be preserved so far as practicable, and this matter so treated that its members shall feel that in changing to the special intensive work desired by the government they are rendering a vital and greatly needed service.

The government will ask from the institutions a specific service; that is, the housing, subsistence, and instruction along specified lines of a certain number of student soldiers. There will be no interference with the freedom of the institution in conducting other courses in the usual way.

The contract will be for a fixed term, probably nine months, subject to renewal for a further period on reasonable notice, on terms to be agreed upon and subject to cancellation on similar terms.

The story of the life of the American army behind the lines in France would fill a volume. The hospitality of the French people had something pathetic in it. They were expecting miracles of their new Allies. They were war sick. Nearly all of them had lost some father, or brother, or husband, and here came these big, hearty, joyous soldiers, full of ardor and confident of victory. It put a new spirit into all France. Their reception when they first landed was a scene of such fervor and enthusiasm as had never been known before and probably will not be known again. Soon the American soldier, in his khaki, with his wide-brimmed soft hat, became a common sight.

The villagers put up bunting, calico signs, flags and had stocks of American canned goods to show in their shop windows. The children, when bold, played with the American soldiers, and the children that were more shy ventured to go up and touch an American soldier's leg. Very old peasant ladies put on their Sunday black, and went out walking, and in some mysterious way talking with American soldiers. The village mayors turned out and made speeches, utterly incomprehensible to the American soldiers.

The engineering, building and machinery works the Americans put up were astonishing. Gangs of workers went over in thousands; many of these were college men. They dug and toiled as efficiently as any laborer. One American major told with glee how a party of these young workers arrived straight from America at 3.30 P. M. and started digging at 5 A. M. next morning, "and they liked it, it tickled them to death." Many of these draftees, in fact, were sick and tired of inaction in ports before their departure from America, and they welcomed work in France as if it were some great game.

Perhaps the biggest work of all the Americans performed was a certain aviation camp and school. In a few months it was completed, and it was the biggest of its kind in the world. The number of airplanes used merely for training was in itself remarkable. The flying men--or boys--who had, of course, already been broken-in in America, did an additional course in France, and when they left the aviation camp they were absolutely ready for air-fighting at the front. This was the finishing school. The aviators went through eight distinct courses in the school. They were perfected in flying, in observation, in bombing, in machine-gun firing. On even a cloudy and windy day the air overhead buzzed with these young American fliers, all getting into the pink of condition to do their stunts at the front. They lived in the camp, and it required moving heaven and earth for one of them to get leave to go even to the nearest little quiet old town.

An impression of complete businesslike determination was what one got when visiting the Americans in France. A discipline even stricter than that which applied in British and French troops was in force. In towns, officers, for instance, were not allowed out after 9 P. M. Some towns where subalterns discovered the wine of the country were instantly put "out of bounds." No officer, on any pretext whatsoever was allowed to go to Paris except on official business.

The postal censors who read the letters of the American Expeditionary Force were required to know forty-seven languages! Of these languages, the two least used were Chinese and German.

The announcement of the organization of the first American Field Army was contained in the following dispatch from France, August 11, 1918:

"The first American field army has been organized. It is under the direct command of General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American forces. The corps commanders thus far announced are Major-Generals Liggett, Bullard, Bundy, Read, and Wright.

[Illustration: Chart] Key The state of German civilian morale. Variations in Germany's military position Decree of political unity in Germany. The Food situation In North Germany. Condition of Austria-Hungary. U-Boat sinkings. (Monthly reports of tonnage sunk.) SECRETARY OF WAR'S OFFICIAL CHART This reproduction of Secretary Baker's chart, which hung in his office at Washington, illustrates graphically Germany's success and failure in the war.

"The creation of the first field army is the first step toward the coordination of all the American forces in France. This does not mean the immediate withdrawal from the British and French commands of all American units, and it is probable that divisions will be used on the French and British fronts for weeks yet. It is understood, however, that the policy of organizing other armies will be carried out steadily."

This announcement marked a milestone in the military effort of the United States. When the American troops first arrived in France, they were associated in small units with the French to get primary training. Gradually regiments began to function under French division commanders. Then American divisions were formed and trained under French corps commanders. Next, American corps began to operate under French army commanders. Finally, the first American army was created, because enough divisions and corps had been graduated from the school of experience.

An American division numbers 30,000 men, and a corps consists of six divisions, two of which play the part of reserves. With auxiliary troops, air squadrons, tank sections, heavy artillery, and other branches, a corps numbers from 225,000 to 250,000 men.

[Illustration: Chart] The main line in this graph--the heavy broken line--represents the state of civilian morale in Germany.

German morale is arbitrarily regarded as standing at 100 % in August. 1914.

Zero, for the same line, is taken to be the point at which an effective majority of the German people will refuse longer to support the war.

The degree of movement of this line is determined mainly by a consideration of the deflections of the secondary lines which represent the forces exerting the greatest influence on the German state of mind.

SHOWING GERMANY'S ROAD TO DEFEAT

Austria's fluctuations are indicated, as well as the morale, military position, political and food conditions and undersea enterprises of Germany.

The following were the general officers temporarily assigned to command the first five corps: First corps--Major-General Hunter Liggett. Second corps--Major-General Robert L. Bullard Third corps--Major-General William M. Wright. Fourth corps--Major-General George W. Read. Fifth corps--Major-General Omar Bundy.

Seven divisions and one separate regiment of American troops participated in the counter-offensive between Chateau-Thierry and Soissons and in resisting the German attack in the Champagne, it was officially stated on July 20. The 42d, or "Rainbow" Division, composed of National Guard troops from twenty-six states and the District of Columbia, including the New York 69th Infantry, now designated as the 165th Infantry, took part in the fighting in the Champagne east of Rheims. The six other divisions were associated with the French in the counter-offensive between Chateau-Thierry and Soissons. These divisions were the 1st, 2d, 3d and 4th of the Regular Army, the 26th National Guard Division, composed of troops from the six New England States, and the 28th, composed of the Pennsylvania National Guard. Marines were included in this number. The separate regiment that fought in the Champagne was a negro unit attached to the new 93d Division, composed entirely of negro troops. It was also announced that the 77th Division was "in the line near Luneville" and was "operating as a division, complete under its own commander."

The 42d Division had the distinction, General March announced on August 3d, of defeating the 4th Division of the crack Prussian Guards, professional soldiers of the German standing army, who had never before failed. General March also disclosed the fact that another American division had been sent into that part of the Rheims salient where the Germans showed resistance. This was the 32d Division. "The American divisions in the Rheims salient," General March said, "have now been put in contiguously and are actually getting together as an American force. Southeast of Fere-en-Tardenois our 1st Corps is operating, with General Liggett in actual command."

The organization of twelve new divisions was announced by General March, Chief of Staff, in statements made on July 24th and July 31st. These divisions were numerically designated from 9 to 20, and organized at Camps Devens, Meade, Sheridan, Custer, Funston, Lewis, Logan, Kearny, Beauregard, Travis, Dodge, and Sevier. Each division had two infantry regiments of the regular army as nucleus, the other elements being made up of drafted men. The new divisions moved into the designated camps as the divisions already trained there moved out.

The composition of an American division is as follows:

Two brigades of infantry, each consisting of two regiments of infantry and one machine-gun battalion.

One brigade of artillery, consisting of three regiments of field artillery, and one trench mortar battery.

One regiment of engineers.

One field signal battalion.

The following trains: Headquarters and military police, sanitary, supply, engineer, and ammunition.

The following division units: Headquarters troop and one machine-gun battalion.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright International Film Service. SAFE ON SHORE AT LAST Arrival of American troops in Liverpool after defying the perils of the submarine. Note the bulk of the packs carried by each soldier in heavy marching order.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright International Film Service. THE FIRST OF THE TIDAL WAVE OF KHAKI Beginning with the handful of American soldiers who landed in France on June 8, 1917, the flood of troops poured across the ocean in ever-increasing volume until at the end of the war more than two million soldiers had been transported to France.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright Committee on Public Information from Underwood and Underwood. AMERICANS ATTACKING A GERMAN TRENCH POSITION Company M and Company K of the 336th Infantry, 82d Division, advance on Germans entrenched at the edge of a woods. The 307th Engineers, 82d Division, clear the way by blowing up wire entanglements. The attacking companies can be seen rushing for the point where the breach in the wire obstacles has been made.

[Illustration: Photograph] Photo by International Film Service. AMERICA GETS INTO THE WAR AT CANTIGNY On the morning of May 28, 1918, the 1st Division, A. E. F., launched its first attack, which took place at Cantigny. Within 45 minutes all objectives had been gained, serious losses inflicted on the enemy, and 200 prisoners taken. General Pershing personally directed operations. This picture shows American troops going forward under support of tanks.

A general order of the War Department providing for the consolidation of all branches of the army into one army to be known as the "United States Army" was promulgated by General March on August 7th. The text of the order read:

1. This country has but one army--the United States Army. It includes all the land forces in the service of the United States. Those forces, however raised, lose their identity in that of the United States Army. Distinctive appellations, such as the Regular Army, Reserve Corps, National Army, and National Guard, heretofore employed in administration command, will be discontinued, and the single term, the United States Army, will be exclusively used.

2. Orders having reference to the United States Army as divided in separate and component forces of distinct origin, or assuming or contemplating such a division, are to that extent revoked.

3. The insignia now prescribed for the Regular Army shall hereafter be worn by the United States Army.

4. All effective commissions purporting to be, and described therein, as commissions in the Regular Army, National Guard, National Army, or the Reserve Corps, shall hereafter be held to be, and regarded as, commissions in the United States Army--permanent, provisional, or temporary, as fixed by the conditions of their issue; and all such commissions are hereby amended accordingly. Hereafter during the period of the existing emergency all commissions of officers shall be in the United States Army and in staff corps, departments, and arms of the service thereof, and shall, as the law may provide, be permanent, for a term, or for the period of the emergency. And hereafter during the period of the existing emergency provisional and temporary appointments in the grade of second lieutenant and temporary promotions in the Regular Army and appointments in the Reserve Corps will be discontinued.

5. While the number of commissions in each grade and each staff corps, department, and arm of the service shall be kept within the limits fixed by law, officers shall be assigned without reference to the term of their commissions solely in the interest of the service; and officers and enlisted men will be transferred from one organization to another as the interests of the service may require.

6. Except as otherwise provided by law, promotion in the United States Army shall be by selection. Permanent promotions in the Regular Army will continue to be made as prescribed by law.

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XXXIV. HOW FOOD WON THE WAR

Food won the war. Without the American farmer the Entente Allies must have capitulated. Wheat, beef, corn, foods of every variety, hermetically sealed in tins, were thrown into the scales on the side of the Entente Allies in sufficient quantities to tip the balance toward the side of civilization and against autocracy. Late in the fall of 1918 when victory was assured to America and the Allies, there was received this message of appreciation from General Pershing to the farmers of America, through Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture:

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, Office of the Commander-in-Chief, France, October 16, 1918. Honorable CARL VROOMAN, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture: DEAR MR. VROOMAN:--Will you please convey to farmers of America our profound appreciation of their patriotic services to the country and to the Allied armies in the field. They have furnished their full quota of fighting men; they have bought largely of Liberty Bonds; and they have increased their production of food crops both last year and this by over a thousand million bushels above normal production. Food is of vital military necessity for us and for our Allies, and from the day of our entry into the war America's armies of food producers have rendered invaluable service to the Allied cause by supporting the soldiers at the front through their devoted and splendidly successful work in the fields and furrows at home. Very sincerely, JOHN J. PERSHING.

This tribute to the men and women on the farms of America from the head of the American forces in France is fit recognition of the important part played by American food producers in the war. It was early recognized by all the belligerent powers that final victory was a question of national morale and national endurance. Morale could not be maintained without food. The bread lines in Petrograd gave birth to the revolution, and Russian famine was the mother of Russian terrorism. German men and women, starved of fats and sweets, deteriorated so rapidly that the crime ratio both in towns and country districts mounted appallingly. Conditions in Austria-Hungary were even worse. Acute distress arising from threatening famine was instrumental in driving Bulgaria out of the war. The whole of Central Europe indeed was in the shadow of famine and the masses were crying out for peace at any price.

On the other hand, Germany's greatest reliance for a victorious decision lay in the U-boat blockade of Great Britain, France and Italy. Though some depredations came to these countries, the submarine blockade never fully materialized and with its failure Germany's hopes faded and died.

The Entente Allies and the United States were fortunate in securing Herbert C. Hoover to administer food distribution throughout their lands and to stimulate food production by the farmers of the United States. After his signal success in the administration of the Belgian Relief Commission, Mr. Hoover became the unanimous choice of the Allies for the victualing of the militant and civilian populations after America's entrance into the World War. His work divided itself into three heads:

First, stimulation of food production.

Second, elimination of food wastage in the homes and public eating places of the country.

Third, education of food dealers and the public in the use of such foods as were substitutes for wheat, rye, pork, beef and sugar.

After long and acrimonious debates in Congress, Mr. Hoover, as Federal Food Administrator, was clothed with extraordinary powers enabling him to fulfil the purposes for which he was appointed. The ability with which he and his associates performed their work was demonstrated in the complete debacle of Bulgaria, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and Germany. These countries were starved out quite as truly as they were fought out. The concrete evidence of the Food Administration's success is shown in the subjoined table which indicates the increase over normal in exporting of foodstuffs by the United States since it became the food reservoir for the world on account of the war.

TOTAL EXPORTS 3-year 1916-17 1917-18 July, 1917 to July,1918 to pre-war fiscal fiscal average. year. year. Sept. 30,1917. Sept. 30,1918 Total beef products, lbs.. 186,375,372 405,427,417 565,462,445 93,962,477 171,986,147 Total pork products, lbs.. 996,930,627 1,498,302,713 1,691,437,435 196,256.750 540,946,324 Total dairy products, lbs.. 26,037,790 351,958,336 590,798,274 130,071,165 161,245,029 Total vegetable oils, lbs.. 332,430,537 206,708,490 151,029,893 27,719,553 26,026,701 Total grains, bushels... 183,777,331 395,140,238 *349,123,235 66,383,084 121,668,823 Total sugar, pounds.. 621,745.507 3,084,390,281 2,149,787,050 1,108.559,519 1,065,398,247

* Wheat harvest 1917-18 was 200,217,333 bushels below the average of the three previous years.

Upon the same subject Mr. Hoover himself after the harvest of 1918 said:

It is now possible to summarize the shipments of foodstuffs from the United States to the allied countries during the fiscal year just closed--practically the last harvest year. These amounts include all shipments to allied countries for their and our armies, the civilian population, the Belgium relief, and the Red Cross. The figures indicate the measure of effort of the American people in support of allied food supplies.

The total value of these food shipments, which were in the main purchased through, or with the collaboration of the Food Administration, amounted to, roundly, $1,400,000,000 during the fiscal year.

The shipments of meats and fats (including meat products, dairy products, vegetable oils, etc.) to allied destinations were as follows:

POUNDS Fiscal year 1916-17 2,166,500,000 Fiscal year 1917-18 3,011,100,000 ----------------- Increase 844,600,000

Our slaughterable animals at the beginning of the last fiscal year were not appreciably larger in number than the year before; and particularly in hogs, there were probably less. The increase in shipments is due to conservation and the extra weight of animals added by our farmers.

The full effect of these efforts began to bear their best results in the last half of the fiscal year, when the exports to the Allies were 2,133,100,000 pounds, as against 1,266,500,000 pounds in the same period of the year before. This compares with an average of 801,000,000 pounds of total exports for the same half years of the three-year pre-war period.

In cereals and cereal products reduced to terms of cereal bushels, our shipments to allied destinations have been:

BUSHELS Fiscal year 1916-17 259,900,000 Fiscal year 1917-18 340,800,000 ------------ Increase 80,900,000

Of these cereals our shipments of the prime breadstuffs in the fiscal year 1917-18 to allied destinations were: Wheat, 131,000,000 bushels and rye 13,900,000 bushels, a total of 144,900,000 bushels.

The exports to allied destinations during the fiscal year 1916-17 were: Wheat, 135,100,000 bushels and rye, 2,300,000 bushels, a total of 137,400,000 bushels. In addition, some 10,000,000 bushels of 1917 wheat are now in port for allied destinations or en route thereto. The total shipments to allied countries from our last harvest of wheat will be, therefore, about 141,000,000 bushels, or a total of 154,900,000 bushels of prime breadstuffs.

In addition to this we have shipped some 10,000,000 bushels to neutrals dependent upon us and we have received some imports from other quarters. A large part of the other cereals exported has also gone into war bread.

It is interesting to note that since the urgent request of the Allied Food Controllers early in the year for a further shipment of 75,000,000 bushels from our 1917 wheat than originally planned, we shall have shipped to Europe, or have en route, nearly 85,000,000 bushels. At the time of this request our surplus was already more than exhausted.

This accomplishment of our people in this matter stands out even more clearly if we bear in mind that we had available in the fiscal year 1916-17 from net carryover and a surplus over our normal consumption about 200,000,000 bushels of wheat which we were able to export that year without trenching on our home loaf. This last year, however, owing to the large failure of the 1917 wheat crop we had available from net carry over and production and imports only just about our normal consumption. Therefore our wheat shipments to allied destinations represent approximately savings from our own wheat bread.

These figures, however, do not fully convey the volume of the effort and sacrifice made during the past year by the whole American people. Despite the magnificent effort of our agricultural population in planting a much increased acreage in 1917, not only was there a very large failure in wheat, but also the corn failed to mature properly, and corn is our dominant crop.

We calculate that the total nutritional production of the country for the fiscal year just closed was between seven per cent and nine per cent below the average of the three previous years, our nutritional surplus for export in those years being about the same amount as the shrinkage last year. Therefore the consumption and waste in food have greatly reduced in every direction during the year.

I am sure that the millions of our people, agricultural as well as urban, who have contributed to these results, should feel a very definite satisfaction that, in a year of universal food shortage in the Northern Hemisphere, all of these people joined together against Germany have come through into sight of the coming harvest not only with health and strength fully maintained, but with only temporary periods of hardship. The European Allies have been compelled to sacrifice more than our own people, but we have not failed to load every steamer since the delays of the storm months of last winter.

Our contributions to this end could not have been accomplished without effort and sacrifice, and it is a matter for further satisfaction, that it had been accomplished voluntarily and individually. It is difficult to distinguish between various sections of our people--the homes, public eating places, food trades, urban or agricultural populations--in assessing credit for these results, but no one will deny the dominant part of the American woman.

But the work of the Food Administration did not come to an end with the close of the war. Insistent cries for food came from the members of the defeated Teutonic alliance, as well as from the suffering Allied and neutral nations. To meet those demands, Mr. Hoover sailed for Europe to organize the food relief of the needy nations. The State Department, explaining his mission, stated that as the first measure of assistance to Belgium it was necessary to increase immediately the volume of foodstuffs formerly supplied, so as to physically rehabilitate this under-nourished population. The relief commission during the four years of war sent to the 10,000,000 people in the occupied area over 600 cargoes of food, comprising 120,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs and over 3,000,000,000 pounds of other foodstuffs besides 20,000,000 garments, the whole representing an expenditure of nearly $600,000,000. The support of the commission came from the Belgian, British, French and American governments, together with public charity. In addition to this some $350,000,000 worth of native produce was financed internally in Belgium by the relief organization.

The second portion of Mr. Hoover's mission was to organize and determine the need of foodstuffs to the liberated populations in Southern Europe--the Czecho-Slovaks, the Jugo-Slavs, and Serbians, Roumanians and others.

To meet the conditions in Europe following the armistice of November 11, 1918, the employment service of the United States set to work laying far-reaching plans for meeting the problem of world food shortage. The demands after the war were greater than they had been during the conflict but the nation that had fed the allies of civilization in war time performed the task of feeding the world, friend and foe alike, when peace at length came upon the earth.

