In his cable of May 1 Mr. Gibbs gave details of the extraordinary heroism of the British Guards. He related incidents which had occurred April 11 to 14, after the Germans had broken through the Portuguese in their efforts to widen the gap between Armentières and Merville by gaining the crossings of the Lys.
The Grenadier, Irish, and Coldstream Guards were sent forward along the Hazebrouck-Estaires road when the situation was at its worst, when the men of the 15th Division and other units had fought themselves out in continual rearguard and holding actions, so that some of those still in the line could hardly walk or stand, and when it was utterly necessary to keep the Germans in check until a body of Australian troops had time to arrive. The Guards were asked to hold back the enemy until those Australians came and to fight at all costs for forty-eight hours against the German tide of men and guns which was attempting to flow around the other hard pressed men, and that is what the Guards did, fighting in separate bodies with the enemy pressing in on both flanks.
Greatly outnumbered, they beat back attack after attack, and gained precious hours, vital hours, by the most noble self-sacrifice. A party of Grenadiers were so closely surrounded that their officer sent back a message saying:
"My men are standing back to back and shooting on all sides."
The Germans swung around them, circling them with machine guns and rifles and pouring a fire into them until only eighteen men were left. Those eighteen, standing amongtheir wounded and their dead, did not surrender. The army wanted forty-eight hours. They fixed bayonets and went out against the enemy and drove through him. A wounded Corporal of Grenadiers, who afterward got back to the British lines, lay in a ditch, and the last he saw of his comrades was when fourteen men of them were still fighting in a swarm of Germans.
The Coldstream Guards were surrounded in the same way and fought in the same way. The army had asked for forty-eight hours until the Australians could come, and many of the Coldstreamers eked out the time with their lives. The enemy filtered in on their flanks, came crawling around them with machine guns, sniped them from short range and raked them from ditches and upheaved earth.
The Coldstream Guards had to fall back, but they fought back in small groups, facing all ways and making gaps in the enemy's ranks, not firing wildly, but using every round of small-arms ammunition to keep a German back and gain a little more time.
Forty-eight hours is a long time in a war like this. For two days and nights the Irish Guards, who had come up to support the Grenadiers and Coldstreamers, tried to make a defensive flank, but the enemy worked past their right and attacked them on two sides. The Irish Guards were gaining time. They knew that was all they could do, just drag out the hours by buying each minute with their blood. One man fell and then another; but minutes were gained, and quarters of hours and hours.
Small parties of them lowered their bayonets and went out among the gray wolves swarming around them, and killed a number of them until they also fell. First one party and then another of these Irish Guards made those bayonet charges against men with machine guns and volleys of rifle fire. They bought time at a high price, but they did not stint themselves nor stop their bidding because of its costliness.
The brigade of Guards here and near Vieux Berquin held out for those forty-eight hours, and some of them were fighting still when the Australians arrived, according to the timetable.
Mr. Gibbs, in a dispatch dated May 3, gave these vivid descriptions of the fighting in the Locre-Dranoutre-Kemmel region:
On April 24 the German bombardment was intensified and spread over a deep area, destroying villages, tearing up roads, and making a black vomit of the harrowed fields. Dranoutre, Locre, Westoutre, and other small towns were violently bombarded. That night the French discovered that the Germans were preparing an attack for the next morning, to be preceded by a gas bombardment. The officers warned all their men, and they stood on the alert with gas masks when at 3:30 in the morning thousands of gas shells fell over them, mixed with high explosives of all calibres up to the monster twelve-inch, which burst like volcanic eruptions.
In the intensity of bombardment several officers who fought at Fleury said: "This is the most frightful thing we have seen. Verdun was nothing to it."
All the French troops jammed on gas masks, and on one day put them on fifty times, only removing them when the wind, which was fairly strong, blew away the poison fumes until other storms of shells came. For nearly a week they wore them constantly, sleeping in them, officers giving orders in them, and the men fighting and dying in them and charging with the bayonet in them. It was worth the trouble and suffering, for this French regiment between Locre and Dranoutre had only twelve gas casualties.
That morning the German attack fell first on Kemmel Hill, which they turned from the north, and two hours later, the bombardment continuing all along the line, they developed a strong attack against Dranoutre in the south in order to take Locre and turn the French right. Until evening the troops on Kemmel Hill, with a small body of British, still held out with great devotion in isolated positions, but by 8 o'clock that morning Kemmel Hill was entirely cut off.
This was a severe menace to their comrades at Locre and southward, because both their flanks were threatened. They did heroic things to safeguard their right and left, which again and again the enemy tried to pass. I have already told in a previous message how a gallant French officer and a small company of men made a counterattack at Dranoutre and held the post there against all odds.
Up by Locre the commandant of the left battalion found machine-gun fire sweeping his left flank, and his men had to face left to defend their line. Small parties of Germans with machine guns kept filtering down from the north and established themselves on the railway in order to rake the French with an enfilade fire.
