AMERICA IN FRANCE.*
Cernaar. PALMED. has added to his fascinating books on the war a volume describing the growth and exploits of the American Army in France down to the opening of the Argonne offensive. It is a very remarkable and interesting story. In April, 1917, the American Regular Army at home was about one hundred thousand strong, and the National Guard or Militia about one hundred and thirty thousand. In November, 1918, there were two million American troops in France and millions more trebling at home. Colonel Palmer's task is to show how this modern miracle was accomplished. The American War Depart. meat succeeded primarily because it took long views and refused to be hurried. If the small American Regular Force had been Rent to France forthwith, it would have been used up in is few months, and there would have been no disciplined men to stiffen the regiments of recruits or experienced officers to train them. Therefore the new levies were diluted—to use the popular labour terns—with Regulars as far as possible, and the officers were scattered far and wide through the now Army. General Pershing and his Staff went to France in May, 1917, to arrange for the reception, housing, and training of the hosts which were to follow them. They envisaged clearly the magnitude of theie work and made their plans on a grand scale. At the time soma short-sighted people may have thought them to he possessed by megalomania in planning ports, railways, storehouses, factories, camps, and aerodromes of magnificent proportions. But they:were justified sear later when the American Expedi- tionary Force suddenly began to expand by a quarter of a million a month, without confusion and without hardship. If General Pershing had planned for a small Army, it would have I een curlews form to seeritiee our foreign trade and devote every t.' ip that we could charter to the transport of American troops lest spring and summer. As it was, the American commander's large views saved the situation. Yet the equipment, transport, and feeding of the troops were leas difficult than the training of them for modern war. The conversion of young America into a fighting force capable of holding the line side by aide with French and British veterans against German veterans must necessarily tale time. Fortunately the Americans had the benefit of our experience of the new methods of war, and could be trained gradually by French and British officers and given practical lessons in the quiet sectors of the battle-zone. They had not, like the new British and Dominion Armies from the winter of 1914 onwards, to learn their first lessons in desperate battle and at a terrible price.
The First Division, whirls reached France in the early summer of 1917, was, like all the rest, mainly composed of recruits. It was sent for political and moral reassess to show that America Was in earnest about the war, and to give encouragement to the French people in the critical days when Russia's collapse was meeting deepondeney. The First Division—twenty-seventhousand strong —underwent all its training in Lorraine, under the care of French instructors. A regiment of Marines, leanly Regulars who had seen service in many climes, was attached for a time to the Division, but did not go with it in October,1917, when the Americans first took over part of a quiet sector at Einville,on the Lorraine front. Colonel Palmer writes in his humorous way :—
" We were nursed into the trenches with all the care of father teaching his eon to swim. The French are a thorough people. They believe in no short- cute to learning, but in gradual processes. We were not to start algebra until we thoroughly knew arith- metic, or geometry until we thoroughly knew algebra. General Parable% is also thorough. There are no elective courses at West Point. Our battalions, three at a time, were to he placed between French battalions in the line in what was to be dietinctly considered as another step in our course of training. Every American battery was to be paired off with a French battery. The French regulated the amount of our artillery fire, and their observers named the targets. Our battalion Colossi =ZVI grlorlf: 635r1 171g.;" 61;71:4.
commanders could not act without French advice. No patrols could be sent out without French direction. We were en- tirely under French command. The artillery moved up ore the night of October 22. Battery C, of the 9th Field Artillery, wanted the honour of firing the first shot of the war. Without waiting on going into position at the time set, the Ines dragged a gun forward in the early morning of October 23 and sent a shell at the enemy. There was no particular target. The aim was in the general direction of Berlin. This filled the historical requirement which later sent the gun to West Point as a relic. Other artillerists said that they did not see anything professional in being first or in firing without a target, and thew gems looked exactly like the one sent to West Point.'
Ten days later the enemy made a trench raid on the Americans for the sake of information, and the Americans buried their first dead. The war for them had really begun. Three more divisions, the Twenty-sixth (New-England National Guard), the Second (half composed of Marines), and the Forty-second—called the Rainbow Division because its regiments came from various parts of America—joined the First in the autumn and spent the long wet winter in the Vosges. In ?starch, 1918, when Mr. Baker, the Secretary of War, arrived for an inspection, the American Army organization was far advanced. But the troops—except the first hundred thousand—were still training in America, and the German offensive of March 21st showed convincingly that they were needed very urgently in France. Colonel Palmer attributes to Mr. Baker's promptitude and energy no small share in the decision to expedite the coming of the Americans and to entrust the supreme command to Marshal Foch. The first operation in which Americans took part was the capture of Cantigny, near Montdidier, in April by the First Division, to relieve the pressure on the Amiens front. The next was the gallant stand made north and south of the Marne by the Second and Third Divisions at the end of May, when the enemy was driving south and south- west from the broken Aisne front. Colonel Palmer gives a dramatic recount of tho hard fighting for Pelleau Wood and Vaux, near Château Thierry. Ten American divisions, begin- ning with the four in the Second Corps, were trained with the British Army in the Salient. They were taken aback, the author tells us, by the British soldier's apparent pessimism:—
"When the Englishman begins talking about being ' all in,' and magnifying the fighting qualities of the German, it is a healthy sign. It means that he is awoke to the situation. When he takes the contrary view, and seems perfectly satisfied with his prowess, he is in more danger of being caught napping. The careless way that the English had of speaking of their work deceived us a little at first ; but later we learned that although an Englishmen may not have our versatility, he knows his own job very thoroughly. Our men admired the way that the British looked after horses and kept up their transport and their guns, and liked their cleanliness and their reality when we came to know them better. After we bad been in the trenches with them and had realized what they endured, we appreciated their heroic, quiet methods. . . . We learned much and saw much with the British. Whether or not the British learned anything new about the Yanks, which changed their previously conceived notions about us, is for them to say. They were surely a little surprised at our discipline. No European quite expected discipline of Americans, or that we had a general of Perehing's type on the list of our little regular srmy."
When the enemy began his last offensive on July 13th, the Rainbow Division at Perthes-les.Hurlus, on the Champagne front, rendered splendid service with the French in stopping and breaking General Ludendorffs final effort. Three days later, the American divisions round Château Thierry and near Soissons played their part manfully in the great Allied counter- stroke which changed the whole aspect of the war. Colonel Palmer's description of the fighting from the Marne to the Ourcq and the Vesle is much the fullest and best that we have seen, and emphasizes the stubbornness with which the enemy tried first to hold his ground and then to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout. Wiping out that Marne salient was not so simple an affair as it might seem from a glance at the military maps. The author notes incidentally that the Thirty-second Division, including farmers' sons front Wisconsin and Iowa and "supposedly pro.Germana " from Milwaukee, rendered specially brilliant service at the Ourcq, and that the young American's with German names met and repulsed a German night-attack with the bayonet, wielded in anything but an indifferent or pacificist temper. After this, ire September, came the very successful attack on the St. Mihicl salient, of which we have heard a good deal. Colonel Palmer promises in another volume an account of the terrible struggle in the Argonne, which led the Americans to Sedan and completed the enemy's disconAture: But the formation of this mighty Army from a pacific and wholly unprepared nation in eighteen months was really more wonderful
even than the part played by the Army in battle. The work could not have been done if the whole American people had not been heart and soul with the Allies in, the determination to make an end of German militarism, and had not had its pride wounded by the open contempt of the Germans for the supposed helpless. mess of the great Republic.
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