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XXXV. THE UNITED STATES NAVY IN THE WAR

Long before war was declared the United States Government had been engaged in preparation. It had realized that unrestricted submarine warfare was sure to lead to war, and though for a time it was preserving what it was pleased to call "an armed neutrality" the President doubtless was well aware what such an "armed neutrality" would lead to. Merchant ships were being armed for protection against the submarine, and crews from the Navy assigned to work the guns. The first collision was sure to mean an active state of war. The Naval Department, therefore, was working at full speed, getting the Navy ready for active service as soon as war should be declared.

Secretary Daniels made every effort to obtain the crews that were necessary to man the new ships which were being fully commissioned with the greatest possible speed and called upon newspapers all through the country to do their utmost to stimulate enlistment.

On March 26th President Wilson issued an order increasing the enlisted strength of the United States Marine Corps to 17,400 men, the limit allowed under the law. On March 29th a hundred and three ensigns were graduated from the Naval Academy three months ahead of their time, and on April 6th, as soon as war was declared, the Navy was mobilized.

Within a few minutes after Secretary Daniels had signed the order for this purpose one hundred code messages were sent out from the office of Admiral W. S. Benson, Chief of Naval Operations, which placed the Navy on a war basis, and put into the control of the Navy Department the naval militia of all the states as well as the Naval Reserves and the Coast Guard Service. In the Naval Militia were about 584 officers, and 7,933 men. These were at once assembled and assigned to coast patrol service. All of the ships that were in active commission in the Navy were already ready for duty. But there were reserve battleships and reserve destroyers, besides ships which had been out of commission which had to be manned as quickly as possible.

At the beginning of the war there were 361 vessels ready for service, including twelve first-line battleships, twenty-five second-line battleships, nine armored cruisers, twenty-four other cruisers, seven monitors, fifty destroyers, sixteen coast torpedo vessels, seventeen torpedo boats, forty-four submarines, eight tenders to torpedo boats, twenty-eight gunboats, four transports, four supply ships, one hospital ship, twenty-one fuel ships, fourteen converted yachts, forty-nine tugs, and twenty-eight minor vessels. There were about seventy thousand regularly enlisted men, besides eight thousand five hundred members of the naval militia. Many yachts together with their volunteer crews had been offered to the government by patriotic citizens.

For the complete mobilization of the Navy, as it then stood, 99,809 regularly enlisted men and 45,870 reserves were necessary. About twenty-seven thousand of these were needed for coast defense, and twelve thousand at the various shore stations. Retired officers were called out, and assigned to duty which would permit officers on the active list to be employed in sea duty. The Navy therefore still lacked thirty-five thousand men to bring it up to its full authorized strength at the beginning, but after the declaration of war an active recruiting campaign brought volunteers by thousands. The service was a popular one and recruits were easily obtained.

One of the first phases of the mobilization was the organization of a large fleet of mosquito craft to patrol the Atlantic Coast, and keep on the watch for submarines. Many of these boats had been private yachts, and hundreds of young men volunteered from the colleges and schools of the country for this work. Many boat builders submitted proposals to construct small boats for this kind of patrol duty, and on March 31st a coast patrol fleet was organized by the government under the command of Captain Henry B. Wilson.

The Navy took possession immediately on the declaration of war of all wireless stations in the United States dismantling all that could not be useful to the government. War zones were established along the whole coast line of the United States, making a series of local barred zones extending from the larger harbors in American waters all along the line. These harbors were barred at night to entering vessels in order to guard against surprise by German submarines. Contracts were awarded for the construction of twenty-four destroyers even before war was declared, and many more were already under construction.

[Illustration: Map] MAP OF THE UNITED STATES SHOWING THE IMMENSE LENGTH OF COAST-LINE TO BE DEFENDED

The growth of the Navy in one year may give some idea of the efficiency of the Navy Department. In April, 1917, the regular Navy contained 4,366 officers and 64,680 men. In April, 1918, it contained 7,798 officers and 192,385 men. In the Marine Corps in 1917 there were 426 officers and 13,266 men. In one year this was increased to 1,389 officers and 38,629 men. In the organization of the Naval Reserves, naval volunteers and coast guards there were in 1917, 24,569 men, in 1918, 98,319 men, and 11,477 officers.

While personnel of the Navy was thus expanding the United States battle fleet had grown to more than twice the size of the fleet before the war. When war was declared there were under construction 123 new naval vessels. These were completed and contracts made for 949 new vessels. Among the ships completed are fifteen battleships, six battle cruisers, seven scout cruisers, twenty-seven destroyers, and sixty-one submarines. About eight hundred craft were taken over and converted into transports, patrol service boats, submarine chasers, mine sweepers and mine layers.

The government also seized 109 German ships which had been interned in American ports. The Germans had attempted to damage these ships so that they would be useless, but they were all repaired, and carried American troops and supplies in great quantities to France.

As the fleet grew the training of the necessary officers and crews was conducted on a grand scale. Naval camps were established at various points. The main ones were those at Philadelphia, (League Island); Newport, Rhode Island; Cape May, New Jersey; Charleston, South Carolina; Pensacola, Florida; Key West, Florida; Mare Island, California; Puget Sound, Washington; Hingham, Massachusetts; Norfolk, Virginia; New Orleans, San Diego, New York Navy Yard; Great Lakes, Illinois; Pelham, New York; Hampton Roads, Virginia; and Gulfport, Mississippi. Schools in gunnery and engineering were established and thousands of gunners and engineers were trained, not only for the Navy but for the armed merchant vessels.

The training of gun crews by target practice was a feature of this work. Long before the war began systematic training of this kind had been done, but mainly in connection with the big guns, and great efficiency had been obtained by the steady practice. With the introduction of the submarine, it became necessary to pay special attention to the training of the crews of guns of smaller caliber, and it was not long before the officers of our Navy were congratulating themselves on the efficiency of their men. It is not easy to hit so small a mark as the periscope of a submarine, but it could be done and many times was done.

Twenty-eight days after the declaration of war a fleet of United States destroyers under the command of Admiral William S. Sims reported for service at a British port.

The American destroyer squadron arrived at Queenstown after a voyage without incident. The water front was lined with an excited crowd carrying small American flags, which cheered the destroyers from the time they were first seen until they reached the dock. They cheered again when Admiral Sims went ashore to greet the British senior officer who had come to welcome the Americans. It was a most informal function. After the usual handshakes the British commander congratulated the Americans on their safe voyage and then asked:

"When will you be ready for business?"

"We can start at once," was the prompt reply of Admiral Sims.

This rather took the breath away from the British commander and he said he had not expected the Americans to begin work so soon after their long voyage. Later after a short tour of the destroyers he admitted that the American tars looked prepared.

"Yes," said the American commander, "we made preparations on the way over. That is why we are ready."

Everything on board the destroyers was in excellent condition. The only thing lacking was heavier clothing. The American uniforms were too light for the cool weather which is common in the English waters. This condition, however, was quickly remedied, and the American ships at once put out to sea all in splendid condition and filled with the same enthusiasm that the Marines showed later at Chateau-Thierry.

"They are certainly a fine body of men, and what's more, their craft looked just as fit," declared the British commander.

One of the American destroyers, even before the American fleet had arrived at Queenstown, had begun war duty. It had picked up and escorted through the danger zone one of the largest of the Atlantic liners. The passengers on board the liner sent the commander of the destroyer the following message:

British passengers on board a steamer, bound for a British port, under the protection of an American destroyer, send their hearty greetings to her commander and her officers and crew, and desire to express their keen appreciation of this practical co-operation between the government and people of the United States and the British Empire, who are now fighting together for the freedom of the seas.

Moving pictures were taken by the official British Government photographer as the American flotilla came into the harbor, and sailors who received shore leave were plied with English hospitality. The streets of Queenstown were decorated with the Stars and Stripes. As soon as American residents in England learned that American warships were to cross the Atlantic they held a conference to provide recreation buildings, containing sleeping, eating, and recreation accommodations for the comfort of the American sailors. The destroyer flotilla was the first contribution of American military power to the Entente Alliance against Germany.

Admiral Sims is one of the most energetic and efficient of American naval officers and to him as much as to any other man is due the efficiency of the American Navy. During the period just before the Spanish-American War Lieutenant Sims was Naval Attache at Paris, and rendered invaluable services in buying ships and supplies for the Navy. In 1900 he was assigned to duty on the battleship Kentucky, then stationed in the Orient. In 1902 he was ordered to the Navy Department and placed in charge of the Office of Naval Practice, where he remained for seven years and devoted his attention to the improvement of the Navy in gunnery. During that time he made constant trips to England to consult with English experts in gunnery and ordnance, and became intimately acquainted with Sir Percy Scott, who had been knighted and made Rear-Admiral for the improvements he had introduced in connection with the gunnery of the British warships. In 1909 he was made commander of the battleship Minnesota, and in 1911 was a member of the college staff at the Naval War College. In 1913 he was made commander of the torpedo flotilla of the Atlantic fleet and in 1905 assigned to command the Dreadnaught Nevada. In 1916 he was President of the Naval War College. He was made Rear-Admiral in 1916 and Vice-Admiral in 1917 and assigned to the command of all American war vessels abroad.

Immediately upon their arrival the American vessels began operation in the submarine zone. Admiral Beatty then addressed the following message to Admiral Henry T. Mayo of the United States Atlantic Fleet:

The Grand Fleet rejoices that the Atlantic fleet will now share in preserving the liberties of the world and in maintaining the chivalry of the sea.

Admiral Mayo replied:

The United States Atlantic Fleet appreciates the message from the British fleet and welcomes opportunities for work with the British fleet for the freedom of the seas.

It may also be noted, as a fact which is not without significance, that the losses by submarine which had reached their highest mark in the last week in April began from that time steadily to diminish.

One of the main duties of the Navy was to convoy transports and supplies across the Atlantic. This was done with the assistance of Allied vessels with remarkable success. For a long period it seemed as if the U-boats would not be able to penetrate through the Allied convoy, but during 1918 four transports were torpedoed. The first was the Tuscania which was sunk in February off the north coast of Ireland, with 1,912 officers and men of the Michigan and Wisconsin guardsmen, of whom 204 were lost. The Oronsa, which was torpedoed in April, contained 250 men and all were saved except three of the crew. The Moldavia came next with five hundred troops, of whom fifty-five were lost. On September 6th the troopship Persic with 2,800 American soldiers was torpedoed but American destroyers rescued all on board, and the Persic, which was prevented from sinking by its water-tight bulkheads, was afterwards beached.

Several American ships, including the troop transport Mount Vernon, were torpedoed on return trips and a number of the men of their crews were lost, and several naval vessels were lost, including the destroyer Jacob Jones, and the patrol vessel Alcedo. The Cassin was torpedoed, but reached port under its own steam and later returned to service.

In September and October three more American transports were added to the list of American losses. On September 26th the United States steamer Tampa was torpedoed and sank with all on board, losing 118 men. On September 30th the Ticonderoga was also torpedoed, eleven naval officers and 102 enlisted men being lost.

In addition to these submarine losses several ships and a number of men were lost through collision. The United States steamer Westgate was sunk in a collision with the steamer American on October 7th, with the loss of seven men. On October 9th the United States destroyer Shaw lost fifteen men in a collision, though she later succeeded in reaching port. On October 11th the American steamer Otranto was sunk in a collision with the British liner Cashmere. Of seven hundred American soldiers who were on board 365 were lost. At this time about three thousand anti-submarine craft were in operation day and night around the British Isles, and about five thousand working in the open sea. This was what made it possible for the Allies to win the war.

Inasmuch as the illegal use of the submarine by Germany brought America into the war it was extremely appropriate that she should take an active part in the suppression of the submarine menace. The methods which were used in fighting the submarines differed much in different cases. The action of the government in arming merchantmen and in providing them with trained gun crews did much to lower the number of such ships sunk by the U-boats.

The submarine, which had formerly been able to stop the unarmed merchantman and sink him at leisure, after a few combats with an armed merchantman began to be very wary and to depend almost entirely upon his torpedoes. It was not always easy for the submarine to get in a position where her torpedo would be effective, and the merchantman was carefully directed, if attacked, to pursue a ziz-zag irregular course, and at the same time endeavor to hamper the submarine by shooting as near her periscope as possible.

Along the sea coasts and at certain points in the English Channel great nets were used effectively. Submarines, however, toward the end of the war were made sufficiently large to be able to force their way through these nets, and net-cutting devices were also used by them with considerable effect. The best way to destroy the submarines seemed to be in a direct attack by flotillas of destroyers.

By the end of the war the whole process of sinking or destroying submarines had been thoroughly organized. Practically every portion of the seas near Great Britain and France was carefully watched and the appearance of a submarine immediately reported. As the submarine would only travel at a certain well-understood speed during a given time, it was possible to calculate, after the locality of one was known, about how far from that point it would be found at any later period. Destroyers were therefore sent circling around the point where the submarine had been discovered, enlarging their distance from the center every hour. In the course of time the submarine would be compelled to come up for air, and then, if luck were with the destroyer, it might find its foe before it was seen itself. Having discovered the submarine the destroyer immediately endeavored to ram, dropping depth bombs at the point where they supposed the enemy to be.

These bombs were so constructed that at a certain depth in the water they would explode, and the force of the explosion was so great that even if they did not strike the submarine they would be sure to damage it seriously, sometimes throwing the submarine to the surface partly out of water, and at other times driving her to come to the surface herself ready to surrender.

In many cases it was not necessary to use the depth bomb at all. The gunners on board the destroyers had become extraordinarily expert, and though a shot might destroy the periscope of a submarine without doing much damage, most submarines carrying extra periscopes to use if necessary, yet it was soon found that it was possible by the use of plunging shells to do effective damage. Plunging shells are somewhat similar in their operation to bombs. Such a shell falling just short of a periscope and fused to burst both on contact and at a certain depth was extremely likely to do damage.

In the pursuit of the U-boat the airplane was also extremely effective. These were sent out to patrol large districts near the Allied coast, and also, in some cases, from ships themselves. It is possible in certain weather conditions for the observer on an airplane to detect a submarine even when it is submerged and the airplane can not only attack the submarine by dropping depth bombs, but it can signal at once the location of the enemy to the hurrying destroyers. Indeed, as the submarine warfare proceeded the main difficulty of the Allies was to locate the submarines. Many ingenious devices were used for this purpose, and many of the English vessels had listening attachments under water which were intended to make it possible to hear a submarine as it moved. These, however, do not seem to have been very effective. The submarine itself seems at times to have been fitted out in a similar way and to have thus been able to hear the sound of an approaching ship.

Many thrilling reports of naval actions against German submarines were given out officially by the British admiralty from time to time. In most of these cases the submarine was both rammed and attacked by depth bombs. In nearly all of them the only proof of success was the oil and air bubbles which came to the surface.

One interesting encounter was that in which a British submarine sighted a German U-boat, while both were on the surface. The British submarine dived and later was able to pick up the enemy through the periscope and discharge a torpedo in such a way as to destroy the German vessel. When the British submarine arose it found a patch of oil in which Germans were swimming.

Ordinarily, however, a submarine was of little service in a fight against another for the radius of sight from a periscope is so short that it is practically blind so far as another periscope is concerned. This blindness of the submarine was taken advantage of by the Allies in every possible way.

Merchant ships were camouflaged, that is painted in such a way that they could not be easily distinguished at a distance. In the great convoys ships were often hidden by great masses of smoke to prevent a submarine from finding an easy mark. At night all lights were put out or else so shaded as not to be seen by the enemy. The result of these methods was the gradual destruction of the U-boat menace.

In the summer of 1918, while occasionally some ship was lost, the production of new ships was much greater than those that were sunk. During the month of June it was announced that the completion of new tonnage by the Allies had outstripped the losses by thousands of tons. During this period the United States had attained its full stride in building ships, airplanes and ordnance.

[Illustration: Painting] "HAIL COLUMBIA" England greets the first American destroyer squadron to arrive in European waters after the United States entered the war. The British admiral asked Admiral Sims, who was in command, how long he needed to refit and get ready for action. He replied "We are ready now."

[Illustration: Painting] THE DAY'S WORK OF UNCLE SAM'S DESTROYERS More than 2,000,000 men were safely landed in France guarded by the destroyers, ready day or night whenever an enemy submarine threatened a convoy, as was the case here in a trip over of the Adriatic loaded with troops. In the foreground is the periscope of the attacking submarine trying to submerge before she is hit.

Archibald Hurd, the English naval expert, said: "When the war is over the nation will form some conception of the debt which we owe the American Navy for the manner in which it has co-operated, not only in connection with the convoy system, but in fighting the submarines. If the naval position is improving today, as it is, it is due to the fact that the British and American fleets are working in closest accord, supported by an immense body of skilled workers on both sides of the Atlantic, who are turning out destroyers and other craft for dealing with the submarine, as well as mines and bombs. Some of the finest battleships of the United States Navy are now associated with the British Grand fleet. They are not only splendid fighting ships but they are well officered and manned."

On May 13, 1918, in appreciation of some remarks which had been made by Sir Eric Geddes, First Lord of the British Admiralty, Josephus Daniels, the American Secretary of the Navy, addressed a letter to him in the following terms:

"Your reference to the splendid spirit of co-operation between the navies of our countries, and your warm praise of the officers and men of our navy, have been most grateful to me and to all Americans. The brightest spot in the tragedy of this war is this mutual appreciation of the men in the naval service. Our officers who have returned confirm the statements of Admiral Sims of the courtesies and kindness shown in every way by the admiralty and the officers of the British fleet. I had hoped to have the pleasure of visiting Great Britain and of personally expressing this feeling of mutual working together, but the task here of making ready more and more units for the fleet is a very serious one, and my duty chains me here. The order in all the Navy is 'Full speed ahead' in the construction of destroyers and other craft, and the whole service is keyed up to press this program forward. Therefore I shall not have the pleasure, until this program shall materialize, of a personal acquaintance and a conference which would be of such interest and value."

Sir Eric Geddes replied: "I am exceedingly grateful for your letter. As you know we, all of us here, have great admiration for your officers and men, and for the splendid help they are giving in European waters. Further, we find Admiral Sims invaluable in council and in co-operation. I fully appreciate how onerous your office must be and much though I regret that you do not see your way to visiting this country in the near future, I hope we may some day have the pleasure of welcoming you here."

Sir Eric afterward himself visited the United States and his visit was made the occasion of a general expression of the high regard which the United States felt for the splendid assistance which the great British Navy had rendered in convoying its armies across the seas.

Secretary Daniels, in his report of December, 1918, said that American sea forces in European waters comprised 338 vessels, with 75,000 men and officers--a force larger than the entire Navy was before the war began.

From August, 1914, to September, 1918, German submarines sank 7,151,088 deadweight tons of shipping in excess of the tonnage turned out in that period by the allied and neutral nations. That total does not represent the depletion of the fleets at the command of the allied and neutral nations, however, as 3,795,000 deadweight tons of enemy ships were seized in the meantime. Actually, the allied and neutral nations on September 1, 1918, had only 3,362,088 less tons of shipping in operation than in August, 1914.

These details of the shipping situation were issued by the United States Shipping Board along with figures to show that, with American and allied yards under full headway, Europe's danger of being starved by the German submarine was apparently at an end. The United States took the lead of all nations in shipbuilding.

In all, the allied and neutral nations lost 21,404,913 deadweight tons of shipping since the beginning of the war, showing that Germany maintained an average destruction of about 445,000 deadweight tons monthly. During the latter months, however, the sinkings fell considerably below the average, and allied construction passed destruction for the first time in May, 1918.

The losses of the allied and neutral shipping in August, 1918, amounted to 327,676 gross tonnage, of which 176,401 was British and 151,275 allied and neutral, as compared with the adjusted figures for July of 323,772, and 182,524 and 141,248, respectively. British losses from all causes during August were 10,887 tons higher than in June, which was the lowest month since the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare.