One French company, led by devoted officers, counterattacked there five times with the bayonet into the sweep of those bullets, and by this sacrifice saved their flank. Another company advanced to hold the hospice. There was desperate fighting day after day, so that its ruins, if any bits of wall are left, will be as historic as the château at Vermelles, or other famous houses of the battlefields.
French and Germans took it turn and turn about, and although the enemy sent great numbers of men to garrison this place they never were able to hold it long, because always some young French Lieutenant and ahandful of men stormed it again and routed the enemy. When it was taken last on April 29, the day of the enemy's severe defeat, the French captured 100 prisoners in the cellars there, and they belonged to fourteen battalions of four regiments of three divisions, showing the amazing way in which the enemy's divisions have been flung into confusion by the French fire.
On the morning of April 26 French companies made six attacks, and in the afternoon two more, and though their losses were heavy, that evening both the village and hospice of Locre stayed in their hands. That night, their men being exhausted for a time after so many hours under fire, they withdrew their line a little to the Locre-Bailleul road by the Château of Locre and west of Dranoutre in order to reorganize a stronger defense. The German bombardment slackened on the morning of April 28 owing to fog, and those few hours on that day and one other were the only respite these French troops had from the incessant and infernal gunfire when, owing to open warfare, "en rase campagne," as the French call it, as in 1914, without a complete system of trenches or dugouts or other artificial cover, they were much exposed.
"There were ten big shells a second," one of these officers told me, "and that lasted, with only two short pauses, for six days all through the battle, and other shells were uncountable."
The enemy had brought up light artillery and trench mortars almost to his front lines in Dranoutre Wood and other places and attempted to take the French in an enfilade fire from Kemmel, but by this time many French guns were in position, reinforcing the British artillery, and on the 28th they opened up and killed great numbers of the enemy.
Allied aviators saw long columns of Germans on the roads by Neuve Eglise and in Dranoutre Wood, and signaled to the guns to range on these human targets. The guns answered. Masses of Germans were smashed by the fire and panicstricken groups were seen running out of Dranoutre Wood.
That night the Germans seemed to be relieving their troops, and again the French and British guns flung shells into them, and for the enemy it was a night of death and horror; but the next day, the 29th, the enemy made reply by a prolonged bombardment, more intense even than before, and then attacked with new troops all along the line. But the French also had many fresh troops in line—not those I met yesterday—who at 2 o'clock in the morning went forward into attack and took back the village. This defeated the enemy's plan of turning the French left.
All through that day the enemy's desperate efforts to break through were shattered, and that night the French held exactly the same ground as before and had caused enormous losses to the German divisions, at least 40 per cent. of their strength, as it is reckoned on close evidence.
That night even the German guns stopped their drumfire, as though Sixt von Arnim's army was in mourning for its dead. It was a night of strange and uncanny silence after the stupendous tumult, but for those French regiments who had been holding the line for nearly a week it had been a day of supreme ordeal.
There were no general engagements during the preceding five days nor up to May 18, but incessant artillery fire was kept up and raids were constantly made. On May 5 Mr. Gibbs described the difficulties encountered by the Germans in preparing for a new advance:
The enemy has many divisions, both up in the Flemish fields and on the Somme, divisions in line and divisions in reserve—divisions crowded in reserve—and there are few roads for them down which to march. There is not much elbow room for such masses to assemble, and not much cover in trenches or dugouts from high explosives or shrapnel. So we pound them to death, many of them to death and many of them to stretcher cases, and relief comes up, gets wildly mixed with the divisions coming down, and at night there is mad confusion in the ranks of marching men and transport columns, which gallop past dead horses and splintered wagons and wrecks of transport columns, and among the regimental and divisional staffs, trying to keep order in the German way when things are being smashed into chaos, while the Red Cross convoys are over-loaded with wounded and unable to cope with all the bodies that lie about.
This is what is happening behind the German lines—I have not overdrawn the picture, believe me—and it is upsetting somewhat the plans of the high German officers who are arranging things from afar through telephones, down which they shout their orders.
In his dispatch of May 9 the following was written to describe the difficulties of the Germans in reorganizing their battered forces:
From many points the British have complete observation of the enemy's positions there, as he has of theirs from the other side of the way, and, needless to say, they are making use of this direct view by flinging over storms of shells whenever his transport is seen crawling along the tracks of the old Somme battlefields or his troops are seen massing among their shell craters.
The town of Albert itself, where once untilrecent history the golden Virgin used to lean downward with her babe outstretched above the ruins, is now a death trap for the German garrisons there and for any German gunners who try to hide their batteries among the red brick houses. By day and night their positions are pounded with high explosives and soaked in asphyxiating gas.
I went within 2,000 yards of it yesterday, and saw the heaviest work of the British upon it. It was a wonderful May day, as today is, and the sun shone through a golden haze upon the town. As I looked into Albert and saw the shells smashing through, and then away up the Albert-Bapaume road, past the white rim of the great mine crater of La Boiselle to the treeless slopes of Posières, and over all that ground of hills and ditches to the high, wooded distant right, with its few dead stumps of trees, it was hard to believe that all this was in the area of the German Army, that the white, winding lines freshly marked upon this bleak landscape were new German trenches, and that the enemy's outposts were less than 2,000 yards from where I stood.