An official statement of the United States Shipping Board, issued September 21, 1918, set forth the following facts:

STATUS OF WORLD TONNAGE, SEPTEMBER 1, 1918 (Germany and Austria excluded) Deadweight Tons Total losses (allied and neutral) August, 1914-September 1, 1918 21,404,913

Total construction (allied and neutral) August, 1914-September 1, 1918 14,247,825

Total enemy tonnage captured (to end of 1917) 3,795,000

Excess of losses over gains 3,362,088

Estimated normal increase in world's tonnage if war had not occurred (based on rate of increase, 1905-1914) 14,700,000

Net deficit due to war 18,062,088

In August, deliveries to the Shipping Board and other seagoing construction in the United States for private parties passed allied and neutral destruction for that month. The figures:

Gross (Actual) Tone Deliveries to the Shipping Board 244,121 Other construction over 1,000 gross 16,918 Total 261,039 Losses (allied and neutral) 259,400 America alone surpassed losses for month by 1,630

NOTE.--World's merchant tonnage, as of June 30, 1914, totaled 49,089,552 gross tons, or, roughly, 73,634,328 deadweight tons. (Lloyd's Register.)

The climax to Germany's piratical submarine adventure took place a few days after the armistice, when a mournful procession of shamefaced-looking U-boats sailed between lines of English cruisers to be handed over to the tender mercies of the Allied governments.

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XXXVI. CHINA JOINS THE FIGHTING DEMOCRACIES

The circumstances connected with the entrance of the Republic of China into the World War were as follows: On February 4, 1917, the American Minister, Dr. Reinsch, requested the Chinese Government to follow the United States in protesting against the German use of the submarine against neutral ships. On February 9th Pekin made such a protest to Germany, and declared its intention of severing diplomatic relations if the protest were ineffectual. The immediate answer of Germany was to torpedo the French ship Atlas in the Mediterranean on which were over seven hundred Chinese laborers. On March 10th the Chinese Parliament empowered the government to break with Germany. On the same afternoon a reply was received from the German Government to the Chinese protest, of a very mild character. The reply produced a great deal of surprise in China.

A Chinese statesman made this comment on the German change of attitude: "The troops under Count Waldersee leaving Germany for the relief of Pekin were instructed by the War Lord to grant no quarter to the Chinese. On the other hand, the latter were to be so disciplined that they would never dare look a German in the face again. The whirligig of time brings its own revenge, and today, after the lapse of scarcely seventeen years, we hear the Vossiche Zeitung commenting on the diplomatic rupture between China and Germany, lamenting that even so weak a state as the Far Eastern Republic dares look defiantly at the German nation."

The breaking off of relations with Germany led to trouble between the President of the Republic and the Premier. The Premier desired to break off relations without consulting Parliament. The President insisted that Parliament should be consulted, which was actually done. The next move was to declare war, but here the Chinese statesmen hesitated, and their hesitation arose through their feeling toward Japan.

They sympathized with the Allies, but to Chinese eyes Japan has stood for all that Germany, as depicted by its worst enemies, stood for. The Japanese Government was professing friendliness to China, but that profession the Chinese could not reconcile with Japan's action in the Chino-Japanese War, and on many other occasions since that war. In Chinese hearts there was a strong feeling of distrust, fear and hatred for their Japanese neighbor. There were other reasons also why they hesitated to declare war. Indeed the devotion to peace, which is deep-rooted in the nation, would be a sufficient reason in itself.

Moreover, China, like other neutral nations, was a strong center for German propaganda. German consuls and diplomatic officers, who were scholars in Chinese literature and philosophy, and who also had sufficient funds to entertain Chinese officials as they liked to be entertained, were actively endeavoring to influence Chinese statesmen.

The Chinese Government, however, was determined to declare war, and to secure support the Chinese Premier summoned a council of military governors to consider the question. The majority of the conference agreed with the Premier, but a vigorous opposition began to develop. On May 7th the President sent a formal request to Parliament to approve of a declaration of war. Parliament delayed and was threatened by a mob. The Premier was accused of having instigated the riot and support began to gather for Parliament, and an attack was made on the Premier as being willing to sell China.

Day by day the differences between the militants and democrats became more bitter. The question of war was almost lost in the differences of opinion as to the comparative powers of Parliament and the Executive. A demand was made that the Premier resign. He refused to resign and was dismissed from office by the President, who was supported in his action by the Parliament. This was practically a success of the Parliamentary party, when suddenly several of the northern generals and governors declared their independence, and the movement gradually developed into a revolution in favor of the restoration of the Manchu Dynasty. This revolution was finally suppressed.

The Japanese declared themselves, not the enemies, but the protectors of China in terms that suggested the appearance of a Monroe Doctrine for Asia. They pledged themselves not to violate the political independence or territorial integrity of China, and declared strongly in favor of the principle of the open door and equal opportunity.

On August 14th China formally joined the Allies and declared war on Austria and Germany. She took no great part in the war, except to invade the German and Austrian settlements in Tientsin and Hankow, which were taken over by the Chinese authorities. The Chinese officials also seized the Deutsche Asiatiche Bank which had been the financing agent in China for the German Government, and fourteen German vessels which had been interned in Chinese ports. Thousands of Chinese coolies were sent to Europe to work in the Allied interests behind the battle lines, and China has in all respects been faithful to her pledges.

The official war proclamation of China which was signed by President Feng-kuo-chang reviewed China's efforts to induce Germany to modify her submarine policy. It declared that China had been forced to sever relations with Germany and with Austro-Hungary to protect the lives and property of Chinese citizens. It promised that China would respect the Hague Convention, regarding the humane conduct of the war, and asserted that China's object was to hasten peace.

On July 22d Siam officially entered the war and all German and Austrian subjects were interned and German ships seized. The Prince of Songkla, brother of the reigning monarch, declared that natural necessity and moral pressure forced Siam into the war on the side of the Entente. Neutrality had become increasingly difficult, and it had become apparent that freedom and justice in states which were not strong from a military standpoint were not to be secured through the policy of the Central Powers. Sympathy for Belgium and the popular aversion to Teutonic methods had left no doubt as to the duty of Siam. The motive of Siam had a curious fitness, though there was a certain quaintness in her expression of a desire to make, "the world safe for democracy."

The native name of Siam is Muang-Thai, which means the Kingdom of the Free. Siam is about as large as France, and has a population of about eight millions. Its people, who are of many shades of yellowish-brown, have descended into this corner of Asia from the highlands north of Burma and east of Tibet. The tradition among these people was that the further south they descended the shorter they would grow, that when they reached the southern plains they would be no larger than rabbits, and that when they came to the sea they would vanish altogether. As a fact the northern tribes are much taller than the southern.

The original population of the Siamese peninsula was a race of black dwarfs, remnants of whom still dwell in caves and nests of palm leaves, so shy that it is almost impossible to catch a glimpse of them. The literary and religious culture of Siam comes mainly from southern India. Buddhism is the dominant religion, but there are many Mohammedans also.

The accession of Siam to the ranks of the Allies did not make any great difference from a military point of view, but it was another evidence of the general world feeling with regard to the Germans and their encroachments in all parts of the world. Germany had tried its best to keep these nations from participation in the war, but not only had her propaganda failed but the feeling of these Oriental peoples was strongly anti-German. Much of this feeling, it is readily seen from their statements and their private letters, comes from a personal resentment of the boorish attitude of the individual German. By the end of 1918 the Teuton influence in the Orient had completely disappeared.

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XXXVII. THE DEFEAT AND RECOVERY OF ITALY

None of the surprises of the World War brought such sudden and stunning dismay to the Entente Allies as the news of the Italian disaster beginning October 24, 1917, and terminating in mid-November. It is a story in which propaganda was an important factor. It taught the Allies the dangers lying in fraternization between opposing armies.

During the summer of 1917 the second Italian army was confronted by Austrian regiments composed largely of war-weary Socialists. During that summer skilful German propagandists operating from Spain had sown the seeds of pacificism throughout Italy. This was made easy by the distress then existing particularly in the villages where food was scanty and complaints against the conduct of the war were numerous. The propaganda extended from the civilian population to the army, and its channel was directed mainly toward the second army encamped along the Isonzo River.

As a consequence of the pacifists' preachments both by word of mouth and document, the second army was ready for the friendly approaches that came from the front lines of the Austrians only a few hundred yards away. Daily communication was established and at night the opposing soldiers fraternized generally. The Russian doctrine that an end of the fighting would come if the soldiers agreed to do no more shooting, spread throughout the Italian trenches.

This was all part of a plan carefully mapped out by the German High Command. When the infection had spread, the fraternizing Austrian troops were withdrawn from the front trenches and German shock troops took their places.

On October 24th these troops attacked in force. The Italians in the front line, mistaking them for the friendly Austrians, waved a greeting. German machine guns and rifles replied with a deadly fire, and the great flanking movement commenced. So well had the Germans played their game the Italians lost more than 250,000 prisoners and 2,300 guns in the first week. The attack began in the Julian Alps and continued along the Isonzo southwestward into the plain of Venice. The Italian positions at Tolmino and Plezzo were captured and the whole Italian force was compelled to retreat along a seventy-mile front from the Carnic Alps to the sea. The most important point gained by the enemy in its early assault was the village of Caporetto on the Upper Isonzo where General Cadorna held a great series of dams which could have drained the Isonzo River dry within twelve hours.

[Illustration: Map] AREA OF THE FLOW AND EBB OF ITALY'S MILITARY SUCCESS FROM THE CARSO PLATEAU TO THE PIAVE LINE.

The Italian retreat at places degenerated into a rout and it was not until the Italians, reinforced by French and British, reached the Piave River, that a stand was finally made. The defeat cost Cadorna his command, and he was succeeded by General Armando Diaz, whose brilliant strategy during the remainder of the war marked him as a national hero and one of the outstanding military geniuses of the war.

The order for a general retreat was issued on October 27th. Poison gas shells rained blindness and death upon the retreating Italians and upon the heroic rear-guards. The city of Udine and its environs were emptied of their inhabitants; and Goritzia, which had been wrested after a desperate effort from the Austrians, was retaken on October 28th.

That the entire Italian army escaped the fate that had come to the Russians at the Masurian Lakes was due mainly to the third army commanded by the Duke of Aosta. During the long running fight, it faced about from time to time and drove the Germans back in bloody encounters.

By November 10th the Italian forces had come to the hastily prepared entrenchments on the west bank of the Piave River. The Austrians and the Germans dug in on the east bank from the village of Susegana in the Alpine foothills to the Adriatic Sea.

Here a long-drawn-out battle was fought, resulting in enormous losses to the Germans and Austrians. By this time reinforcements had come up from the French front and every attempt by the enemy to gain ground met a bloody check. The hardest fighting was on the Asiago Plateau. There, although the Italians were greatly outnumbered, the concentration of their artillery in the hills overlooking the great field completely dominated the situation.

A factor that was of the utmost value in checking the Austrians was the system of lagoon defenses running from the lower Piave to the Gulf of Venice.

From November 13th, when the Austrians in crossing the lower Piave in their headlong rush to Venice were suddenly checked by the Italian lagoon defenses, the entire Gulf of Venice, with its endless canals and marshes, with islands disappearing and reappearing with the tide, was the scene of a continuous battle. A correspondent described the fighting as absolutely without precedent. The Teutons were desperately trying to turn the Italian right wing by working their way around the northern limits of the Venetian Gulf. The Italians inundated the region and sealed all the entrances into the gulf by mine fields. The gulf, therefore, was converted into an isolated sea. Over this inland waterway the conflict raged bitterly. The Italians had a "lagoon fleet" ranging from the swiftest of motor boats, armed with machine guns, small cannon, and torpedo tubes, to huge, cumbersome, flat-bottomed British monitors, mounting the biggest guns.

The Italian vessels navigated secret channels dug in the bottom of the shallow lagoons. Only the Italian war pilots knew these courses. Even gondolas straying out of the channels were instantly and hopelessly stranded. Not only this, but as the muddy flats and marshy islands did not permit of artillery emplacements the Italians developed an immense fleet of floating batteries. The guns ranged from three-inch fieldpieces to great fifteen-inch monsters. Each was camouflaged to represent a tiny island, a garden patch, or a houseboat. Floating on the glasslike surface of the lagoons, the guns fired a few shots and then changed position, making it utterly impossible for the enemy to locate them. The entire auxiliary service of supplying this floating army was adapted to meet the lagoon warfare. Munition dumps were on boats, constantly moved about to prevent the enemy spotting them. Gondolas and motor boats replaced the automobile supply lorries customary in land warfare. Instead of motor ambulances, motor boats carried off the dead and wounded. Hydro-airplanes replaced ordinary fighting aircraft.

Along the northern limit of the Venetian Gulf, where the Austrians, having filtered into the Piave Delta, sought to cross both the Sile and the Piave, the enemy each night hooked up pontoons. At daybreak every morning one end of a huge pontoon structure was anchored to the east bank of the Piave and the other flung out to the strong current, which soon stretched the makeshift bridge across.

The moment this happened, the enemy infantry madly dashed across. Simultaneously the Italian floating batteries opened a terrific fire. Practically every morning the Austrians tried the trick, and every morning they failed, with heavy losses, to effect a crossing. At last they gave up the attempt as hopeless, and the armies remained locked on the Piave for several months.

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XXXVIII. REDEMPTION OF THE HOLY LAND

From the beginning of the war the German General Staff and the British War Office planned the occupation of Palestine and Macedonia. Germany wanted domination of that territory because through it lay the open road to Egypt and British prestige in the East. Turkey was the cat's paw of the Hun in this enterprise. German officers and German guns were supplied to the Turks, but the terrible privations necessary in a long campaign that must be spent largely in the desert, and the inevitable great loss in human life, were both demanded from Turkey.

Great Britain made no such demands upon any of its Allies. Unflinchingly England faced virtually alone the rigors, the disease and the deaths consequent upon an expedition having as its object the redemption of the Holy Land from the unspeakable Turk.

Volunteers for the expedition came by the thousands. Canada, the United States, Australia and other countries furnished whole regiments of Jewish youths eager for the campaign. The inspiration and the devotion radiating from Palestine, and particularly from Jerusalem and Bethlehem, drew Jew and Gentile, hardy adventurer and zealous churchman, into Allenby's great army.

It was a long campaign. On February 26, 1917, Kut-el-Amara was recaptured from the Turks by the British expedition under command of General Sir Stanley Maude, and on March 11th following General Maude captured Bagdad. From that time forward pressure upon the Turks was continuous. On September 29, 1917, the Turkish Mesopotamian army commanded by Ahmad Bey was routed by the British, and historic Beersheba in Palestine was occupied on October 31st. The untimely death of General Maude, the hero of Mesopotamia, on November 18, 1917, temporarily cast gloom over the Allied forces but it had no deterrent effect upon their successful operations. Siege was laid to Jerusalem and its environs late in November, and on December 8, 1917, the Holy City which had been held by the Turks for six hundred and seventy-three years surrendered to General Allenby and his British army. Thus ended a struggle for possession of the holiest of shrines both of the Old and New Testaments, that had cost millions of lives during fruitless crusades and had been the center of religious aspirations for ages.

[Illustration: Map: The Jordan river from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea.] HOW THE TWO WINGS OF THE BRITISH ARMY TRAPPED THE TURKS.

General Allenby's official report follows:

"I entered the city officially at noon December 11th with a few of my staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, the heads of the political missions, and the military attaches of France, England, and America.

"The procession was all afoot, and at Jaffa gate I was received by the guards representing England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, India, France and Italy. The population received me well.

"Guards have been placed over the holy places. My military governor is in contact with the acting custodians and the Latin and Greek representatives. The governor has detailed an officer to supervise the holy places. The Mosque of Omar and the area around it have been placed under Moslem control, and a military cordon of Mohammedan officers and soldiers has been established around the mosque. Orders have been issued that no non-Moslem is to pass within the cordon without permission of the military governor and the Moslem in charge."

A proclamation in Arabic, Hebrew, English, French, Italian Greek and Russian was posted in the citadel, and on all the walls proclaiming martial law and intimating that all the holy places would be maintained and protected according to the customs and beliefs of those to whose faith they were sacred. The proclamation read:

PROCLAMATION

To the Inhabitants of Jerusalem the Blessed and the People Dwelling in Its Vicinity.

The defeat inflicted upon the Turks by the troops under my command has resulted in the occupation of your city by my forces. I, therefore, proclaim it to be under martial law, under which form of administration it will remain so long as military consideration makes necessary.

However, lest any of you be alarmed by reason of your experience at the hands of the enemy who has retired, I hereby inform you that it is my desire that every person should pursue his lawful business without fear of interruption.

Furthermore, since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of mankind and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore, do I make it known to you that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest, or customary place of prayer of whatsoever form of the three religions will be maintained and protected according to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faith they are sacred.

Guardians have been established at Bethlehem and on Rachel's Tomb. The tomb at Hebron has been placed under exclusive Moslem control.

The hereditary custodians at the gates of the Holy Sepulchre have been requested to take up their accustomed duties in remembrance of the magnanimous act of the Caliph Omar, who protected that church.

Jerusalem was now made the center of the British operations against the Turks in Palestine. Mohammed V, the Sultan of Turkey, died July 3, 1918, and many superstitious Turks looked upon that event as forecasting the end of the Turkish Empire. The Turkish army in Palestine was left largely to its fate by Germany and Austria, and although it was numerically a formidable opponent for General Allenby's forces, that distinguished strategist fairly outmaneuvered the Turkish High Command in every encounter. The beginning of the end for Turkish misrule in Palestine came on September 20th when the ancient town of Nazareth was captured by the British.

A military net was thereupon closed upon the Turkish army. The fortified towns of Beisan and Afule followed the fate of Nazareth. In one day's fighting 18,000 Turkish prisoners, 120 guns, four airplanes, a number of locomotives and cars, and a great quantity of military and food supplies were bagged by the victorious British. So well did Allenby plan that the British losses were far the smallest suffered in any large operation of the entire war. It was the swiftest and most decisive victory of any scored by the Allies. It ended the grandiose dream of Germany for an invasion of Egypt in stark disaster, and swept the Holy Land clear of the Turks.

This great battle on the Biblical field of Armageddon was remarkable in that it was virtually the only engagement during the entire war offering the freest scope to cavalry operations. British cavalry commands operated over a radius of sixty miles between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, sweeping the Turks before them.

By September 25th the total bag of Turkish prisoners exceeded 40,000. Munition depots covering acres of ground were taken. Whole companies of Turkish soldiers were found sitting on their white flags waiting for the British to accept their terms. Two hundred sixty-five pieces of artillery were captured.

Damascus was captured on Tuesday, October 1st, after an advance of 130 miles by General Allenby since September 1st, the day of his surprise attack north of Jerusalem. During that period a total of 73,000 prisoners was captured.

Palestine's delivery from the Turks was complete. Official announcement was made by the British War Office that the total casualties from all sources in this final campaign was less than 4,000.

Plans for the government of the people of Palestine were announced immediately. Their general scope was outlined in an agreement made between the British, French and Russian governments in 1916. Under that arrangement Republican France was charged with the preparation of a scheme of self-government. The town of Alexandretta was fixed upon as a free port of entry for the new nation.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. British Official Photo. JERUSALEM DELIVERED On December 11, 1917, the Holy City was entered by the British forces. Following the custom of the Crusaders, General Allenby, commander of the British and Allied forces, made his entry, with his staff and Allied officers, through the Jaffa Gate, on foot.

[Illustration: Photograph] British Official Photograph. ANCIENT AND MODERN WARFARE MINGLE IN THE HOLY LAND The distinctly modern British soldier uses the camel, that extremely ancient beast of burden, to get him over the desert in Palestine. The Imperial Camel Corps gave valuable service in the campaign that led to the capture of Jerusalem.