Some siege gunners were lying on their stomachs and observing the enemy's lines for some monsters I had seen on my way up, monsters that raised their snouts slowly, like elephants' trunks, before bellowing out with an earthquake roar, annihilating all one's senses for a second. Some of the men passed the remark to me that "Albert isn't the town it was" and that "Fritz must be having a thin time there." They also expressed the opinion that the Albert-Bapaume road was not a pleasant walk for Germans on a sunny afternoon.
I did not dispute these points with them, for they were beyond argument. Big shells were smashing into Albert and its neighborhood from many heavy batteries, raising volcanic explosions there, and shrapnel was bursting over the tracks in white splashes.
In describing the artillery fire which broke up a threatened assault on May 5, Mr. Gibbs wrote:
A new German division, the 52d Reserve, and the 56th German Division prepared an assault on Ridge Wood. All these men were crowded into narrow assembly grounds and did not have quiet hours before the moment of attack. They had hours of carnage in the darkness. British and French guns were answering back the German bombardment with their heaviest fire. French howitzers, long-muzzled fellows, which during recent weeks I had seen crawling through Flanders with the cornflowers, as the French soldiers call themselves, crowded about them on the gun limbers and transport wagons and muddy horses, and which had traveled long kilometers, were now in action from their emplacements between the ruined villages of the Flemish war zone, and with their little brothers, the soixante-quinzes, their blood-thirsty little brothers, were savage in their destruction and harassing fire.
I have seen the soixante-quinze at work and have heard the rafale des tambours de la mort—the ruffle of the drums of death—as the sound of their fire is described by all soldier writers of France. It was that fire, that slashing and sweeping fire, which helped to break up any big plan of attack against the French troops yesterday morning, and from those assembly places a great part of the German infantry never moved all day, but spent their time, it seems, in carrying back their wounded.
Mr. Gibbs on May 11 described a visit to Arras, as follows:
Since the beginning of these great battles in bleak, cold weather Spring has come, and almost Summer, changing all the aspect of the old battlefields and of the woods behind craterland and of the cities under fire.
I went into one of those cities the other day, Arras, which to me and to many of us out here is a queerly enchanted place because of its beauty, which survives even three years of bombardment, and because of the many great memories which it holds in its old houses and streets and the sense of romance which lurks in its courtyards and squares, reaching back to ancient history before its death. For Arras is dead and but the beautiful corpse of the city that was once very fair and noble.
During the recent weeks the enemy has flung many big explosive shells into it, so that its ruins have become more ruined and many houses hardly touched before have now been destroyed. It was sad to see this change, the fresh mangling of stones that had already been scarred, the heaps of masonry that lay piled about these streets that were utterly deserted. I walked down many of them and saw no living soul, only a few lean cats which prowled about, slinking close to the walls and crouching when a German shell came over with a rending noise.
Bright sunlight shone down these streets, putting a lazy glamour upon their broken frontages and flinging back shadows from high walls, except where shell holes let in the light. The cathedral and the great Palace of the Bishops were unroofed, with tall pillars broken off below the vaulting and an avalanche of white masonry about them. They were clear-cut and dazzling under the blue sky, and one was hushed by the tragic grandeur of these ruins.
One of the British airplanes flew low over the city, and its engine sang loudly with a vibrant humming, and now and again the crash of a gun or a shell loosened some stones or plaster below its wings. Other birds were singing. Spring birds, who are not out for war but sweethearting in the gardens of Arras.
[By arrangement with The London Chronicle.]
One of the finest moral actions in this war has been done by America. It is action on a gigantic scale, and yet of a directly personal character. Insufficient publicity, I think, has been given to this action.
Is it realized by the people of this country that America has already saved us from capitulating to the enemy? Either we should have been forced into this surrender (with our armies unbroken and our munitions of war unexhausted) or we should at this moment be struggling to live and work and fight on one-third of our present rations.
America is sending to these islands almost two-thirds of our food supplies. Sixty-five per cent. of the essential foodstuffs eaten by the British citizen comes to him from the American Continent. This in itself is something which calls for our lively gratitude. But there is a quality in the action of America which should intensify our gratitude. For these American supplies, essential to our health and safety, represent in very large measure the personal and voluntary self-sacrifice of the individual American citizen. They are not crumbs from the table of Dives. They are not the commandeered supplies of an autocratic Government. They represent, rather, the kindly, difficult, and entirely willing self-sacrifice of a whole nation, the vast majority of whom are working people.
There is only one altar for this act of sacrifice—it is the table of the American working classes. And the rite is performed by men, women, and children, at every meal of the day, day after day, week after week.
This act of self-sacrifice, let us remember, is made in the midst of plenty. Well might the American housewife ask why she should deprive her children of food, why she should institute wheatless and meatless days, when all about her there is a visible superabundance of these things. Questions such as this are natural enough on the other side of the Atlantic, and on the other side of the American continent, 5,000 miles away from the battlefields of France.