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XXXIX. AMERICA'S TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS

When America entered the war there was a very great increase in the volume of business of the railroads of the country. The roads were already so crowded by what the Allies had done in purchasing war supplies, that a great deal of confusion had resulted. The Allies had expended more than three billion dollars in the United States, and as nearly all of their purchases had to be sent to a few definite points for shipment to Europe, the congestion at those points had become a serious difficulty. Thousands of loaded cars had to stand for long periods awaiting the transfer of their contents to ships. This meant that thousands of cars which had been taken from lines in other parts of the country would be in a traffic blockade for weeks at a time. The main difficulty appeared to be that of getting trains unloaded promptly.

The declaration of war by the United States made the situation very much worse. Not only did the railroads have to handle the freight destined for the Allies, but there was a very large addition to the passenger movement on account of the thousands of men that were being sent to the various training camps, and the immense masses of supplies that had to be sent to these camps. This included not only the ordinary supplies to the men but thousands of carloads of lumber. Moreover, all over the country mills and factories were now being handed over to the government for war work; and to them, too, great quantities of raw material had to be sent, and the finished product removed to its destination.

A vigorous endeavor to meet the new difficulties was instituted by the railroads themselves. They themselves named a war board, which was to co-operate with the government and which was to have absolute authority. But this arrangement soon proved unsatisfactory. Each government official would do his best to obtain preference for what his department required, and to obtain that preference a system of priority tags was established which became a great abuse. The result was that priority freight soon began to crowd out the freight which the railroads could handle according to their own discretion, thus seriously interfering with business all over the country.

Naturally, the railroad executives and the government authorities studied the question with the greatest care, but they could not reach an understanding among themselves, nor with the Administration. At last the President settled the matter by announcing his decision to have the government take over complete control of the roads. The President derived his power from an Act of Congress dated August 29, 1916, which reads as follows:

The President in time of war is empowered, through the Secretary of War, to take possession and assume control of any system or systems of transportation, or any part thereof, and to utilize the same to the exclusion, as far as may be necessary, of all other traffic thereon, for the transfer or transportation of troops, war material and equipment, or for such other purposes connected with the emergency as may be needful or desirable.

The proclamation went into effect on December 28, 1917, and the President declared that it applied to "each and every system of transportation and the appurtenances thereof, located, wholly or in part, within the boundaries of the Continental United States, and consisting of railroads and owned or controlled systems of coastwise and inland transportation, engaged in general transportation, whether operated by steam, or by electric power, including also terminals, terminal companies, and terminal associations, sleeping and parlor cars, private cars, and private car lines, elevators, warehouses, telegraph and telephone lines, and all other equipment and appurtenances commonly used upon or operated as a part of such rail or combined rail and water systems of transportation.... That the possession, control, operation, and utilization of such transportation systems shall be exercised by and through William G. McAdoo, who is hereby appointed, and designated Director General of Railroads. Said Director may perform the duties imposed upon him so long and to such an extent as he shall determine through the boards of directors, receivers, officers and employees, of said system of transportation." President Wilson issued an explanation with this proclamation in which he said:

This is a war of resources no less than of men, perhaps even more than of men, and it is necessary for the complete mobilization of our resources that the transportation systems of the country should be organized and employed under a single authority and to simplify methods for coordination which have not proved possible under private management and control. A committee of railway executives who have been cooperating with the government in this all-important matter, have done the utmost that it was possible for them to do, but there were differences that they could neither escape nor neutralize. Complete unity of administration in the present circumstances involves upon occasion, and at many points, a serious dislocation of earnings, and the committee was, of course, without power or authority to rearrange charges or effect proper compensations in adjustments of earnings. Several roads which were willingly and with admirable public spirit accepting the orders of the committee, have already suffered from these circumstances, and should not be required to suffer further. In mere fairness to them, the full authority of the government must be substituted. The public interest must be first served, and in addition the financial interests of the government, and the financial interests of the railways, must be brought under a common direction. The financial operations of the railway need not, then, interfere with the borrowings of the government, and they themselves can be conducted at a great advantage. Investors in railway securities may rest assured that their rights and interests will be as scrupulously looked after by the government as they could be by the directors of the several railway systems. Immediately upon the reassembling of Congress I shall recommend that these different guarantees be given. The Secretary of War and I are agreed that, all the circumstances being taken into consideration, the best results can be obtained under the immediate executive direction of the Honorable William G. McAdoo, whose practical experience peculiarly fits him for the service, and whose authority as Secretary of the Treasury will enable him to coordinate, as no other man could, the many financial interests which will be involved, and which might, unless systematically directed, suffer very embarrassing entanglements.

President Wilson's proclamation stirred up great excitement on the stock market. Speculators rushed to buy back railroad stocks which they had previously sold short, and the market value of such stocks was raised more than three hundred and fifty million dollars as a result. The Federal Government's assumption of control of the railroads was generally recognized as the proper act under existing circumstances, and the guarantee of pre-war earnings made them a good investment.

The railroad system in the United States consists of 260,000 miles of railroad, owned by 441 distinct corporations, with about 650,000 shareholders. It employs 1,600,000 men and represents a property investment of $17,500,000,000. The outstanding capital in round numbers is $16,000,000,000, $9,000,000,000 of which is represented by a funded debt. The rolling stock comprises 61,000 locomotives, 2,250,000 freight cars, 52,000 passenger cars and 95,000 service cars. All this was now under the charge of William G. McAdoo. On January 4, 1918, President Wilson explained his plan to Congress, and recommended legislation to put the new system of control into effect, and to guarantee to the holders of railroad stocks and bonds a net annual income equal to the average net income for the three years ending June 30, 1917.

The wise recommendations of President Wilson were at once approved by Congress; provision was made for guaranteeing the railroads the income which he recommended, and for financing the roads. The railroads' war board was abolished and Mr. McAdoo appointed an advisory board to assist him. This board consisted of John Skelton Williams, Controller of the Currency; Hale Holden, President of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad; Henry Walters, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Coast Line; Edward Chambers, Vice-President of the Santa Fe Railroad and head of the transportation division of the United States Food Administration; Walter D. Hines, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Santa Fe. Specific duties were assigned to the various members of this committee. Mr. Williams was to deal with the financial problem; Mr. Holden to assume direction of committees and sub-committees, and other phases of the work were allotted to other members. Mr. Walter D. Hines was made assistant to the Director General.

Mr. McAdoo's first order was to pool all terminals, ports, locomotives, rolling stock and other transportation facilities. Another order had as its object to end the congestion of traffic in New York City and Chicago. It gave all lines entering these centers equal rights in trackage and water terminal facilities. This wiped out the identity of the great Pennsylvania Terminal Station in New York, and gave all railroads the use of the Pennsylvania tubes under the Hudson River.

The effect of government control of the railroads was felt from the very first. Coal was given the right of way, giving great relief to such sections as were suffering from fuel shortage. Many passenger trains were taken off, more than two hundred and fifty of such trains being dropped from the schedules of the eastern roads. This permitted a great increase in the freight traffic. Orders were also given that all empty box cars were to be sent to wheat-producing centers, so that wheat could be moved to the Atlantic sea coasts for shipment to England and France. These orders preceded the adoption of the railroad control bill, which was not passed by Congress until March 14th. A feature of the bill is the proviso that government control of the railroads shall not continue more than twenty-one months after the war. After the passing of the bill plans were made to make contracts with each railroad company for government compensation on the basis provided in the bill.

The action of the government in thus assuming control of the railroads very naturally led to wide differences of opinion, some of which were sharply expressed in the Congress of the United States. On the whole, however, public opinion decided that the government acted wisely. Certain inconveniences to the traveling public were easily excused when it was realized that the movement of troops throughout the country to the camps, or from the camps to the ports which were to take them across the sea, from "Texas to Toul," was being accomplished with great success; that the movement of war material was now possible, and that the gigantic railroad system was working without a hitch.

Many details, in connection with the railroad management, were not at once worked out, and many months passed without complete agreements regarding the railway operating contracts. But this was a matter of greater interest to the owners than it was to patriotic citizens, anxious for the winning of the war. Governmental control of the railroads, was only a beginning. On July 16th President Wilson took control, for the period of the war, of all telegraph, telephone, cable and radio lines, signing a bill on that day passed by Congress authorizing such action.

The transportation of the American army across the ocean was the greatest military feat of its kind ever accomplished in history. The transportation of English troops during the Boer War meant a longer journey, but the number of troops sent on that journey was but a small fraction of America's army.

The railroads in existence were not sufficient. The ships that were necessary could not be found in America's navy. It was necessary to build new roads, new docks, new terminals, new bases of supplies in America, and to send abroad thousands of trained workmen and experienced railroad engineers to build similar necessities in France. To convey the millions of men across the water England had to come to the rescue, and though hundreds of American ships were built with a speed that was almost miraculous, they were in constant need of the assistance of the Allies. But wonderful men were put in charge of the work, wonderful organizers with wonderful assistants, and the great task was accomplished.

As soon as the army was trained it was sent across--first by thousands, then by tens of thousands, then by hundreds of thousands, until before the war was over more than two million men had made the great trip "over there." And throughout that whole trip they were watched over as carefully as if they were at home. Every want was supplied; food, clothing, munitions were all where they were needed. Even their leisure hours were looked after, their health attended to. Books, games, theaters, classes for those who cared to study, all were there.

It was a wonderful performance, and the whole movement was conducted with clock-like precision. On such a day at such an hour the trained soldier would start. At such an hour he would report in some Atlantic port. At such an hour and such a minute he would board ship, and with equal precision that ship would sail upon the appointed moment. Perhaps on the journey over some submarine might delay the ship, but the destroyers were there on the alert, and the submarine was but an amusing episode. On the other side the process was carried on with equal efficiency. Before the American doughboy could realize that he was in France he was in his quarters, just like home, in the base camps behind the fighting line and it was this miracle of transportation that won the war.

A study of transportation construction in other countries showed that actual construction of railroads had been suspended in some cases, and in others retarded, but in not a few instances hastened by the war. Brazil experienced a more nearly complete suspension of railroad building than any of the other countries, but preparation was made for prompt resumption of construction, with the return of more normal conditions.

The Chinese building program also had been affected unfavorably by the war. Nevertheless, there were important additions made, aggregating approximately 800 miles during the war. Of the lines completed in 1917, two are of especial significance. One of these, a 140-mile section of the Canton-Hankow line, a link in the route between South China and Peking. The other is a 60-mile feeder of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Manchuria. A line was extended from South Manchuria into Mongolia, the first railroad to penetrate this territory. Financial arrangements were made for the early construction of a line across Southern Manchuria and for another connecting the Peking-Hankow and Tientsin-Pukow lines.

Construction in Siberia proceeded rapidly. The completion, in 1915, of the Amur River division of the Trans-Siberian in the east, together with the extension in 1913 of the Ekaterinburg-Tiumen line to Omsk in the west, gave virtually a double track from European Russia to Vladivostok.

The notable achievement in Africa was the continuation of the southern rail link in the Cape-to-Cairo route. This line was completed to Bukama on the navigable Congo, 2,600 miles from Capetown. The railway in German East Africa, was extended to Lake Tanganyika on the eve of the war, making a rail-water line across the center of the continent. The railroad from Lobito Bay was extended eastward to Katanga, a rich mineral region of the Belgian Congo, and, with the road already reaching the Indian Ocean at Beira, gave a second east and west transcontinental line. A permanent standard gauge railroad was laid by the British Expeditionary Forces from Egypt into Palestine.

Despite the magnitude of the Australian contribution to the Allied military and naval forces, the east and west transcontinental railway, begun in 1912, was completed in 1917. In all, more than 3,500 miles of track were built in the commonwealth in the years 1915-17.

In Canada, the work of providing two transcontinental railroads was completed; feeders were added, and a line from La Pas to Hudson Bay was under construction. From 1912 to 1916 more than 10,000 miles of track were put in operation, nearly 7,000 of which were added in the first two years of the war.

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XL. SHIPS AND THE MEN WHO MADE THEM

When the United States of America entered the World War she was confronted at once by a serious question. The great Allied nations were struggling against the attempt of the Germans, through the piratical use of submarines, to blockade the coast of the Allied countries. It was this German action which had led America to take part in the war. It is true that America had other motives. Few wars ever take place among democratic nations as a result of the calculation of the nation's leaders. The people must be interested, and the people must sympathize with the cause for which they are going to fight. The people of America had sympathized with Belgium, and had become indignant at the brutal treatment of that inoffensive nation. They had sympathized with France in its gallant endeavor to protect its soil from the inroads of the Hun. This feeling had become a personal one as they reviewed the lists of Americans lost in the sinking of the Lusitania, and this sympathy had gradually grown into indignation when the Germans, after having promised to conduct submarine warfare according to international law, again and again violated that promise. When, then, the Germans declared that they would no longer even pretend to treat neutral shipping according to the laws of maritime warfare the people with one accord approved the action of the President of the United States in declaring war. The Germans at this time were making a desperate effort to starve England, by destroying its commerce, and it was in the endeavor to accomplish this purpose that they thought it necessary to attack American ships.

The first effort of Americans, therefore, was naturally to use every power of the navy to destroy the lurking submarines, and in the second place to use every means in their power to supply the Allies with food. But America had for many years neglected to give encouragement to her merchant fleets. Her commerce was very largely carried in foreign bottoms.

Ships were needed, and needed urgently, and one of the very first acts of the American Government was to authorize their production. Congress therefore appropriated for this purpose what was then the extraordinary sum of $1,135,000,000 and General Goethals, recently returned from his work in building the Panama Canal, was appointed manager of the Emergency Fleet Corporation and entrusted with the execution of the government's ship-building program.

The Emergency Fleet Corporation, however, was then independent of the United States Shipping Board, of which Mr. William Denman was made chairman, and friction between General Goethals and Mr. Denman at the very start caused long delay. The difference of opinion between them arose over the comparative merits of wooden and steel ships. The matter was finally laid before President Wilson and ended in the resignation of both men and the complete reorganization of the board and the Fleet Corporation, in which reorganization the Fleet Corporation was made subordinate to the Shipping Board but given entire control of construction.

Rear-Admiral Capps succeeded General Goethals, but was compelled to resign on account of ill health. Rear-Admiral Harris, who had been chief of the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks, then had the job for two weeks, but resigned because in his opinion he had not enough authority. Then came Mr. Charles Piez, who held the position for a longer period. Mr. Edward N. Hurley had been made chairman of the United States Shipping Board, and under the direction of these two men much progress was made.

In the spring of 1918 the boards themselves were not satisfied with their progress, and on April 16, 1918, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, was made Director General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Mr. Schwab was one of the most prominent business men in the United States and one of the best known, and his appointment was received all over the country with the greatest satisfaction. His wonderful work in building up the Bethlehem steel plant not only showed his great ability, but especially fitted him for a task in which the steel industry bore such a vital part. The official statement issued from the White House read as follows:

Edward N. Hurley, Charles M. Schwab, Bainbridge Colby and Charles Piez were received by the President at the White House today. It was stated that the subject discussed was the progress and condition of a national ship-building program. The carrying forward of the construction work in the one hundred and thirty shipyards now in operation is so vast that it requires a reinforcement of the ship-building organization throughout the country. Later in the day Chairman Hurley of the Shipping Board announced that a new office with wide powers had been created by the Trustees of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The new position is that of Director General and Mr. Schwab has been asked, and has agreed, to accept this position in answer to the call of the nation. Charles Piez, Vice-President of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, recommended that the post of General Manager of the corporation be at once abolished, so that Mr. Schwab as Director General should be wholly unhampered in carrying on the large task entrusted to him. Mr. Piez, since the retirement of Admiral Harris, has been filling both the position of Vice-President and that of General Manager. Mr. Schwab will have complete supervision and direction of the work of ship-building. He agreed to take up the work at the sacrifice of his personal wishes in the matter. His services were virtually commandeered. His great experience as a steel maker and builder of ships has been drafted for the nation.

Although the fact that production during the month of March had not been as great as had been hoped probably brought about this change, it should also be said that those who had been responsible deserved much credit for what had actually been done. They had been handicapped constantly by poor transportation and shortage of materials, but had worked faithfully and with what under ordinary circumstances would be regarded as remarkable success. The call upon Mr. Schwab was simply an effort to draft into the service of the country its very highest executive ability. Mr. Schwab's name had been mentioned before for more than one government post, and it was thought that here was the place where his talents could have the fullest play. It was stated in Washington that he would receive a salary of one dollar a year.

Mr. Schwab at once proceeded to "speed up" the shipping-program. It took him just one day to arrange his own business affairs and then he began his work. His first day was spent in going over the details of his task with Chairman Hurley and Mr. Piez. He then received newspaper men, beginning the campaign of publicity which turned out to be so successful. He was full of compliments for the work which had already been done. "It is prodigious, splendid, magnificent!" he said. "It is far greater than any man who hasn't seen the inside of things can appreciate. The foundation is laid. That task is well done. We are going to get the results which are needed and I should be proud if I could have any part in the accomplishment. All I can say for myself is that I am filled with enthusiasm, energy and confidence. Mr. Hurley and I are in full accord on everything, and we are going to work shoulder to shoulder to make the work a success, but the large burden must fall upon the people at the yards, and they are entitled to any credit for success. I do not want to have any man in the shipyards working for me. I want them all working with me. Nothing is going to be worth while unless we win this war, and everyone must do the task to which he is called."

One of the first steps that Mr. Schwab took to speed up ship production was to establish his headquarters in Philadelphia, as the center of the ship-building region. Chairman Hurley remained at Washington, and the operating department, which included agencies such as the Inter-Allied Ship Control Committee, was removed to New York City. It was stated that nearly fifty per cent of the work in progress was within a short radius of Philadelphia.

The year before the war the total output of the United States shipyards was only two hundred and fifty thousand tons. The program of the shipping board contemplated the construction of one thousand one hundred and forty-five steel ships, with a tonnage of eight million one hundred and sixty-four thousand five hundred and eight, and four hundred and ninety wooden ships, with a tonnage of one million seven hundred and fifteen thousand. These of course could not be built in the shipyards then in existence. New shipyards had to be built in various parts of the country.

In the first year after the shipping board took control, one hundred and eighty-eight ships were put in the water and through requisition and by building, one hundred and three more were added to the American merchant fleet. By April, 1918, the government had at its service 2,762,605 tons of shipping. During the month of May, the first month after Mr. Schwab began his work, the record of production had mounted from 160,286 tons to 263,571. American shipyards had completed and delivered during that month forty-three steel ships and one wooden ship. Mr. Hurley, in an address on June 10th, said:

On June 1st, we had increased the American built tonnage to over 3,500,000 dead-weight tons of shipping. This gives us a total of more than one thousand four hundred ships with an approximate total deadweight tonnage of 7,000,000 now under the control of the United States Shipping Board. In round numbers and from all sources we have added to the American flag since our war against Germany began, nearly 4,500,000 tons of shipping. Our program calls for the building of 1,856 passenger, cargo and refrigerator ships and tankers, ranging from five thousand to twelve thousand tons each, with an aggregate dead-weight of thirteen million. Exclusive of these we have two hundred and forty-five commandeered vessels, taken over from foreign and domestic owners which are being completed by the Emergency Fleet Corporation. These will aggregate a total dead-weight tonnage of 1,715,000. This makes a total of two thousand one hundred and one vessels, exclusive of tugs and barges which are being built and will be put on the seas in the course of carrying out the present program, with an aggregate dead-weight tonnage of 14,715,000. Five billion dollars will be required to finish our program, but the expenditure of this enormous sum will give to the American people the greatest merchant fleet ever assembled in the history of the world. American workmen have made the expansion of recent months possible, and they will make possible the successful conclusion of the whole program.