But the citizens of America do not ask such questions. With a cheerfulness and a courage which are as vigorous as their industry, and with a moral earnestness which is by far the greatest demonstration America has yet given to the world of American character, these people so far away from us on the other side of the Atlantic have willingly and with no coercion by the State denied themselves for the sake of the Entente. They are going short, they are going hungry, for our sakes. They are practicing an intimate self-sacrifice in order that we may hold our own till their sons come to fight at our side. All over America the individual American citizen is making this self-sacrifice, and making it without a murmur. He is feeding, by his personal self-sacrifice, not only these islands, but France, Italy, and many of the neutrals.
This great demonstration of character has had no other impetus than the simple declaration of the facts by Herbert Hoover, the man who fed Belgium. Hoover has told his countrymen how things stand. That is all. The Winter of 1918, he declared to them, will prove to mankind whether or not the American Nation "is capable of individual self-sacrifice to save the world." His propaganda has never descended to unworthy levels. He has appealed always to the conscience of his countrymen. He has spoken of "a personal obligation upon every one of us toward some individual abroad who will suffer privation to the extent of our own individual negligence."
America has answered this appeal in a manner which marks her out as one of the greatest moral forces in the world. It should be known out there, in the farmhouses and cottages of the American Continent, that the people of this country are mindful of America's self-sacrifice, and are grateful.
Brig. Gen. Benjamin Alvord, AdjutantBrig. Gen. Benjamin Alvord, Adjutant(©Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. Benjamin Alvord, Adjutant(©Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. Andre W. Brewster, InspectorBrig. Gen. Andre W. Brewster,Inspector(©Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. Andre W. Brewster,Inspector(©Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. Edgar Russell, Signal Officer (Underwood from BuckBrig. Gen. Edgar Russell,Signal Officer (Underwood from Buck)
Brig. Gen. Edgar Russell,Signal Officer (Underwood from Buck)
Brig. Gen. Harry L. Rogers, QuartermasterBrig. Gen. Harry L. Rogers,Quartermaster(©Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. Harry L. Rogers,Quartermaster(©Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. B. D. Foulois, Aviation Officer on Pershing's StaffBrig. Gen. B. D. Foulois,Aviation Officer on Pershing's Staff(Press Illustrating Service)
Brig. Gen. B. D. Foulois,Aviation Officer on Pershing's Staff(Press Illustrating Service)
Dr. F. P. Keppel, Recently appointed Assistant Secretary of WarDr. F. P. Keppel,Recently appointed Assistant Secretary of War(© Harris & Ewing)
Dr. F. P. Keppel,Recently appointed Assistant Secretary of War(© Harris & Ewing)
W. C. Potter, Chief of Equipment Division of Signal CorpsW. C. Potter,Chief of Equipment Division of Signal Corps(© Harris & Ewing)
W. C. Potter,Chief of Equipment Division of Signal Corps(© Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. C. B. Wheeler, Ordnance Officer on Pershing's StaffBrig. Gen. C. B. Wheeler,Ordnance Officer on Pershing's Staff(© Harris & Ewing)
Brig. Gen. C. B. Wheeler,Ordnance Officer on Pershing's Staff(© Harris & Ewing)
[Month ended May 20, 1918]
Seicheprey, in the Toul sector, was the scene on April 20, 1918, of the most determined attack launched against the American forces in France up to that time. A German regiment, reinforced by storm troops, a total of 1,500, was hurled against the American positions on a one-mile front west of Remières Forest, northwest of Toul, after a severe bombardment of gas and high explosive shells. The Germans succeeded in penetrating the front-line trenches and taking the village of Seicheprey, but after furious hand-to-hand fighting the American troops recaptured the village and most of the ground lost in the early fighting.
Next morning, after a brief bombardment, the Americans attacked and drove the enemy out of the old outposts, which they had gained, and thus broke down an offensive which, it was believed, was intended as the beginning of a German plan to separate the Americans and the French. The French lines also were attacked, but the Germans were repulsed and the lines re-established.
The losses were the heaviest sustained by Americans since they began active warfare in France. In a dispatch to the War Department General Pershing indicated that the losses among his men were between 200 and 300. According to the German official statement 183 Americans were taken prisoner, so that the American casualties apparently came mostly under the heading of captured. Official reports of the German losses, according to a prisoner captured later, gave 600 killed, wounded, and missing.
"Franco-American positions south of the Somme and on the Avre" were officially mentioned for the first time in the French War Office report of April 24, indicating that forces of the United States were there on the battlefront resisting the great German offensive. The report stated that an intense bombardment of the positions all along this front was followed by an attack directed against Hangard-en-Santerre, the region of Hailles, and Senecat Wood. The Germans were repulsed almost everywhere.
Formal announcement that American troops sent to reinforce the allied armies had taken part in the fighting was made by the War Department in its weekly review of the situation issued on April 29. "Our own forces," the statement read, "have taken part in the battle. American units are in the area east of Amiens. During the engagements which have raged in this area they have acquitted themselves well."