In the wonderful work that followed his appointment Mr. Schwab constantly came before the public, mainly through his addresses to the working men of the different yards. His main endeavor was to stimulate enthusiasm and rivalry among the men. A ten-thousand-dollar prize was offered to the yard producing the largest surplus above its program, and he traveled throughout the country urging the employees at all the great yards to break their records. The result of his work was that it was not long before it was announced that the monthly tonnage of ships completed by the Allies exceeded the tonnage of those sunk by the German submarine. The menace of the submarine, which had seemed so formidable, had disappeared.

The most important of the great shipyards which were producing the American cargo ships was at Hog Island in the southwest part of Philadelphia. This shipyard may indeed be called the greatest shipyard in the world. Before Mr. Schwab became Director General much criticism had been launched at the work that was going on there, and an investigation had been made which resulted in a favorable report. On August 5th the new shipyard launched its first ship, the 7,500 ton freight steamer, Quistconck, in the presence of a distinguished throng among whom were the President of the United States and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. The ship was christened by Mrs. Wilson, and the President swung his hat and led the cheers as the great ship glided down the ways. The name "Quistconck" is the ancient Indian name of Hog Island. The crowd numbered more than sixty thousand people, and special trains from Washington and New York brought many notable guests. President and Mrs. Wilson were escorted by Mr. Hurley and Mr. Schwab, and apparently thoroughly enjoyed the occasion. An enormous bouquet was presented to Mrs. Wilson by Foreman McMillan, who had driven the first rivet in the Quistconck's keel.

Shortly after the armistice it was announced that the Hog Island plant would be acquired by the United States Government. The real estate, valued at $1,760,000, was owned by the American International Ship Building Company, and the government had invested about $60,000,000 in equipping the plant. At the time the war ended thirty-five thousand persons were at work and a hundred and eighty ships were in various stages of completion.

An interesting feature in connection with the endeavor to "speed up" was the competition in riveting. Early in the year in yard after yard expert riveters were reported as making extraordinary records, and prizes were offered to the winners of such records. Later, however, such contests were discouraged by Chairman Hurley and by others. The best record was made by John Omir, who drove twelve thousand two hundred and nine rivets in nine hours at the Belfast Yards of Workman and Clark. In the accomplishment of this feat on two occasions he passed the mark of one thousand four hundred rivets an hour. In his best minute he drove twenty-six rivets.

The ships constructed by the Shipping Board were of steel, of wood and of concrete, and at times considerable difference of opinion existed with regard to which form of ship should receive the most attention. The policy of the government seemed finally to favor the steel as it was claimed that the wooden type was not only more expensive, but that it was less efficient. However until the very end wooden ships in great numbers were being built.

On May 31st the steamship Agawam, described as the first fabricated ship in the world, was launched in the yards of the Submarine Boat Corporation at Newark. This was essentially a standardized steel cargo ship. "Fabricated" is the technical term applied to ships built from numbered shapes made from patterns.

President Carse, of the Submarine Boat Corporation, said that the Agawam was the first of a hundred and fifty vessels of that type which would be constructed in the yard. The parts were made, he said, in bridge and tank shops throughout the country and were assembled at the yard. "Ninety-five per cent of the work in forming the parts entering into the hull of this vessel, and punching rivet holes, is done at shops widely separated, from drawings furnished by this company, and these drawings have been of such exactitude, and the work has been so carefully performed by the different bridge shops that when they are brought together at this yard they fit perfectly and the ship as you see is absolutely fair. The construction of the hull of this vessel requires the driving of over four hundred thousand rivets, and by our method more then one quarter of these rivets are driven at the distant shops, the different parts being brought to the yard in sections as large as can be transported on the railroad. Each part is numbered and lettered and as they are shaped perfectly all that is necessary is to place them in position, bolt them, and finally fasten them with rivets."

Officials of the company said that they expected to launch in the course of time two such vessels in each week. A standard ship of this type has a dead-weight carrying capacity of five thousand five hundred tons. It is three hundred and forty-three feet long and forty-six feet wide and is expected to show an average speed of ten and a half knots. Fuel oil is used to generate steam, to drive a turbine operating three thousand, six hundred revolutions a minute. The oil is carried in compartments of the double bottom of the ship in sufficient quantity for more than a round trip to Europe. Twenty-seven steel mills, fifty-six fabricating plants, and two hundred foundries and equipment shops were drawn upon to construct the ship.

In addition to the steel and wood vessels the Emergency Fleet Corporation also constructed a number of concrete ships. The first step in this direction was taken on April 3d, when the construction of four 7,500-ton concrete ships at a Pacific coast shipyard was authorized. This action was taken as a result of a report on the trials made with the concrete ship, Faith, which was built in San Francisco by private capital. The test of this ship had been satisfactory and Mr. R. J. Wig, an agent of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, who had made a careful inspection of the Faith and watched the tests, reported his confidence in the new cargo carrier. The successful trial trip of the Faith led, on the 17th of May, to the government order that fifty-eight mere such ships be constructed. Sites for yards were leased and contracts awarded. The concrete ship turned out to be a great success.

The extraordinary success of the American ship-building program during the World War was due to the enthusiasm of the workmen employed at the government plants, and that same enthusiasm was found in connection with their work in every industry on which the Government made demands. American labor was thoroughly loyal. It recognized that in the war for democracy against autocracy it had a vital concern. The attitude of the great American labor unions must however be sharply distinguished from that of the extreme socialists who refused to take any part in helping to win the war.

From the very beginning, the American Federation of Labor took a patriotic stand. Its leader was Mr. Samuel Gompers, and it was fortunate for America that the leadership of this great organization was in such patriotic hands. Mr. Gompers had been for many years president of this great labor organization, and was so often called in consultation by the President of the United States in connection with labor affairs that he might almost be called an unofficial member of the President's cabinet. Mr. Gompers was by birth an Englishman, but he had left his home when still a boy and was thoroughly filled with true American patriotism. From the beginning he devoted himself with the greatest enthusiasm not only to the protection of the interests of which he was in charge, but to the prosecution of a successful war. He had to contend, as labor leaders in other countries had been compelled to contend, with socialistic and anarchistic organizations.

During the period of America's participation in the war there were certain disturbances caused by the I. W. W., but from such movements the American Federation of Labor held itself aloof. Occasional strikes, on account of special conditions, were easily settled. The governmental assumption of control over railroads and other essential industries had much to do with the peaceful attitude of the workmen. The very high wages which were offered to the workmen at munitions works, ship-building plants and other governmental enterprises enabled the workmen there to live in reasonable comfort, though it caused a great deal of trouble in private industry, and compelled an increase in pay to labor all over the land.

In the latter part of the war Mr. Gompers traveled abroad, as a representative of American labor, and was greeted everywhere with the utmost enthusiasm, while his influence was strongly felt in favor of moderate and sane views as to labor's rights.

The American situation with regard to labor was made much simpler by the organization of the United States Employment Service. This was made an arm of the Department of Labor, with branch offices in nearly all the large cities of every state. It had a large corps of traveling examiners, men skilled in determining the fitness of workers for particular jobs, and it undertook to recruit labor for the various war industries in which they were needed. During the last year of the war from a hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand workers of all kinds were given work each month. In addition to this the Employment Service was a clearing house of information for manufacturers. The Director General of this service was Mr. John B. Densmore.

Labor throughout the country, except when influenced by men of foreign birth who were not in touch with the spirit of America, was universally loyal, and its share in the winning of the war will always remain a matter for pride.

[Illustration: Photograph] THE GREATEST SHIPYARD IN THE WORLD View of Hog Island shipyard near Philadelphia, showing the forest of derricks rising from its fifty shipways. At the time the war ended, 35,000 persons were at work and 180 ships were in course of completion.

[Illustration: Painting] THE LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD AS A U. S. TRANSPORT Among the German ships taken over by the United States at the outbreak of the war was the "Vaterland," the largest ship ever built. She was renamed the "Leviathan" and used as a transport, carrying 12,000 American soldiers past the submarines on each trip. She is shown here entering a French harbor at the end of a passage.

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XLI. GERMANY'S DYING DESPERATE EFFORT

In the spring of 1918 it must have been plain to the German High Command that if the war was to be won it must be won at once. In spite of all their leaders said of the impossibility of bringing an American army to France they must have been well informed of what the Americans were doing. They knew that there were already more than two million men in active training in the American army, and while at that time only a small proportion of them were available on the battle front, yet every day that proportion was growing greater and by the middle of the summer the little American army would have become a tremendous fighting force.

Their own armies on their western front had been enormously increased in size by the removal to that front of troops from Russia. Hundreds of thousands of their best regiments were now withdrawn from the east and incorporated under the command of their great Generals, Hindenburg and Ludendorf, in the armies of the west. They must, therefore, take advantage of this increased force and win the war before the Americans could come.

The problem of the Allies was also simple. It was not necessary for them to plan a great offensive. All they had to do was to hold out until, through the American aid which was coming now in such numbers, their armies would be so increased that German resistance would be futile. Under such circumstances began the last great offensive of the German army.

At that time it seems probable that the armies of Great Britain and France numbered about three million five hundred thousand men, and that, of these, six hundred and seventy thousand were on the front lines when the German attack began, leaving an army of reserve of about two million eight hundred and fifty thousand men. A considerable number of these were probably in England on leave. The number of French soldiers must have been between four and five million, of whom about one million five hundred thousand were on the front line. Adding to these the American, Belgian, Portuguese, Russian and Polish troops the Allied forces could not have been short of eight million five hundred thousand men.

[Illustration: Map: Lens on the North, St. Quentin on the East, Soissons on the South, Amiens on the West.] HOW GERMANY ATTEMPTED TO DIVIDE THE ALLIED ARMIES The map shows the ground covered by the Germans in the terrific Picardy drive of March, 1918, which had for its object the capture of Amiens and the push forward along the Somme to the channel, thus dividing the British army in the north from the French and Americans in the south.

The strength of the Germans on the western front before the Russian Revolution was probably about four million five hundred thousand men, and the withdrawal of Russia from the war had added to that number probably as many as one million five hundred thousand men, making an army of six million men to oppose that of the Allies. The Allies, therefore, must have considerably outnumbered the Germans.

In spite of this fact in nearly all the engagements in the early part of the great offensive the Allied forces were outnumbered in a ratio varying from three to one to five to three. This was possible, first, because in any offensive the attacking side naturally concentrates as many troops as it can gather at the point from which the offense is to begin, and second, since the Allies were not under one command it was with great difficulty that arrangements could be made by which the forces of one nation could reinforce the armies of another.

The first difficulty of course could not be obviated, but the solution of the second difficulty was the appointment of General Foch as Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied forces.

The appointment was made on March 28th and all the influence of the United States had been exerted in its favor. General Pershing at once offered to General Foch the unrestricted use of the American force in France and it was agreed that a large part of the American army should be brigaded with the Allied troops wherever there were weak spots.

Foch was already famous as the greatest strategist in Europe. He comes of a Basque family and was born in the town of Tarbes, in the Department of the Hautes-Pyrenees, which is on the border of Spain, on October 2, 1851. Foch served as a subaltern in the Franco-Prussian War and at twenty-six was made captain in the artillery. Later he became Professor of Tactics in the Ecole de Guerre, where he remained for five years. He then returned to regimental work and won steady promotion until he became brigadier-general. He was sent back to the War College as Director and wrote two books, "The Principles of War" and "Conduct of War," which have been translated into English, German and Italian and are considered standard works. He was now recognized as a man of unusual ability and was appointed to the command first, of the Thirteenth division, then of the Eighth corps at Bourges, and then to the command of the Twentieth corps at Nancy.

Unlike Marshal Joffre who was cool, careful, slow moving, Marshal Foch is full of daring and impetuosity. Everything is calculated scientifically but his strategy is full of dash. Many of his sayings have been passed from mouth to mouth among the Allies.

"Find out the weak point of your enemy and deliver your blow there," he said once at a staff banquet.

"But suppose, General," said an officer, "that the enemy has no weak point?" "If the enemy has no weak point," replied the Commander, "make one."

It was he who telegraphed to Joffre during the first battle of the Marne: "The enemy is attacking my flank. My rear is threatened. I am therefore attacking in front."

Foch is a great student, an especial admirer of Napoleon, whose campaigns he had thoroughly studied. Even the campaigns of Caesar he had found valuable and had gathered from them practical suggestions for his own campaigns. He is the hero of the Marne, the man who on September 9th marched his army between Von Bulow and Von Hausen's Saxons, drove the Prussian Guards into the marshes of St. Gond and forced both Prussians and Saxons into their first great retreat. Later his armies fought on the Yser while the British were battling at Ypres. During the battle of the Somme he was on the English right pressing to Peronne.

For a time he became Chief of the French Staff, until he was called into the field again to his great command. Foch was one of those French officers who had felt that war was sure to come, and had constantly urged that France should be kept in a state of preparedness. The appointment of General Foch to the Supreme Command was largely the result of American urgency.

General March, the American Chief of Staff, in one of his weekly announcements, stated: "One of the most striking things noticeable in the situation as it is shown on the western front is the supreme importance of having a single command. The acceptance of the principle of having a single command, which was advocated by the President of the United States and carried through under his constant pressure, is one of the most important single military things that has been done as far as the Allies are concerned. The unity of command which Germany has had from the start of the war has been a very important military asset, and we already see the supreme value of having that central command which now has been concentrated in General Foch."

General March, who had earlier been appointed Chief of Staff of the United States army, was sending a steady stream of American troops to Europe, a fact whose importance was well understood by the new Commander-in-Chief. On General March's promotion General Foch sent him the following message:

I hear with deep satisfaction of your promotion to the rank of General. I associate myself to the just pride which you must feel in evoking the names of your glorious predecessors, Grant and Sheridan. I convey to you my sincere congratulations and I am happy to see you assume permanently the huge task of Chief of Staff of the United States army which you are already performing in so brilliant a way.

General March replied:

Your message of congratulation upon my promotion to the grade of General Chief of Staff, United States army, was personally conveyed to me by General Vignal, French Military Attache. I appreciate deeply your most kindly greetings and in expressing my most sincere thanks, avail myself of the opportunity to assure you of every assistance and constant support which may lie in my power to aid you in the furtherance and successful accomplishment of your great task.

General Foch took command at a very critical time. The Germans had prepared the most formidable drive in the history of the war. They had gathered immense masses of munitions and supplies. Their great armies had been refitted and they were in hopes of a victory which would end the war. Their great offensive had many phases. It resulted in the development of three great salients, the first in Picardy and in the direction of Amiens along the Somme, which was launched on March 21st; the second on the Lys, which was launched on April 9th; and the third which is called the Oise-Marne salient, launched on May 27th.

Between the attacks which developed these salients there were also some unsuccessful attacks of almost equal power. On March 28th there was a desperate struggle to capture Arras, preceded by a bombardment as great as any during the whole offensive, but this attack was defeated with enormous losses to the German troops. A fourth phase of the German offensive took place on June 9th, on a front of twenty miles between Noyon and Montdidier, which gained a few miles at an enormous cost.

[Illustration: Map: Belgium and Eastern France, show the front from Ypres south to Rheims.] THE LAST DESPERATE DRIVES OF THE GERMANS

On July 15th came the last of the great offensives. It was a smash on a sixty-mile line from Chateau-Thierry up the Marne, around Rheims, and then east to a few miles west of the Argonne forest. This offensive at the start made a penetration of from three to five miles, but was held firmly and much of the gain lost, through the counter-attacks of the Allies. It was at this point that the American troops first began to be seriously felt, and it was at this point that General Foch took up the story, and began the great series of Allied drives which were to crush the German power. But there had been many days of great anxiety before the turn of the tide.

The objects of the German drives were doubtless more or less dependent upon their success. The first drive in Picardy, in the direction of Amiens had apparently as its object to drive a wedge between the French and British and the object was so nearly attained that only the heroic work of General Carey saved the Allies from disaster.

The Fifth British army, which had borne the brunt of the German attack, had found itself almost crushed by the sheer weight of numbers. The whole line was broken up and it seemed as if the road was open to Amiens. French reinforcements could not come up in time; bridges could not be blown up because the engineers were all killed. Orders came to General Carey at two o'clock in the morning, March 26th, to hold the gap. He at once proceeded to gather an extemporized army.

Every available man was rounded up, among others a body of American engineers. Laborers, sappers, raw recruits as well as soldiers of every arm. There were plenty of machine guns, but few men knew how to handle them. With this scratch army in temporary trenches, he lay for six days, and as Lloyd George said, "They held the German army and closed that gap on the way to Amiens."

During this fight General Carey rode along the lines shouting encouraging words to his hard-pressed men. He did not know whether he would get supplies of ammunition and provisions or not, but he stuck to it. Later on the regular troops arrived. The American engineers, who had been fighting, immediately returned to their base, and resumed work laying out trenches. General Rawlinson, Commander of the British army at that point, sent the commanding officer of the Americans engaged, the following letter:

The army Commander wishes to record officially his appreciation of the excellent work your regiment has done in assisting the British army to resist the enemy's powerful offensive during the last ten days. I fully realize that it has been largely due to your assistance that the enemy has been checked, and I rely on you to assist us still further during the few days that are still to come before I shall be able to relieve you in the line. I consider your work in the line to be greatly enhanced by the fact that for six weeks previous to your taking your place in the front line your men had been working at such high pressure erecting heavy bridges on the Somme. My best congratulations and warm thanks to all. RAWLINSON.

The demoralization of General Gough's Fifth army, which had thus left an eight-mile gap on the left, and which had been saved at that point by General Carey, permitted also the opening of another gap between its right wing and the Sixth French army. Here General Fayolle did with organized troops what Carey had done with his volunteers further north. The reason for the success of both Carey and Fayolle appears to have been that the German armies had been so thoroughly battered that they were unable to take advantage of the situation. Their regiments had been mixed up, their officers had been separated from their men in the rush of the attack, and before they could recover the opportunity was lost.

The first days of April saw the end of the drive toward Amiens. The Germans claimed the capture of ninety thousand prisoners and one thousand three hundred guns. They had penetrated into the Allies' territory in some points a distance of thirty-five miles. Their new line extended southwest from Arras beyond Albert to the west of Moreuil, which is about nine miles south of Amiens, and then went on west of Pierrepont and Montdidier, curving out at Noyon to the region of the Oise.

The first part of April was a comparative calm, when suddenly there developed the second drive of the German offensive. This drive was not so extensive as the first one, and its object appeared to be to break through the British forces in Flanders and reach the Channel ports. It resulted in a salient embracing an area about three hundred and twenty square miles, and the Germans claimed the capture of twenty thousand prisoners and two hundred guns. It was at this point that General Haig issued his famous order in which he described the British armies as standing with their "backs to the wall." It reads as follows:

Three weeks ago today the enemy began his terrific attacks against us on a fifty-mile front. Its objects are to separate us from the French, to take the Channel ports, and to destroy the British army. In spite of throwing already one hundred and six divisions into the battle and enduring the most reckless sacrifice of human life, he has yet made little progress toward his goals. We owe this to the determined fighting and self-sacrifice of our troops. Words fail me to express the admiration which I feel for the splendid resistance offered by all ranks of our army under the most trying circumstances. Many among us now are tired. To those I would say that victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest. The French army is moving rapidly and in great force to our support. There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retiring. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes, and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.

The British commander's order made the situation clear to the British people and to the world. The Germans had given up for the moment their attempt to divide the British and French armies, and were now attempting to seize the Channel ports, and the British were fighting with true British pluck with their "backs to the wall."

One can imagine the anxiety in the villages of Flanders where they watched the German advance and heard the terrible bombardment which was destroying their beautiful little cities, and threatening to put them under the dominion of the brutal conquerors of Belgium. Town after town fell to the enemy until at last the German attack began to weaken.

Counter-attacks on April 17th recaptured the villages of Wytschaete and Meteren. At other points German attacks were repulsed, and the attack on the Lys had reached its limits. It had not only failed to reach the coast but it had not even reached so far as to force the evacuation of Ypres or to endanger Arras. On the contrary the Germans had paid for their advance by such terrible losses that the ground that they had gained meant almost nothing. They then made, on April 30th, a vigorous endeavor to broaden the Amiens salient in the region of Hangard and Noyon. This attack also failed.

On May 27th Ludendorf made his next move. This was in the south, and was preceded by the most elaborate preparations over a forty-mile front. At first it met with great success. German troops from a point northwest of Rheims to Montdidier were moving apparently with the purpose of breaking the French lines and clearing the way for a drive to Paris. Consternation reigned among Allied observers as the Germans carried, apparently with ease, first the formidable Chemin des Dames, which was believed invulnerable, and then the south bank of the Aisne, with its great fortifications at Soissons.

Criticism began to appear of General Foch, who was thought at first to have been taken by surprise. The Germans were using four hundred thousand of their best troops, and the greatest force of tanks, machine guns and poison-gas projectors which they had ever gathered. They captured over forty-five thousand prisoners and took four hundred guns. They penetrated thirty miles and gained six hundred and fifty square miles of territory, but they were held on the River Marne.

It is now apparent that General Foch knew exactly what he was about. He might easily, by sending in reinforcements, have put up the same desperate resistance to the German offensive which they were now meeting in other sectors. But he preferred to retreat and lead the enemy on to a position which would make them vulnerable to the great counter-attack he was preparing for them on their flank. The Germans reached the Marne, but they paid for it in the terrible losses which they incurred.

The German line now from Montdidier, the extreme point of the Amiens salient, to Chateau-Thierry, the point of the new Marne salient, was in the form of a bow, and on June 9th General Ludendorf attempted to straighten out the line. His new attack was made on a twenty-mile front between Montdidier and Noyon in the direction of Compiegne. This was another terrific drive and at first gained about seven miles. French counter-attacks, however, not only held him in a vise but regained a distance of about one mile. This battle was probably the most disastrous one fought by the Germans during their whole offensive. Nearly four hundred thousand men were completely used up, without gaining the slightest strategic success.

Then followed a period without battles of major importance, during which General Foch by periodic assaults on the Lys, the Somme, on the flanks of Montdidier and Soissons, on the Chateau-Thierry sector and southwest of Rheims, captured many important positions and kept the enemy in constant anxiety.

During the great German offensives the Germans had lost at least five hundred thousand men, while the casualties of the Allies were barely one hundred and fifty thousand. The Germans also were beginning to lose their morale. They were finding that however great might be their efforts, however terrible might be their losses, they were still being constantly held. Their troops were now apparently made of inferior material, and included boys, old men and even convicts.

The system of making attacks by means of shock troops was producing the inevitable result. The shock regiments were composed of selected men, picked here and there, from the regular troops. Their selection had naturally weakened the regiments from which they were taken. After three months of great offensives these shock troops were now in great part destroyed, and the German lines were being held mainly by the inferior troops which had been left. Moreover, in other parts of the world, the allies of Germany were being beaten. In Italy and Albania and Macedonia there was danger.

The Germans prepared for one more effort. On June 18th they had made a costly attempt to carry Rheims. On July 15th they made their last drive. Ludendorf took almost a month for preparation. He gathered together seventy divisions and great masses of munitions, and then drove in from Chateau-Thierry on a sixty-mile line up on the Marne, and then east to the Argonne forests. His line made a sort of semicircle around Rheims and then pushed south to the east and west of that fortress.

Once again he had temporary success. West of Rheims he penetrated a distance of five miles, and on the first day, had crossed the Marne at Dormans, but was held sharply by the Americans east of Chateau-Thierry. On the second day he made further gains, but with appalling losses. On the 17th he was still struggling on with minor successes but on July 18th the French and Americans launched the great counter-offensive from Chateau-Thierry along a twenty-five mile front, between the Marne and the Aisne. The Germans everywhere began their retreat and the war tide had turned.

The German attack east of Rheims had been a failure from the start. The Allied forces retired about two miles and then held firm. The country there is flat and sandy and gave little shelter to the attacking forces which lost terribly. In this sector, too, there were many American troops, who behaved with distinguished bravery.

By this time nearly seven hundred thousand men of the American army were on the battle line. They had been fighting here and there among the French and English but on June 22d General March made the announcement that five divisions of these troops had been transferred to the direct command of General Pershing as a nucleus for an American army.

In glancing back at the great German drives which have now been described, one is impressed by the terrific character of the fighting. This struggle undoubtedly was the greatest exertion of military power in the history of the world. Never before had such masses of munitions been used; never before had scientific knowledge been so drawn on in the service of war. Thousands of airplanes were patrolling the air, sometimes scouting, sometimes dropping bombs on hostile troops or on hostile stores, sometimes flying low, firing their machine guns into the faces of marching troops. Thousands upon thousands of great guns were sending enormous projectiles, which made great pits wherever they fell. Swarms of machine guns were pouring their bullets like water from a hose upon the charging soldiers.

One of the most noticeable artillery developments was the long-range gun which off and on during this period was bombarding Paris. This bombardment began on March 23d, when the nearest German line was more than sixty-two miles away. For a time the story was regarded as pure fiction, but it was soon established that the great nine-inch shells which were dropping into the city every twenty minutes came from the forests of St. Gobain, seven miles back of the French trenches near Laon, and about seventy-five miles from Paris. This was another of those futile bits of frightfulness in which the Germans reveled. Military advantage gained by such a gun was almost nothing, and the expense of every shot was out of all proportion to the damage inflicted. It only roused intense indignation and stirred the Allies to greater determination. The first day's casualties in Paris were ten killed and fifteen wounded. By the next day one would not have been able to tell from the Paris streets that such a bombardment was going on at all. The subway and surface cars were running, the streets were thronged and traffic was going on as usual. About two dozen shells were thrown into Paris every day, mainly in the Montmartre district, in a radius of about a mile. This seemed to show that the gun was immovable.

On March 29th, however, a shell struck the church of St. Gervais during the Good Friday service, killing seventy-five persons and wounding ninety. Fifty-four of those killed were women. The church had been struck at the moment of the Elevation of the Host. This outrage aroused special indignation, and Pope Benedict sent a protest to Berlin.

An examination of exploded shells indicated that the new German gun was less than nine inches in caliber, and that the projectiles, which weighed about two hundred pounds, contained two charges, in two chambers connected by a fuse which often exploded more than a minute apart. It took three minutes for each shell to travel to Paris and it was estimated that such a shell rose to a height of twenty miles from the earth. Three of these guns were used. One of these guns exploded on March 29th, killing a German lieutenant and nine men. The Kaiser was present when the gun was first used. It was said by American scientists that seismographs in the United States felt the shock of each discharge. On April 9th French aviators discovered the location of the new guns, and French artillery began to drop enormous shells weighing half a ton each near the German monsters. A few days later a French shell fell on the barrel of one of these guns and put it out of commission. Great craters were made around the other, interfering with its use, and toward the end of the period it was only occasionally that the remaining gun was fired, and no great damage resulted.

Another feature of the great German drives was the tremendous destruction that accompanied them. Not only were churches, public buildings, and private houses throughout almost the whole district turned into ruins, but the very ground itself was plowed up into craters and shell holes, and the trees smashed into mere splinters. During the whole campaign poison gas of various kinds was used in immense quantities, and it was constantly necessary for the troops to wear gas masks. Sometimes after a town had been evacuated by the enemy it was so filled with gas that it was impossible for victorious troops to enter. One of the fiercest bombardments was that directed against the Portuguese during the fighting along the Lys. The enemy made a special attempt to crush the Portuguese contingent which behaved with the utmost gallantry.

It was the season of the year when the orchards were covered with blossoms and the fields with flowers, but the horrors of war destroyed the beauty of the spring. In these battles men fought until they were completely exhausted and one could see troops staggering as they walked and leaning on each other from pure exhaustion.

These were days when wonders were performed by the Medical Departments of the Allied armies, and the work of the Red Cross was almost as important as the work of the soldiers. Relief for the wounded had to be undertaken and carried on a mammoth scale. Many of the doctors, nurses, orderlies and ambulance men lost their lives while making efforts to rescue the wounded.

These were days when the German leaders were filled with the pride of victory. They were talking now about a hard German peace. On June 17th the German Kaiser celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his accession to the throne. He talked no more of a war of self-defense, but declared the war to be the struggle of two world views wrestling with each other. "Either German principles of right, freedom, honor and morality must be upheld, or Anglo-Saxon principles with their idolatry of Mammon must be victorious." He sent congratulations to Field Marshal von Hindenburg, to General Ludendorf and to the Crown Prince. Von Hindenburg assured the Kaiser of the unswerving loyalty until death of Germany's sons at the front, and concluded "May our old motto 'Forward with God for King and Fatherland, for Kaiser and Empire' result in many years of peace being granted to your Majesty after our victorious return home."

But the terrific attacks which the German commanders directed upon the Americans at Chateau-Thierry and at other points upon the southern lines show well that they knew that there was another danger rising to confront them; that during their great drives a million and a half American soldiers had been learning the art of war, and that every moment of delay meant a new danger. By the end of this period the Americans had arrived.

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XLII. CHATEAU-THIERRY, FIELD OF GLORY

Nowhere in American history may be found a more glorious record than that which crowned with laurel the American arms at Chateau-Thierry. Here the American Marines and divisions comprising both volunteers and selected soldiers, were thrown before the German tide of invasion like a huge khaki-colored breakwater. Germany knew that a test of its empire had come. To break the wall of American might it threw into the van of the attack the Prussian Guard backed by the most formidable troops of the German and Austrian empires. The object was to put the fear of the Hun into the hearts of the Yankees, to overwhelm them, to drive straight through them as the prow of a battleship shears through a heavy sea. If America could be defeated, Germany's way to a speedy victory was at hand. If America held--well, that way lay disaster.

And the Americans held. Not only did they hold but they counter-attacked with such bloody consequences to the German army that Marshal Foch, seizing the psychological moment for his carefully prepared counter-offensive, gave the word for a general attack.

With Chateau-Thierry and the Marne as a hinge, the clamp of the Allies closed upon the defeated Germans. From Switzerland to the North Sea the drive went forward, operating as huge pincers cutting like chilled steel through the Hindenburg and the Kriemhild lines. It was the beginning of autocracy's end, the end of Der Tag of which Germany had dreamed.

The matchless Marines and the other American troops suffered a loss that staggered America. It was a loss, however, that was well worth while. The heroic young Americans who held the might of Germany helpless and finally rolled them back defeated from the field of battle, and who paid for that victory with their lives, made certain the speedy end of the world's bloodiest war.

The story of the American army's effective operations in France from Cantigny to the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient, is one long record of victories. To the glory of American arms must be recorded the fact that at no time and at no place in the World War did the American forces retreat before the German hosts.

In the latter days of May, 1918, the Allied forces in France seemed near defeat. The Germans were steadily driving toward Paris. They had swept over the Chemin des Dames and the papers from day to day were chronicling wonderful successes. The Chemin des Dames had been regarded as impregnable, but the Germans passed it apparently without the slightest difficulty. They were advancing on a forty-mile front and on May 28th had reached the Aisne, with the French and British steadily falling back. The anxiety of the Allies throughout the world was indescribable. This was the great German "Victory Drive" and each day registered a new Allied defeat. Newspaper headlines were almost despairing.

On May 29th, however, in quiet type, under great headlines announcing a German gain of ten miles in which the Germans had taken twenty-five thousand prisoners and crossed two rivers, had captured Soissons, and were threatening Rheims, there appeared in American papers a quiet little despatch from General Pershing. It read as follows:

"This morning in Picardy our troops attacked on a front of one and one-fourth miles, advanced our lines, and captured the village of Cantigny. We took two hundred prisoners, and inflicted on the enemy severe losses in killed and wounded. Our casualties were relatively small. Hostile counter-attacks broke down under our fire." This was the first American offensive.

The American troops had now been in Europe almost a year. At first but a small force, they had been greeted in Paris and in London with tremendous enthusiasm. Up to this point they had done little or nothing, but the small force which passed through Paris in the summer of 1917 had been growing steadily. By this time the American army numbered more than eight hundred thousand men. They had been getting ready; in camps far behind the lines they had been trained, not only by their own officers, but by some of the greatest experts in the French and the British armies. Thousands of officers and men who, but a few months before, had been busily engaged in civilian pursuits, had now learned something of the art of war. They had been supplied with a splendid equipment, with great guns and with all the modern requirements of an up-to-date army.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright Committee on Public Information. From Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. CHATEAU-THIERRY; WHERE AMERICA INFLICTED A SECOND GETTYSBURG ON GERMANY Poilus and Yanks in the foreground looking over the roofs of Chateau-Thierry, where, in the middle of July in the last year of the war, the Americans at a crucial moment stopped the German advance in the second battle of the Marne. After that Germany never went forward on any field of battle again.

[Illustration: Photograph] French Official Photograph by International Film Service. WIPING OUT THE ST. MIHIEL SALIENT The first major exploit carried out independently by the American army was the obliteration of the St. Mihiel salient, which had been in German hands since 1914, a spectacular achievement, carried out in two days with great brilliance and precision. The picture shows U. S. troops following the Germans through Thiaucourt, one of the towns on the salient.

For some months, here and there, on the French and British lines small detachments of American troops flanked on both sides by the Allied forces, had been learning the art of war. Here and there they had been under fire. At Cantigny itself they had resisted attack. On May 27th General Pershing had reported "In Picardy, after violent artillery preparations, hostile infantry detachments succeeded in penetrating our advance positions in two points. Our troops counter-attacked, completely expelling the enemy and entering his lines." They had also been fighting that day in the Woevre sector where a raiding party had been repulsed. There had been other skirmishes, too, in which many Americans had won honors both from Great Britain and France. But the attack at Cantigny was the first distinct American advance.

The Americans penetrated the German positions to the depth of nearly a mile. Their artillery completely smothered the Germans, and its whirr could be heard for many miles in the rear. Twelve French tanks supported the American infantry. The artillery preparation lasted for one hour, and then the lines of Americans went over the top. A strong unit of flame throwers and engineers aided the Americans. The American barrage moved forward a hundred yards in two minutes and then a hundred yards in four minutes. The infantry followed with clock-like precision. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting occurred in Cantigny, which contained a large tunnel and a number of caves. The Americans hurled hand grenades like baseballs into these shelters.

The attack had been carefully planned and was rehearsed by the infantry with the tanks. In every detail it was under the direction of the Superior French Command, to whom much of the credit for its success was due. The news of the American success created general satisfaction among the French and English troops. The operation, of course, was not one of the very greatest importance. It was a sort of an experiment, but coming as it did, in the middle of the great German Drive, it was ominous. America had arrived.

On May 30th General Pershing announced the complete repulse of further enemy attacks from the new American positions near Cantigny. This time he says: "there was considerable shelling with gas, but the results obtained were very small. The attempt was a complete failure. Our casualties were very light. We have consolidated our positions."

The London Evening News commenting on this fact says: "Bravo the young Americans! Nothing in today's battle narrative from the front is more exhilarating than the account of their fight at Cantigny. It was clean cut from beginning to end, like one of their countrymen's short stories, and the short story of Cantigny is going to expand into a full-length novel which will write the doom of the Kaiser and Kaiserism. Cantigny will one day be repeated a thousand fold."

The Germans, in reporting this fight, avoided mention of the fact that the operation had been conducted by American troops. This seemed to indicate that they feared the moral effect of such an admission in Germany. Up to this time, with the exception of small brigades, the American army had been held as a reserve. After the Cantigny fight they were hurried to the front. The main point to which they were sent at first was Chateau-Thierry, north of the Marne, the nearest point to Paris reached by the enemy. There, at the very critical point of the great German Drive, they not only checked the enemy but, by a dashing attack, threw him back.

This may be said to be the turning point in the whole war. It not only stopped the German Drive at this point, but it gave new courage to the Allies and took the heart out of the Germans. The troops were rushed to the battle front at Thierry, arriving on Saturday, June 1st. They entered the battle enthusiastically, almost immediately after they had arrived. A despatch from Picardy says: "On their way to the battle lines they were cheered by the crowds in the villages through which they passed; their victorious stand with their gallant French Allies, so soon after entering the line, has electrified all France."

General Pershing's terse account of what happened reads as follows: "In the fighting northwest of Chateau-Thierry our troops broke up an attempt of the enemy to advance to the south through Veuilly Woods, and by a counter-attack drove him back to the north of the woods."

The American troops had gone, into the action only an hour or so after their arrival on the banks of the River Marne. Scarcely had they alighted from their motor trucks when they were ordered into Chateau-Thierry with a battalion of French-Colonial troops. The enemy were launching a savage drive, and at first succeeded in driving the Americans out of the woods of Veuilly-la-Poterie. But the Americans at once counter-attacked, driving their opponents from their position, and regaining possession of the woods. On the same day the Germans launched an attack of shock troops, attempting to gain a passage across the Marne at Jaulgonne. They obtained a footing on the southern bank but another American counter-attack forced them back across the river. The American soldiers were fighting with wonderful spirit, and the French papers were filled with praise of their work. As they came up to go into the line they were singing, and they charged, cheering.

[Illustration: Map: Paris is in Southwest corner. Amiens in the Northwest corner and Rheims is on the East side.] WHERE THE "YANKS" FOUGHT THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE

On June 6th came a climax of the American fighting. It was the attack of the American Marines in the direction of Torcy. This gained more than two miles over a two and a half mile front. On the next day the advance continued over a front of nearly six miles, and during the night the Americans captured Bouresches and entered Torcy.

The fighting at Torcy was characteristically American; the Marines advanced yelling like Indians, using bayonet and rifle. From Torcy the Marines set forward and took strong ground on either side of Belleau Wood. They had reached all the objectives and pushed beyond them. The Germans were on the run, and surrendering right and left to the Americans. The attack by the Marines forestalled an attack by the enemy. German reports now noticed the Americans. Their report on June 9th referring to this attack, says: "Americans who attempted to attack northwest of Chateau-Thierry were driven back beyond their positions of departure with heavy losses and prisoners were captured." The Americans had lost heavily, and the hospitals were filled with their wounded, but the thorough American organization was giving the wounded every care, and the Americans were still moving forward.

On June the 10th, another attack was made on the German lines in the Belleau Wood, which penetrated for about two-thirds of a mile, leaving the Germans in possession of only the northern fringe of the Wood. On June 11th the official statement of the French War Office declared: "South of the Ourcq River the American troops this morning brilliantly captured Belleau Wood, and took three hundred prisoners."

Belleau Wood had been considered an almost impregnable position, but the valiant fighting of the American Marines had carried them past it. Fighting here was not merely a series of exciting engagements, but an important action, which may have turned, and very probably did turn, the whole tide of battle. The Americans put three German divisions out of business, and caused a change in the German plans, by preventing an extending movement to Meaux, which was the German objective.

From this time on the confidence shown in all reports from the Allies in France was strengthened. They had found that the Americans were all that they had hoped for, and they were sure now that they could hold on until the full American strength could be brought to bear. General Pershing himself was full of optimism and his fine example stimulated his troops. From this time on all dispatches show that the Americans were more and more getting in the game. Repeated German attacks against their forces, on the Belleau-Bouresches line were repulsed, in spite of the fact that crack German divisions, who had been picked especially to punish them, had been found on their front. It was later found that these divisions had been suddenly ordered to that point "in order to prevent at all costs the Americans being able to achieve success." The German High Command was apparently anxious to prevent American success from stimulating the morale of the Allied army.

During the rest of the summer the Americans took an active part in Foch's great offensive which ultimately crushed the German army. They were heard from at widely divergent points: in Alsace, about Chateau-Thierry, at Montdidier, and in the British lines.