Another heavy attack was launched by the Germans against the Americans in the vicinity of Villers-Bretonneux on April 30. It was repulsed with heavy losses for the enemy. The German bombardment opened at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and was directed especially against the Americans, who were supported on the north and south by the French. The fire was intense, and at the end of two hours the German commander sent forward three battalions of infantry. There was hand-to-hand fighting all along the line, as a result of which the enemy was thrust back, his dead and wounded lying on the ground in all directions. The French troops were full of praise for the manner in which the Americans conducted themselves under trying circumstances, especially in view of the fact that they are fighting at one of the most difficult points on the battlefront. The American losses were rather severe.
The gallantry of the 300 American engineers who were caught in theopening of the German offensive on March 21 was the subject of a dispatch from General Pershing made public by the War Department on April 19. The engineers were among the forces hastily gathered by Major Gen. Sanderson Carey, the British commander, who stopped the gap in the line when General Gough's army was driven back. [See diagram on Page 389.] During the period of thirteen days covered by General Pershing's report, the engineers were almost continuously in action. They were in the very thick of the hardest days of the great German drive in Picardy.
General Pershing embodied in his report a communication from General Rawlinson, commander of the British 5th Army, in which the latter declared that "it has been largely due to your assistance that the enemy is checked." The report covered the fighting period from March 21 to April 3. The former date marked the beginning of the Ludendorff offensive along the whole front from La Fère to Croisilles. It showed that while under shellfire the American engineers destroyed material dumps at Chaulnes, that they fell back with the British forces to Moreuil, where the commands laid out trench work, and were then assigned to a sector of the defensive line at Demuin, and to a position near Warfusee-Abancourt.
During the period of thirteen days covered by the report the American engineers had two officers killed and three wounded, while twenty men were killed, fifty-two wounded, and forty-five reported missing.
A correspondent of The Associated Press at the front gave this account of the part played by Americans in the historic episode under General Carey:
A disastrous-looking gap appeared In the 5th Army south of Hamel in the later stages of the opening battle. The Germans had crossed the Somme at Hamel and had a clear path for a sweep southwestward.No troops were available to throw into the opening. A certain Brigadier General was commissioned by Major Gen. Gough, commander of the 5th Army, to gather up every man he could find and to "hold the gap at any cost." The General called upon the American and Canadian engineers, cooks, chauffeurs, road workmen, anybody he could find; gave them guns, pistols, any available weapon, and rushed them into the gap in trucks, on horseback, or on mule-drawn limbers.A large number of machine guns from a machine-gun school near by were confiscated. Only a few men, however, knew how to operate the weapons, and they had to be worked by amateurs with one "instructor" for every ten or twelve guns. The Americans did especially well in handling this arm.For two days the detachment held the mile and a half gap. At the end of the second day the commander, having gone forty-eight hours without sleep, collapsed. The situation of the detachment looked desperate.While all were wondering what would happen next, a dusty automobile came bounding along the road from the north. It contained Brig. Gen. Carey, who had been home on leave and who was trying to find his headquarters.The General was commandeered by the detachment and he was found to be just the commander needed. He is an old South African soldier of the daredevil type. He is famous among his men for the scrapes and escapades of his school-boy life as well as for his daring exploits in South Africa.Carey took the detachment in hand and led it in a series of attacks and counterattacks which left no time for sleeping and little for eating. He gave neither his men nor the enemy a rest, attacking first on the north, then in the centre, then on the south—harassing the enemy unceasingly with the idea of convincing the Germans that a large force opposed them.Whenever the Germans tried to feel him out with an attack at one point, Carey parried with a thrust somewhere else, even if it took his last available man, and threw the Germans on the defensive.The spirit of Carey's troops was wonderful. The work they did was almost super-natural. It would have been impossible with any body of men not physical giants, but the Americans and Canadians gloried in it. They crammed every hour of the day full of fighting. It was a constantly changing battle, kaleidoscopic, free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can. The Germans gained ground. Carey and his men were back at them, hungry for more punishment. At the end of the sixth day, dog-tired and battle-worn, but still full of fight, the detachment was relieved by a fresh battalion which had come up from the rear.
A disastrous-looking gap appeared In the 5th Army south of Hamel in the later stages of the opening battle. The Germans had crossed the Somme at Hamel and had a clear path for a sweep southwestward.
No troops were available to throw into the opening. A certain Brigadier General was commissioned by Major Gen. Gough, commander of the 5th Army, to gather up every man he could find and to "hold the gap at any cost." The General called upon the American and Canadian engineers, cooks, chauffeurs, road workmen, anybody he could find; gave them guns, pistols, any available weapon, and rushed them into the gap in trucks, on horseback, or on mule-drawn limbers.
A large number of machine guns from a machine-gun school near by were confiscated. Only a few men, however, knew how to operate the weapons, and they had to be worked by amateurs with one "instructor" for every ten or twelve guns. The Americans did especially well in handling this arm.
For two days the detachment held the mile and a half gap. At the end of the second day the commander, having gone forty-eight hours without sleep, collapsed. The situation of the detachment looked desperate.