Most of the fighting during June indicated a slow advance at Chateau-Thierry. On June 19th the Americans crossed the Marne, near that city. But Chateau-Thierry itself was not captured until the middle of July. On June 29th they participated in a raid near Montdidier and on July 2d captured Vaux. In the week of July 4th news came of American success in the Vosges. On July 18th they advanced close to Soissons. On August 3d the Americans captured Fismes, and then for nearly a month made little actual progress, though bitter fighting went on in the country around Fismes and near Soissons. On August 29th after a furious battle they captured the plain of Juvigny, north of Soissons.

In all these battles the Americans were doing their part at difficult points, during the great French drive which was clearing out the Marne salient.

On the 12th of September, the first American army, assisted by certain French units, and under the direct command of General Pershing, launched an attack against the St. Mihiel salient. This was the most important operation of the American troops in the Great War. It was a complete success. September 12th was the fourth anniversary of the establishment of the salient, which reached out from the German line in the direction of Verdun.

The attack was fighting on a grand scale, and that such an operation should be intrusted to the American army indicated an entirely new phase of America's participation in the war. It was preceded by a barrage lasting four hours. The German troops, though probably suspecting that such an attack was coming, were nevertheless surprised. The American attack was on the southern leg of the salient along a distance of twelve miles. The French attacked on the western side from a front of eight miles. Each attack was eminently successful. On the southern front the Americans reached their first objectives at some points an hour ahead of schedule time. Thiaucourt was captured early in the drive; later the Americans gained possession of Nonsard, Pannes, and Bouillonville.

[Illustration: Map: Verdun in the Northwest corner, St. Mihiel in Southwest, Metz in the Northeast] THE GREAT ST. MIHIEL SALIENT ESTABLISHED IN 1914 WAS OBLITERATED BY THE AMERICANS IN SEPTEMBER, 1918

At first the resistance of the Germans, without being tame, was not actually stiff, and the doughboys were able to sweep toward the second line of any position without difficulty. There, however, the Germans began to defend themselves sharply, which delayed, but did not stop the American advance. The attack was made in two waves and carried the American forces a distance of about five miles.

The next day the attack continued, and General Pershing's dispatch stated: "In the St. Mihiel sector we have achieved further successes. The junction of our troops advancing from the south of the sector with those advancing from the west has given us possession of the whole salient to points twelve miles northeast of St. Mihiel, and has resulted in the capture of many prisoners. Forced back by our steady advance the enemy is retiring, and is destroying large quantities of material as he goes. The number of prisoners counted has risen to 13,300. Our line now includes Herbeville, Thillet, Hattonville, St. Benoit, Xammes, Jaulny, Thiaucourt and Vieville."

The salient was wiped out, and the St. Mihiel front reduced from forty to twenty miles. Secretary Newton D. Baker, accompanied by Generals Pershing and Petain, visited St. Mihiel a few hours after its capture. They walked through the streets of the city, and heard many stories of the long German occupation.

As the attack proceeded it became more and more evident that the German defense had lost heart. Thousands of them surrendered, declaring they did not care to fight any more. It was also noted that a surprisingly large number of officers were among those captured. The only serious resistance was to the attack south of Fresnes, which was obviously for the purpose of protecting the German retreat.

The first American regiment stationed in the St. Mihiel sector was the 370th Infantry, formerly the Eighth Illinois, a Negro regiment officered entirely by soldiers of that race. This regiment was one of the three that occupied a sector at Verdun when a penetration there by the Germans would have been disastrous to the Allied cause.

The St. Mihiel salient had no great military value to the Germans, and was probably held by them from a sentimental motive. It represented the desperate efforts made by the Crown Prince in his early drive against Verdun. Its destruction, however, was of great importance to the French. It was not only a removal of a menace to the French citizens of Verdun, but it released the French armies at that point for active offensive operation. It also liberated the railway line from Verdun to Nancy, which was of the utmost value to General Pershing and the French armies to his left. It also later developed that the French command regarded the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient as the corner stone of a great encircling movement aimed at the German fortress of Metz. The moral effect of its reduction was also notable as it was one more sign of the weakening of the Germans.

[Illustration: Map: Verdun in the Northwest corner, St. Mihiel in Southwest, Metz in the Northeast] HOW THE ST. MIHIEL SALIENT LOOKED SHORTLY AFTER THE ASSAULT BEGAN The map indicates the beginning of the great American drive, assisted by the French, in 1918, which resulted in the wiping out of the huge salient. The Americans attacked on the south, the French in the north; dotted lines indicate the advance in the first five hours.

History usually concerns itself with the deeds of humanity in the mass and with the leaders of these masses. It is eminently fitting, however, that this history should record the impressions made upon the mind of an American soldier by a modern battle. The United States Government singled out of all the letters received from the front, that written by Major Robert L. Denig, of Philadelphia, to his wife. The letter is now part of the archives of the War Department, and occupies the highest place of literary honor in the records of the Marines. It describes the operation against the Germans on the Marne on July 18th, 1918. This was the counter-attack led by the Marines which broke the back of the German invasion. Major Denig wrote:

The day before we left for this big push we had a most interesting fight between a fleet of German planes and a French observation balloon, right over our heads. We saw five planes circle over our town, then put on, what we thought afterwards, a sham fight. One of them, after many fancy stunts, headed right for the balloon. They were all painted with our colors except one. This one went near the balloon. One kept right on. The other four shot the balloon up with incendiary bullets. The observers jumped into their parachutes just as the outfit went up in a mass of flame.

The next day we took our positions at various places to wait for camions that were to take us somewhere in France, when or for what purpose we did not know. Wass passed me at the head of his company--we made a date for a party on our next leave. He was looking fine and was as happy as could be. Then Hunt, Keyser and a heap of others went by. I have the battalion and Holcomb the regiment. Our turn to en-buss did not come until near midnight.

We at last got under way after a few big "sea bags" had hit nearby. Wilmer and I led in a touring car. We went at a good clip and nearly got ditched in a couple of new shell holes. Shells were falling fast by now, and as the tenth truck went under the bridge a big one landed near with a crash, and wounded the two drivers, killed two marines and wounded five more. We did not know it at the time, and did not notice anything wrong till we came to a crossroad when we found we had only eleven cars all told. We found the rest of the convoy after a hunt, but even then were not told of the loss, and did not find it out until the next day.

We were finally, after twelve hours' ride, dumped in a big field and after a few hours' rest started our march. It was hot as Hades and we had had nothing to eat since the day before. We at last entered a forest; troops seemed to converge on it from all points. We marched some six miles in the forest, a finer one I have never seen--deer would scamper ahead and we could have eaten one raw. At 10 that night without food, we lay down in a pouring rain to sleep. Troops of all kinds passed us in the night--a shadowy stream, over a half-million men. Some French officers told us that they had never seen such concentration since Verdun, if then.

The next day, the 18th of July, we marched ahead through a jam of troops, trucks, etc., and came at last to a ration dump where we fell to and ate our heads off for the first time in nearly two days. When we left there, the men had bread stuck on their bayonets. I lugged a ham. All were loaded down.

Here I passed one of Wass' lieutenants with his hand wounded. He was pleased as Punch and told us the drive was on, the first we knew of it. I then passed a few men of Hunt's company, bringing prisoners to the rear. They had a colonel and his staff. They were well dressed, cleaned and polished, but mighty glum looking.

We finally stopped at the far end of the forest near a dressing station, where Holcomb again took command. This station had been a big fine stone farm but was now a complete ruin--wounded and dead lay all about. Joe Murray came by with his head all done up--his helmet had saved him. The lines had gone on ahead so we were quite safe. Had a fine aero battle right over us. The stunts that those planes did cannot be described by me.

Late in the afternoon we advanced again. Our route lay over an open field covered with dead.

We lay down on a hillside for the night near some captured German guns, and until dark I watched the cavalry--some four thousand, come up and take positions.

At 3.30 the next morning Sitz woke me up and said we were to attack. The regiment was soon under way and we picked our way under cover of a gas infested valley to a town where we got our final instructions and left our packs. I wished Sumner good luck and parted.

We formed up in a sunken road on two sides of a valley that was perpendicular to the enemy's front; Hughes right, Holcomb left, Sibley support. We now began to get a few wounded; one man with ashen face came charging to the rear with shell shock. He shook all over, foamed at the mouth, could not speak. I put him under a tent, and he acted as if he had a fit.

I heard Overton call to one of his friends to send a certain pin to his mother if he should get hit.

At 8.30 we jumped off with a line of tanks in the lead. For two "kilos" the four lines of Marines were as straight as a die, and their advance over the open plain in the bright sunlight was a picture I shall never forget. The fire got hotter and hotter, men fell, bullets sung, shells whizzed-banged and the dust of battle got thick. Overton was hit by a big piece of shell and fell. Afterwards I heard he was hit in the heart, so his death was without pain. He was buried that night and the pin found.

A man near me was cut in two. Others when hit would stand, it seemed, an hour, then fall in a heap. I yelled to Wilmer that each gun in the barrage worked from right to left, then a rabbit ran ahead and I watched him wondering if he would get hit. Good rabbit--it took my mind off the carnage. Looked for Hughes way over to the right; told Wilmer that I had a hundred dollars and be sure to get it. You think all kinds of things.

About sixty Germans jumped out of a trench and tried to surrender, but their machine guns opened up, we fired back, they ran and our left company after them. That made a gap that had to be filled, so Sibley advanced one of his to do the job, then a shell lit in a machine-gun crew of ours and cleaned it out completely.

At 10.30 we dug in--the attack just died out. I found a hole or old trench and when I was flat on my back I got some protection. Holcomb was next to me; Wilmer some way off. We then tried to get reports. Two companies we never could get in touch with. Lloyd came in and reported he was holding some trenches near a mill with six men. Cates, with his trousers blown off, said he had sixteen men of various companies; another officer on the right reported he had and could see forty men, all told. That, with the headquarters, was all we could find out about the battalion of nearly 800. Of the twenty company officers who went in, three came out, and one, Cates, was slightly wounded.

From then on to about 8 P. M. life was a chance and mighty uncomfortable. It was hot as a furnace, no water, and they had our range to a "T." Three men lying in a shallow trench near me were blown to bits.

I went to the left of the line and found eight wounded men in a shell hole. I went back to Cates' hole and three shells landed near them. We thought they were killed, but they were not hit. You could hear men calling for help in the wheat fields. Their cries would get weaker and weaker and die out. The German planes were thick in the air; they were in groups of from three to twenty. They would look us over and then we would get a pounding. One of our planes got shot down; he fell about a thousand feet, like an arrow, and hit in the field back of us. The tank exploded and nothing was left.

We had a machine gun officer with us and at six a runner came up and reported that Sumner was killed. He commanded the machine-gun company with us. He was hit early in the fight by a bullet, I hear; I can get no details. At the start he remarked: "This looks easy--they do not seem to have much art." Hughes' headquarters were all shot up. Turner lost a leg.

Well, we just lay there all through the hot afternoon.

It was great--a shell would land near by and you would bounce in your hole.

As twilight came, we sent out water parties for the relief of the wounded. Then we wondered if we would get relieved. At 9 o'clock we got a message congratulating us and saying the Algerians would take over at midnight. We then began to collect our wounded. Some had been evacuated during the day, but at that, we soon had about twenty on the field near us. A man who had been blinded wanted me to hold his hand. Another, wounded in the back, wanted his head patted, and so it went; one man got up on his hands and knees. I asked him what he wanted. He said, "Look at the full moon," then fell dead. I had him buried, and all the rest I could find. All the time bullets sung and we prayed that shelling would not start until we had our wounded on top.

The Algerians came up at midnight and we pushed out. They went over at daybreak and got all shot up. We made the relief under German flares and the light from a burning town.

We went out as we came, through the gulley and town, the latter by now all in ruins. The place was full of gas, so we had to wear our masks. We pushed on to the forest and fell down in our tracks and slept all day. That afternoon a German plane got a balloon and the observer jumped and landed in a high tree. It was some job getting him down. The wind came up and we had to dodge falling trees and branches. As it was, we lost-- two killed and one wounded from that cause.

That night the Germans shelled us and got three killed and seventeen wounded. We moved a bit further back to the crossroad and after burying a few Germans, some of whom showed signs of having been wounded before, we settled down to a short stay.

It looked like rain, and so Wilmer and I went to an old dressing station to salvage some cover. We collected a lot of bloody shelter halves and ponchos that had been tied to poles to make stretchers, and were about to go, when we stopped to look at a new grave. A rude cross made of two slats from a box had written on it:

"Lester S. Wass, Captain U. S. Marines, July 18, 1918"

The old crowd at St. Nazaire and Bordeaux, Wass and Sumner killed, Baston and Hunt wounded, the latter on the 18th, a clean wound, I hear, through the left shoulder. We then moved further to the rear and camped for the night. Dunlap came to look us over. His car was driven by a sailor who got out to talk to a few of the marines, when one of the latter yelled out, "Hey, fellows! Anyone want to see a real live gob, right this way." The gob held a regular reception. A carrier pigeon perched on a tree with a message. We decided to shoot him. It was then quite dark, so the shot missed. I then heard the following as I tried to sleep: "Hell; he only turned around;" "Send up a flare;" "Call for a barrage," etc. The next day further to the rear still, a Ford was towed by with its front wheels on a truck.

We are now back in a town for some rest and to lick our wounds.

As I rode down the battalion, where once companies 250 strong used to march, now you see fifty men, with a kid second lieutenant in command; one company commander is not yet twenty-one.

After the last attack I cashed in the gold you gave me and sent it home along with my back pay. I have no idea of being "bumped off" with money on my person, as if you fall into the enemy's hands you are first robbed then buried perhaps, but the first is sure.

Baston, the lieutenant that went to Quantico with father and myself, and of whom father took some pictures, was wounded in both legs in the Bois de Belleau. He nearly lost his legs, I am told, but is coming out O. K. Hunt was wounded in the last attack, got his wounds fixed up and went back again till he had to be sent out. Coffenburg was hit in the hand,--all near him were killed. Talbot was hit twice, but is about again. That accounts for all the officers in the company that I brought over. In the first fight 103 of the men in that outfit were killed or wounded. The second fight must have about cleaned out the old crowd.

The tanks, as they crushed their way through the wet, gray forest looked to me like beasts of the pre-stone age.

In the afternoon as I lay on my back in a hole that I dug deeper, the dark gray German planes with their sinister black crosses, looked like Death hovering above. They were for many. Sumner, for one. He was always saying, "Denig, let's go ashore!" Then here was Wass, whom I usually took dinner with--dead, too. Sumner, Wass, Baston and Hunt--the old crowd that stuck together; two dead, one may never be any good any more; Hunt, I hope, will be as good as ever.

The officers mentioned in Major Denig's letter, with their addresses and next of kin, are:

Lieutenant Colonel Berton W. Sibley; Harriet E. Sibley, mother; Essex Junction, Vt.

First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates; Mrs. Willis J. Cates, mother; Tiptonville. Tenn.

First Lieutenant Horace Talbot, no next of kin; Woonsocket, R.I.

Captain Arthur H. Turner; Charles S. Turner, father, 188 West River St., Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Captain Bailey Metcalf Coffenberg; Mrs. Elizabeth Coffenberg, 30 Jackson St., Staten Island, N. Y.

Captain Albert Preston Baston; Mrs. Ora Z. Baston, mother; Pleasant Avenue, St. Louis Park, Minn.

Captain Lester Sherwood Wass; L. A. Wass, father. Gloucester, Mass.

Captain Allen M. Sumner; Mrs. Mary M. Sumner, wife; 1824 S Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Holcomb; Mrs. Thomas Holcomb, wife, 1535 New Hampshire Avenue, Washington, D. C.

Second Lieutenant John Laury Hunt; Etta Newman, sister; Gillet, Texas.

Captain Walter H. Sitz; Emil H. Sitz, father; Davenport, Iowa.

First Lieutenant John W. Overton, son of J. M. Overton, 901 Stahlman Building, Nashville, Tenn.

Major Egbert T. Lloyd; Mrs. E. T. Lloyd, wife; 4900 Cedar Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa.

Major Ralph S. Keyser; Charles E. Keyser, father; Thoroughfare, Va.

Captain Pere Wilmer; Mrs. Alice Emory Wilmer, mother; Centreville, Md.

Lieutenant Colonel John A. Hughes; Mrs. A. J. Hughes, wife, care of Rear-Admiral William Parks, Post Office Building, Philadelphia, Pa.

Lieutenant Overton was the famous Yale athlete, the intercollegiate one-mile champion.

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XLIII. ENGLAND AND FRANCE STRIKE IN THE NORTH

Up to July 18, 1918, the Allied armies in France had been steadily on the defensive, but on that date the tide turned. General Foch, who had been yielding territory for several months in the great German drives, now assumed the offensive himself and began the series of great drives which was to crush the German power and drive the enemy in defeat headlong from France.

The first of these great blows was the one which began with the appearance of the Americans at Chateau-Thierry. The Germans had formed a huge salient whose eastern extremity lay near Rheims, and its western extremity west of Soissons. It was like a great pocket reaching down in the direction of Paris from those two points. Against this salient the French and Americans had directed a tremendous thrust. The Germans resisted with desperation. It was the turning point of the war, but they were compelled to yield. Town after town was regained by the French and American troops, until, by August 5th, the Crown Prince had been driven from the Marne to the Vesle, and the salient obliterated.

On August 7th General Foch delivered his second blow. During the fighting on the Marne it had often been wondered by those who were observing the great French general's strategy, why the British seemed to make no move. Occasionally there had been reports of minor assaults, either on the Lys salient, far north, or on the Somme and Montdidier sectors, lying between. It had not been noticed that in these minor assaults the English had been obtaining positions of strategic importance, and that they were steadily getting ready for an English offensive.

But their time had now come, and on August 7th the armies of Sir Douglas Haig began an attack against the armies of Prince Rupprecht on the Lys salient. This was followed, on August 8th, by another still greater Allied advance in Picardy, between Albert and Montdidier.

Both of these attacks met with notable success. On the Lys salient the English penetrated a distance of one thousand yards over a four-mile front, and followed up this advance by persistent attacks which led to the reoccupation, on August 19th, of Merville, and on August 31st, of Mont Kemmel. On this front the Germans had weakened their strength by withdrawing troops to aid other parts of their front, and the British were constantly taking advantage of this weakening.

The Germans had found this salient a failure. It had failed to attain its objective, the flanking of the Lens line south. They therefore were steadily retreating without any intention other than to extricate themselves from positions of no value, in the most economical manner. The quick operations of the British, however, led to the capture of many prisoners and guns.

The English offensive in Picardy was a more serious matter, and from some points of view was the greatest offensive in the war. The Allied front had been prepared for offensive operations by minor attacks which had secured for the Allied troops dominating positions. The attack was a surprise attack. The Germans were expecting local attacks but not a movement of this magnitude. The surprise was increased because it was made through a heavy mist which prevented observation. It was preceded by tremendous artillery fire which lasted for four minutes, and which was followed by the charge of infantry and tanks. The German artillery hardly replied at all, and only the resistance of a few rifles and machine guns fired vaguely through the fog met the charging troops.

The attack was on a twenty-five-mile front and on the first day gained seven miles, captured seven thousand men and a hundred guns. On the following day there was an advance of about five miles and seventeen thousand more prisoners were captured.

The Germans were now retiring in great haste, blowing up ammunition dumps and abandoning an enormous quantity of stores of all kinds. The English were using cavalry and airplanes, which were flying low over the field and throwing the German troops into confusion. Over three hundred guns, including many of heavy caliber, were captured. The ground had been plowed up by shells and thousands of bodies of men and horses were found lying where they fell. A feature of the attack was the swift whippet tanks which advanced far ahead of the infantry lines.

[Illustration: Photograph] Copyright Western Newspaper Union British Official Photo FORWARD WITH THE TANKS AGAINST BAPAUME This picture gives an excellent idea of the method of combined tank and infantry attack. Behind a low ridge among artillery positions they are forming their line. A company falls in behind one of the waddling monsters that will break a way for it through all obstacles, while on both sides of the road other detachments await the arrival of the tank they are to accompany.

[Illustration: Photograph: Line of marching soldiers stretching back to the horizon. Several men resting in the foreground.] Canadian Official Photograph. From Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. CANADIANS IN THE GREAT CAMBRAI DRIVE One of the busy scenes just preceding the victorious attack by the Canadians upon Cambrai. In the center can be seen captured Germans carrying in one of their wounded comrades.

In the French official report occurred the following statement:

"The brilliant operation which we, in concert with British troops, executed yesterday has been a surprise for the enemy. As occurred in the offensive of July 18th the soldiers of General Debeney have captured enemy soldiers engaged in the peaceful pursuit of harvesting the fields behind the German lines."

By August 10th the Germans had fallen back to a line running through Chaulnes and Roye. Montdidier had been captured, and eleven German divisions had been smashed. By August 12th the number of prisoners was 40,000, and by the 18th the Allied front was almost in the same line as it was in the summer of 1916, before the battle of the Somme.

The next step was to capture Bapaume and Peronne. The French, on August 19th, captured the Lassigny Massif, and continued to press on their attack. Noyon fell on the 29th, Roye on the 27th, Chaulnes on the 29th. Further north the British had captured Albert, and on the 29th occupied Bapaume. On September 1st they took Peronne with two thousand prisoners.

The advance still continued, and the German weakness was becoming more and more apparent. On September 6th the whole Allied line swept forward, with an average penetration of eight miles. Chauny was captured and the fortress of Ham. On September 17th the British were close to St. Quentin and the French in their own old intrenchments before La Fere. On September 18th a surprise advance over a twenty-two-mile front crossed the Hindenburg line at two points north of St. Quentin, Villeret and from Pontru to Hollom.

The first and third British armies, a little further to the north, were moving toward Cambrai and Douai, threatening not only them, but to get in the rear of Lens. This force proceeded up the Albert-Bapaume highway, and on August 27th captured a considerable portion of the Hindenburg line. On the 30th they reached Bullecourt and on September 2d crossed the Drocourt-Queant line on a six-mile-front. This was the famous switch line, meant to supplement the Hindenburg line and its capture meant the complete overthrow of the German intrenched positions at this point.

[Illustration: MAP: Arras in the Southwest corner, Douai in the Northeast.] THE FAMOUS HINDENBURG LINE THAT CRUMBLED IN 1918.

The Germans retreated hastily to the Canal du Nord, and on September 3d Queant was captured by an advance on a twenty mile front, along with ten thousand prisoners. The Allied forces were moving steadily forward. On September 18th the British reached the defenses of Cambrai and were encircling the city of St. Quentin. On October 3d the advance upon Cambrai forced the Germans to evacuate the Lens coal fields, and on October 9th another advance over a thirty-mile front enabled the Allies to occupy Cambrai and St. Quentin. On the 11th they had reached the suburbs of Douai. By this time the whole of the Picardy salient had been wiped out.

The preceding summary of this great movement gives little idea of the tremendous struggle which had gone on during these two critical months, and hardly does more than suggest the tremendous importance of the British operations. The Hindenburg line was like a great fortification, and for more than a year had been regarded as impregnable. At Bullecourt there were two main lines. One hundred and twenty-five yards in front of the first line was a belt of wire twenty-five feet broad, so thick that it could not be seen through. The line itself contained double machine-gun emplacements of ferro-concrete, one hundred and twenty-five yards apart, with lesser emplacements between them. More belts of wire protected the support line. Here a continuous tunnel had been constructed at a depth of over forty feet. Every thirty-five yards there were exits with flights of forty-five steps. The tunnels were roofed and lined and bottomed with heavy timber, and numerous rooms branched off. They were lighted by electricity. Large nine-inch trench mortars stood at the traverses and strong machine-gun positions covered the line from behind.

The Hindenburg line was really only one of a series of twenty lines, each connected with the others by communicating trenches. The main lines were solid concrete, separated by an unending vista of wire entanglements. At points this barrier barbed wire extended in solid formation for ten miles. This tremendous system of defenses was originally called by the Germans the Siegfried line, and in the spring of 1917 they found it wise, at points where a strong offensive was expected, to fall back to it for protection. It had been their hope that it would prove an impassable barrier to the Allied troops, but now it had been broken, and the moral effect of the British success was even greater than the material.

One of the most noticeable results of the British advance had been the capture of Lens. It had been captured without a fight, because of the British threat upon its rear, but its capture was of tremendous importance. Lens had been the scene of bitter fighting in the latter part of August, 1917, when the Canadians had specially distinguished themselves. This city had been heavily fortified by the Germans who had recognized its importance as being the center of the great Lens coal fields, and they had never given it up. It had sometimes been described as the strongest single position that had ever confronted the Allies on the western front. It had been made a sort of citadel of reinforced concrete. Even the courage and power of the Canadians had only given them possession of some of its suburbs. Between these suburbs and the concrete citadel were the coal pits, with their fathomless depths of ages and the mysteries of kultural strategy. The struggle became a succession of avalanches of gas, burning oil, rifle and machine-gun fire. Both sides lost terrifically, but the Germans had held the town. Now it was given up without a blow and its great coal fields were once more in possession of the French. Before retreating the Germans showed their usual destructive energy and the mines were found flooded as a result of consistent and scientific use of dynamite.

The recapture of Lens was cheering news in Paris. Not the least of the many sufferings of the French during the last two years of the war was that which came from the scarcity of coal. Indeed, more than once during those two winters coal could not be obtained at any price. These periods unfortunately came in the latter part of the winter, and it happened they were unusual periods of intense cold. Thousands of people stayed in bed all day in order to keep warm. The capture of Lens, therefore, had been anxiously desired. Nearly the whole of the French coal supply had come from Lens and the adjacent Bethune coal fields. The Bethune field, although steadily working, had never produced enough coal for even the pressing necessities of the French munition works.

The news that Bapaume had fallen on August 29th brought back, especially to the British, memories not only of the previous year and of the great forward movement which, on March 17th, had swept them over Bapaume and Peronne, but also bitter memories of the retreat in the previous March, which had carried them back under the overwhelming German pressure. The capture therefore was balm to their spirits, and an English correspondent, Mr. Philip Gibbs, who had accompanied the British on their previous advance, found officers and men full of laughter and full of memories.

On all sides were the battle-fields of 1916 and 1917; Mametz Wood, Belleville Wood, Usna Hill, Ginchy, Morval, Guillemont. The fields were covered with battle debris, and yet to the English it was sacred ground from the graves of the men who fell there. Those graves still remained. The British shell fire had not touched them, but as the English advanced there were many bodies of gray-clad men on the roads and fields, and dead horses, and a litter of barbed wire, and deep shelters dug under banks, and shell craters, and helmets, gas masks, and rifles thrown here and there by the enemy as they fled. Now it was the Germans that were fleeing, and fleeing hopelessly, sullen, bitter at their officers, impatient of discipline.

One of the great differences between the attacks of the Allies in their last year of the war and those of preceding years, was the increased use and the improved character of the tanks. The tanks were a development of the war. Before the war, however, the development of the caterpillar tractor had suggested to a few farsighted people the possibility of evolving from this invention a machine capable of offensive use over rough country in close warfare. Experiments were made in behalf of the English War Office for some time without practical results.

At last, after these experiments had resulted in various failures, a type of tractor was finally designed which produced satisfactory results. It was a caterpillar tractor, with an endless self-laid track, over which internal driving wheels could be propelled by the engines. It was not until July, 1916, that the first consignment of these new engines of warfare arrived at the secret maneuver ground.

There were two kinds. One called the male was armed with two Hotchkiss quick-fire guns, as well as with an armament of machine guns. The other type, called the female, was armed only with machine guns. The male tank was designed for dealing with the concrete emplacements for the German machine guns. The other was more suitable for dealing with machine-gun personnel and riflemen. Some time was taken in training men to use these tanks, for the crew of a tank must suffer a great deal of hardship on account of the noise of the engine every command had to be made by signs, and the motion of the tank being like that of a ship on a heavy sea, was likely to produce seasickness.

The tanks were painted with weird colors for the purpose of concealment, and when they first appeared caused a great deal of wonder and amusement. They were first used in battle on September 15, 1916, in a continuation of the battle of the Somme, and proved a great surprise to the Germans. The Germans directed all available rifle and machine-gun fire upon them without success. A correspondent narrates that: "As the 'Creme de Menthe' moved on its way, the bullets fell from its sides harmlessly. It advanced upon a broken wall, leaned up against it heavily, until it fell with a crash of bricks, and then rose on to the bricks and passed over them and walked straight into the midst of factory ruins." They were an immense success and had come to stay.

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XLIV. BELGIUM'S GALLANT EFFORT

For more than four years Belgium suffered under the iron heel of the German invaders. One little corner in the far west was occupied by her gallant army, fighting with the utmost courage and a patriotism which has won the admiration of the world under its great King Albert, whose heroic leadership had turned the little commercial nation into a nation of heroes. Conditions of life in the Belgian cities were almost intolerable. The great Belgian Relief Commission, under the direction of Mr. Hoover, had kept the people from starvation, but it could not secure them their rights. They lived in the midst of brutality and injustice.

On Belgian Independence Day at London, Arthur J. Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, made an address in which he commented upon the German treatment of Belgium. In the course of his address he said: "Bitter must be the thought in every Belgian heart of what Belgians in Belgium are now suffering. Let them however, take courage. Let their spirits rise in a mood of profound cheerfulness, for these dark days are not going to last forever, and when they come to a conclusion, when again peace dawns upon this much tormented and cruelly tried world, when Belgium is again free and prosperous, then Belgians, whether they have spent these unhappy years in exile, or, an even harder fate, have spent them in their own country, they will be able to look back upon this time of cruel and unexampled trial, and they will say to themselves, to their children and to their descendants, that Belgium, though her existence as a political entity is less than a century, has within that period shown an example of courage, constancy and virtue to mankind for which all the world should be grateful."

The English Foreign Minister was perhaps not prophesying. He knew something of what was coming. The Great Offensive which was to free Belgium of her German oppressor was already under way. The first move, however, was not upon land, but upon the sea. In the autumn of 1914 the little Belgian port of Zeebrugge, with the neighboring port of Ostend, was captured by the Germans. The Germans, who had already seized the shipbuilding plants at Antwerp, then began to build submarines, and sent them down the canals through Bruges to Zeebrugge and Ostend. From these ports they proceeded to attack the English commerce.

In the spring of 1918 submarine attacks on English shipping were so serious that England was using every possible effort to destroy these piratical craft, and it was determined to make an attempt to block the entrances to the canals at Zeebrugge and at Ostend, by sinking old ships in the channels.

The expedition took place during the night of April 22d, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the expedition. These were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis and Vindictive. The Vindictive carried storming parties to destroy the stone mole at Zeebrugge; the remaining five cruisers were filled with concrete, and it was intended that they should be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. A large force of monitors and small fast craft accompanied the expedition. An observer thus describes the heroic exploit:

The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead as she drove through the water rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing-Commander Brock, without which, acknowledged the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted. A northeast wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships. Beyond it was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious.

It was not until the Vindictive, with bluejackets and marines standing ready for landing, was close upon the mole, that the wind lulled and came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward, There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells. Wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns, and machine guns along the mole. The batteries ashore woke to life.

It was in a gale of shelling that the Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot-high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor, and signaled to the Daffodil to shove her stern in. The Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise.

The fire was intense while the ships plunged and rolled beside the mole in the seas, the Vindictive, with her greater draft, jarring against the foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries on shore. Captain Carpenter conned the Vindictive from the open bridge until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered was it.

The officer of the Iris, which was in trouble ahead of the Vindictive, described Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The Vindictive was fitted along her port side with a high, false deck, from which ran eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and demolition parties were to land. The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines, waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge. Captain Hallahan, who commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The word for the assault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed.

The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a passage across the crashing and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine-guns which swept its length, and a further drop of some sixteen feet to the surface of the mole itself. Many were killed and more wounded as they crowded up the gangways, but nothing hindered the orderly and speedy landing by every gangway. The lower deck was a shambles, as the commander made the round of the ship, yet the wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour.

The Iris had trouble of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant-Commander Bradford, and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast, till each was killed, and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away, and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.

[Illustration: Layout of harbor; North sea at top, with lighthouse, quay and wireless station. Foreground shows harbor facilities and submarine pens.] ZEEBRUGGE HARBOR, BLOCKED BY BRITISH

The Iris was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the Vindictive, which suffered very heavily from fire. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed, and three officers and 103 men wounded.

The storming parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than an intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flames, or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole in search of the enemy destroyed several machine gun emplacements but not a single prisoner awarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole.

The object of the fighting on the mole was in large part to divert the enemy's attention while the work of blocking the canals was being accomplished.

Of this operation the official narrative says: "The Thetis came first steaming into a tornado of shells from great batteries ashore. All her crew save a remnant who remained to steam her in and sink her, already had been taken off her by a ubiquitous motor launch. The remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road to the Intrepid and Iphigenia which followed. She cleared a string of armed barges, which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but had the ill-fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense which flanks it on the shore side. The propeller gathered in the net and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off and found herself in the channel again, still some hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal in practically a sinking condition. As she lay she signaled invaluable directions to others, and her commander blew charges and sank it. Motor launches took off her crew. The Intrepid, smoking like a volcano, and with all her guns blazing, followed. Her motor launch had failed to get alongside, outside the harbor, and she had men enough for anything. Straight into the canal she steered, her smoke blowing back from her into the Iphigenia's eyes so that the latter was blinded, and going a little wild, ran into the dredger, with her barge moored beside it, which lay at the western arm of the canal. She was not clear though, and entered the canal, pushing the barge before her.

"It was then that a shell hit the steam connections of her whistle and the escape of steam which followed drove off some of the smoke, and let her see what she was doing. Lieutenant Carter, commanding the Intrepid, placed the nose of his ship neatly on the mud of the western bank, ordered his crew away, and blew up his ship by switches in the chart room. Lieutenant Leake, commanding the Iphigenia, beached her according to arrangement on the eastern side, blew her up, saw her drop nicely across the canal, and left her with her engines still going to hold her in position till she should have bedded well down on the bottom. According to the latest reports from air observation the two old ships, with their holds full of concrete, are lying across the canal in a V-position, and it is probable that the work they set out to do has been accomplished and that the canal is effectively blocked."

At Ostend an attempt was also made to block the canal on the same night, but it was unsuccessful owing to a shift of wind which blew away the smoke screen behind which the British craft were acting, and enabled the German gun fire to destroy the flares which had been lit to mark the entrance to the harbor. The cruisers tried to act by guess work, and one of the block ships was sunk, but it was not in a position to obstruct the canal.

On May 9th another attempt was made, and the Vindictive, filled with concrete was sunk in the Ostend channel.

This daring exploit of the English fleet, though it had destroyed the value of Zeebrugge and Ostend as submarine bases, had left the Germans in possession. In September, however, General Foch determined that the time had come to throw his armies against the German forces in the distracted little country. He planned two widely separated thrusts. On the south he sent Pershing against the Germans between the Argonne and the Meuse. They made rapid progress, capturing Montfaucon, Varennes and driving on until they had destroyed the German control of the Paris-Chalons-Verdun Railroad.

This was a serious blow to the Germans, for a further push northward would cut the vital lateral railway connecting the German armies in Belgium and France with those in Alsace-Lorraine. Ludendorf hastened reserves to this front, and the American operation was slowed down. Meanwhile at the other end of the line the Belgians, with General Plumer's Second British Army, suddenly attacked on a front which extended all the way from the canal at Dixmude to the Lys, swept the Germans out of all the famous fighting ground of the Ypres salient, pushed across the Passchendaele Ridge and down into the Flanders plain below.

The situation of the Germans in the Lille regions of the south and also along the Belgian coast became at once dangerous. Once more Ludendorf was compelled to send reserves, and this thrust began to slow up but it was not checked permanently, and the Belgian armies were to move on. While this advance was being conducted the British fleet were bombarding the coastal defenses. The Belgian army, fighting with the utmost spirit under command of King Albert, made a penetration of five miles and captured four thousand prisoners and an immense amount of supplies.

On September 30th they captured the city of Roulers. For ten days there was a consolidation of position by the Allies, but on October 14th they made a furious attack in the general direction of Ghent and Courtrai. Thousands of prisoners and several complete batteries of guns were captured. In this attack British, Belgian and French troops took part, and the troops of the three nations went over the top without preliminary bombardment, taking the enemy by surprise.

On October 15th the news from Flanders showed that the victory was growing in extent, the Allied armies were advancing on a front of about twenty-five miles, and in some places had penetrated the enemy's positions six or seven miles. The Belgians had captured seven thousand prisoners and the British and French about four thousand. In French Flanders the British advanced to a point about three miles west of Lille.

The battle was carried on in a heavy rain which turned the battle-fields into seas of mud; while this hampered the Allied troops it hindered even more the Germans in trying to move away their material through the mired ground of the Flanders Lowland.

On the next day dispatches indicated that a retreat on a tremendous scale in northern Belgium was under way. The Germans were retreating so fast that the Allies lost touch with the enemy. The gallant little Belgian army, assisted by crack British and French troops, had driven the despoilers of its country from a large section which the Germans had occupied since the early days of the war, and had gained positions of such importance as to make it probable that the Germans would have to abandon the entire coast of Belgium.

Moreover, on the south, the city of Lille, with the great mining and manufacturing districts around it, was being left in a salient which was growing deeper every hour and which the enemy could not hope to hold. At certain points the resistance of the Germans was extraordinarily fierce. This was especially true in the region of Thouret. The battle here was from street to street and from house to house. The Germans had placed machine-guns in the windows of houses and cellars and fired murderous streams of bullets into the advancing Belgians but were unable to stop them.

The Belgians fought with a dogged determination such as only troops fighting to regain their outraged country could display. Nothing could stop them. At other points, especially in the northern part of the battle area, the Germans surrendered freely. Many civilians were rescued from the towns and districts captured, and little processions of these were straggling rearward out of range of the guns, and out of the way of the fighting troops. At times liberated Belgian women could see their sons, brothers or husbands going forward into battle. On October 17th the German retreat in Flanders became a rout. The enemy were fleeing rapidly on their entire front. The British entered Lille.

The Germans fled from Ostend and British naval forces were landed there. The Belgian infantry were sweeping up the coast, and Belgian patrols entered Bruges. In the afternoon of the day King Albert of Belgium, and Queen Elizabeth entered Ostend. The splendid fighting of the Belgian troops and their magnificent victory was now attracting universal attention. It was one of the revelations of the war. They were bearing the giant's share of the work of the Allied armies in their own country, and had already liberated territory which more than doubled the area of that part of Belgium which had been in their possession.

With the Belgian coast cleared of invaders it became open to British transports which would afford relief to the whole Allied armies from the resultant decrease in the congestion of the channel ports. On October 19th the progress continued. Zeebrugge was occupied by the Allies, the last Belgian port remaining in German hands.

The Belgian advance continued along the whole line. King Albert entered Bruges. Day after day the advance continued. The reception of the King and Queen of Belgium in the recovered towns was something to remember. In Bruges they rode in amid the tumultuous cheering of the frenzied population. On the central square they were received by the burgomaster with an escort of a solitary gendarme, who had refused to give up his uniform and old-fashioned rifle to the enemy; though fined and imprisoned he had kept their hiding place secret. As he stood there alone with fixed bayonet the King and the Queen shook him by the hand and congratulated him. Greatly moved, he stammered, "It is too great an honor, too great an honor."

And with all this happiness came the happiness arising from the return of the soldiers to the homes from which they had been absent so long, the reunions of husband and wife, of parents and children. Belgium was now to reap the reward for her heroism.

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