While all were wondering what would happen next, a dusty automobile came bounding along the road from the north. It contained Brig. Gen. Carey, who had been home on leave and who was trying to find his headquarters.
The General was commandeered by the detachment and he was found to be just the commander needed. He is an old South African soldier of the daredevil type. He is famous among his men for the scrapes and escapades of his school-boy life as well as for his daring exploits in South Africa.
Carey took the detachment in hand and led it in a series of attacks and counterattacks which left no time for sleeping and little for eating. He gave neither his men nor the enemy a rest, attacking first on the north, then in the centre, then on the south—harassing the enemy unceasingly with the idea of convincing the Germans that a large force opposed them.
Whenever the Germans tried to feel him out with an attack at one point, Carey parried with a thrust somewhere else, even if it took his last available man, and threw the Germans on the defensive.
The spirit of Carey's troops was wonderful. The work they did was almost super-natural. It would have been impossible with any body of men not physical giants, but the Americans and Canadians gloried in it. They crammed every hour of the day full of fighting. It was a constantly changing battle, kaleidoscopic, free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can. The Germans gained ground. Carey and his men were back at them, hungry for more punishment. At the end of the sixth day, dog-tired and battle-worn, but still full of fight, the detachment was relieved by a fresh battalion which had come up from the rear.
Major Gen. James W. McAndrew, it was announced on May 3, was appointed Chief of Staff of the American expeditionary force in succession to Brig. Gen. James G. Harbord, who was assigned to a command in the field. Other changes on General Pershing's staff included the appointment of Lieut. Col. Robert C. Davis as Adjutant General, and Colonel Merritte W. Ireland as Surgeon General.
The General Staff of the American expeditionary forces in France, as the result of several changes in personnel, consisted on May 14, 1918, of the following:
President Wilson on May 4 pardoned two soldiers of the American expeditionary force who had been condemned to death by a military court-martial in France for sleeping on sentry duty and commuted to nominal prison terms the death sentences imposed on two others for disobeying orders.
Major Hugh H. Young, director of the work of dealing with communicable blood diseases in our army in France, made this striking statement on May 12 regarding the freedom of the American expeditionary force from such diseases:
In making plans for this department of medical work in France it had been calculated by the medical authorities in Washington to have ten 1,000-bed hospitals, in which a million men could receive treatment, but with 500,000 Americans in France there is not one of the five allotted Americans in any of the hospitals now running, and only 500 cases of this type of disease needing hospital treatment, instead of the expected 5,000.In other words, instead of having 1 per cent. of our soldiers in hospitals from social diseases, as had been expected, the actual number is only one-tenth of 1 per cent. There is no reason to doubt that this record will be maintained. The hospitals prepared for this special treatment are to be used for other cases.
In making plans for this department of medical work in France it had been calculated by the medical authorities in Washington to have ten 1,000-bed hospitals, in which a million men could receive treatment, but with 500,000 Americans in France there is not one of the five allotted Americans in any of the hospitals now running, and only 500 cases of this type of disease needing hospital treatment, instead of the expected 5,000.
In other words, instead of having 1 per cent. of our soldiers in hospitals from social diseases, as had been expected, the actual number is only one-tenth of 1 per cent. There is no reason to doubt that this record will be maintained. The hospitals prepared for this special treatment are to be used for other cases.
This means that the American Army is the cleanest in the world. The results, according to Major Young, have been achieved by preventive steps taken by the American medical directors, coupled with the co-operation of the men.
The overseas fighting forces of the United States have been increasing at a much more rapid rate than the public was aware of. Early in May the number of our men in France was in excess of 500,000. A great increase in the ultimate size of the army was further indicated when the War Department asked the House Military Affairs Committee for a new appropriation of $15,000,000,000.
Mr. Baker, Secretary of War, appeared before the committee on April 23 and, after describing the results of his inspection of the army in France, said that the size of the army that the United States would send abroad was entirely dependent upon the shipping situation. Troops were already moving to France at an accelerated rate.
President Wilson, through Mr. Baker, presented the House Military Affairs Committee on May 2 with proposals for increasing the army. The President asked that all limits be removed on the number of men to be drafted for service. Mr. Baker said that he declined to discuss the numbers of the proposed army "for the double reason that any number implies a limit, and the only possible limit is our ability to equip and transport men, which is constantly on the increase."
The Administration's plans were submitted in detail on May 3, when the committee began the preparation of the army appropriation bill carrying $15,000,000,000 to finance the army during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919. Mr. Baker again refused to go into the question of figures, but it became known at the Capitol that the estimates he submitted were based on a force of not fewer than 3,000,000 men and 160,000 officers in the field by July 1, 1919. The plan contemplated having 130,000 officers and 2,168,000 men, or a total of 2,298,000, in the field and in camps by July 1, 1918, and approximately an additional million in the field before June 30, 1919.
Mr. Baker said that all the army camps and cantonments were to be materially enlarged, to take care of the training of the men to be raised in the next twelve months. The General Staff had this question under careful consideration, and the idea was to increase the size of existing training camps rather than to establish new camps. These camps, it was estimated, already had facilities for training close to a million men at one time.
The Secretary of War also made it clear that the total of $15,000,000,000 involved in the estimates as revised for the new army bill did not cover the whole cost of the army for the next fiscal year. The $15,000,000,000, he explained, was in addition to the large sums that would be carried in the Fortifications Appropriation bill, which covers the cost of heavy ordnance both in the United States and overseas. Nor did it include the Military Academy bill. It was emphasized that, although estimates were submitted on the basis of an army of a certain size, Congress was being asked for blanket authority for the President to raise all the men needed, and the approximate figures of $15,000,000,000 could be increased by deficiency appropriations.
It was brought out in the committee that the transportation service had improved and that the War Department was able to send more men to France each month. It was estimated that if transport facilities continued to improve, close to 1,500,000 fighting men would be on the western front by Dec. 31, 1918. The United States had now in camp and in the field, it was explained to the committee, the following enlisted men and officers:
Provost Marshal General Crowder announced on May 8 that 1,227,000 Americans had been called to the colors under the Selective Draft act, thereby indicating approximately the strength of the national army. Additional calls during May for men to be in camp by June 2 affected something like 366,600 registrants under the draft law. These men were largely intended to fill up the camps at home, replacing the seasoned personnel from the divisions previously training there. With the increase of the number of divisions in France, the flow of replacement troops was increasing proportionately.
In regard to the number of men in France, Mr. Baker on May 8 made the following important announcement:
In January I told the Senate committee that there was strong likelihood that early in the present year 500,000 American troops would be dispatched to France. I cannot either now or perhaps later discuss the number of American troops in France, but I am glad to be able to say that the forecast I made in January has been surpassed.
In January I told the Senate committee that there was strong likelihood that early in the present year 500,000 American troops would be dispatched to France. I cannot either now or perhaps later discuss the number of American troops in France, but I am glad to be able to say that the forecast I made in January has been surpassed.
This was the first official utterance indicating even indirectly the number of men sent abroad. The first force to go was never described except as a division, although as a matter of fact it was constituted into two divisions soon after its arrival in France.
An Associated Press dispatch dated May 17 announced that troops of the new American Army had arrived within the zone of the British forces in Northern France and were completing their training in the area occupied by the armies which were blocking the path of the Germans to the Channel ports. The British officers who were training the Americans stated that the men from overseas were of the finest material. The newcomers were warmly greeted by the British troops and were reported to be full of enthusiasm.
This friendly British view of our soldiers in France is from the pen of a noted warcorrespondent of The London Morning Post
I have recently visited the miniature America now installed in France, and installed in the most French part of Central France. There is nothing more French than these ancient towns with historic castles, moats, dungeons, and torture chambers, these old villages, where farms are sometimes still battlemented like small castles, and this countryside where living is easy and pleasant. On to this heart of France has descended a whole people from across the ocean, a people that hails from New England and California, from Virginia and Illinois. The American Army has taken over this heart of France, and is teaching it to "go some". Townsfolk and villagers enjoy being taught. The arrival of the American Army is a revelation to them.
I was surprised at first to find how fresh a novelty an allied army was in this part of France. Then I remembered that these little towns and villages have in the last few months for the first time seen allies of France. The ports where the American troops land have seen many other allies; they saw, indeed, in August, 1914, some of the first British troops land, whose reception remains in the recollection of the inhabitants as a scene of such fervor and loving enthusiasm as had never been known before and probably will not be known again. In fact, to put it brutally, French ports are blasé. But this Central France for the first time welcomes allied troops. It is true they had seen some Russians, but the least said of them now the better. Some of the Russians are still there, hewing wood for three francs a day per head, and behaving quite peaceably.
These old towns and villages look upon the American Army in their midst as the greatest miracle they have ever known, and a greater one than they ever could have dreamed of. One motors through scores of little towns and villages where the American soldier, in his khaki, his soft hat, (which I am told is soon to be abolished,) and his white gaiters, swarms. The villagers put up bunting, calico signs, flags, and have stocks of American "canned goods" to show in their shop windows. The children, when bold, play with the American soldiers, and the children that are more shy just venture to go up and touch an American soldier's leg. Very old peasant ladies put on their Sunday black and go out walking and in some mysterious way talking with American soldiers. The village Mayor turns out and makes a speech utterly incomprehensible to the American soldier, whenever a fresh contingent of the latter arrives. The 1919 class, just called up, plays bugles and shouts "Good morning" when an American car comes by.
Vice versa, this Central France is perhaps even more of a miracle to the American troops than the American troops are to it. To watch the American trooper from Arkansas or Chicago being shown over a castle which is not only older than the United States, but was in its prime under Louis XII., and dates back to a Roman fortress now beneath it, is a wonderful sight. Here the American soldier shows himself a charming child. There is nothing of the "Innocents Abroad" about him. I heard scarcely anything (except about telephones and railways) of any American brag of modernism in this ancient part of France. On the contrary, the soldier is learning with open eyes, and trying to learn with open ears, all these wonders of the past among which he has been suddenly put. The officer, too, even the educated officer, is beautifully astonished at all this past, which he had read about, but which, quite possibly, he didn't really believe to exist. The American officers who speak French—and there are some of them, coming chiefly fromthe Southern States—are, of course, heroes in every town, and sought after in cafés at recreation hours by every French officer and man. Those who do not know French are learning it, and I remember a picturesque sight, that of a very elderly, prim French governess in black, teaching French to American subalterns in a Y.M.C.A. canteen.
A great French preacher the other day, in his sermon in a Paris church, said that this coming to France of millions of English troops and future millions of American troops may mean eventually one of the greatest changes in Continental Europe the world has ever known. His words never seemed to me so full of meaning as they did when I was among the Americans in the heart of France. There, of course, the contrast is infinitely greater than it can be in the France which our own troops are occupying and defending. These young, fresh, hustling, keen Americans, building up numerous works of all kinds to prepare for defending France, have brought with them Chinese labor and negro labor; and Chinese and negroes and German and Austrian prisoners all work in these American camps under American officers' orders. Imagine what an experience, what a miracle, indeed, this spectacle seems to the country-folk of this old French soil, who have always lived very quietly, who never wanted to go anywhere else, and who knew, indeed, that France had allies fighting and working for her, but had never seen any of them until these Americans came across three thousand miles of ocean.
Something of a miracle, also, is what our new allies are accomplishing. They are doing everything on a huge scale. I saw aviation camps, training camps, aviation schools, vast tracts where barracks were being put up, railways built, telegraphs and telephones installed by Chinese labor, negro labor, German prisoners' labor, under the direction of American skilled workmen, who are in France by the thousand. There are Y.M.C.A. canteens, Red Cross canteens, clubs for officers and for men, theatres and cinemas for the army, and a prodigious amount of food—all come from America. The hams alone I saw strung up in one canteen would astonish the boches. American canned goods, meat, fruit, condensed milk, meal, &c., have arrived in France in stupendous quantities. No body of American troops land in France until what is required for their sustenance several weeks ahead is already stored in France. Only the smallest necessaries are bought on the spot, and troops passing through England on their way to France are strictly forbidden, both officers and men, to buy any article of food whatsoever in England. As for the quality, the American has nothing to complain of, so far as I could see. All pastry, cakes, sweets are henceforth prohibited throughout civilian France, but the American troops rightly have all these things in plenty. I saw marvelous cakes and tarts, which would create a run on any Paris or London teashop, and the lady who manages one American Red Cross canteen (by the way, she is an Englishwoman, and is looked up to by the American military authorities as one of the best organizers they have met) explained to me wonderful recipes they have for making jam with honey and preserved fruit. The bread, of course, they make themselves, and, as is right, it is pure white flour bread, such as no civilian knows nowadays.
One motors through scores of villages and more, and every little old French spot swarms with American Tommies billeted in cottages and farmhouses. Many of them marched straight to their billets from their landing port, and the experience is as wonderful for them, just spirited over from the wilds of America, as it is for the villagers who welcome these almost fabulous allies. But it is the engineering, building, and machinery works the Americans are putting up which are the most astonishing. Gangs of workers have come over in thousands. Many of these young chaps are college men, Harvard or Princeton graduates. They dig and toil as efficiently as any laborer, and perhaps with more zeal. One American Major told me 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 drafts, 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 are doing is a certain aviation camp and school. In a few months it has neared completion, and when it is finished it will, I believe, be the biggest of its kind in the world. There pilots are trained, and trained in numbers which I may not say, but which are comforting. The number of airplanes they use merely for training, which also I must not state, is in itself remarkable. "Training pilots is the one essential thing," I was told by the C.O. These flying men—or boys—who have, of course, already been broken in in America, do an additional course in France, and when they leave the aviation camp I saw they are absolutely ready for air fighting at the front. This is the finishing school. The aviators go through eight distinct courses in this school. They are perfected in flying, in observation, in bombing, in machine-gun firing. On even a cloudy and windy day the air overhead buzzes with these young American fliers, all getting into the pink of condition to do their stunts at the front. They seemed to me as keen as our own flying men, and as well disciplined. They live in the camp, and it requires moving heaven and earth for one of them to get leave to go even to the nearest little quiet old town.
The impression is the same of the American bases in France as of the American front in France. I found there and here one distinctive characteristic, the total absence of bluff. I was never once told that we were going to be shown how to win the war. I was never once told that America is going to win the war. I never heard that American men and machines are better than ours, but I did hear almost apologies from American soldiers because they had not come into the war sooner. They are, I believe, spending now more money than we are—indeed, the pay of their officers is about double that of ours. I said something about the cost. "Yes, but you see we must make up for lost time," was all the American General said. And he told me about the splendid training work that is being done now in the States by British and French officers who have gone out there knowing what war is, and who teach American officers and men from first-hand experience. This particular General hoped that by this means in a very short time American troops arriving in France may be sent much more quickly to the front than is now the case.
An impression of complete, businesslike determination is what one gets when visiting the Americans in France. A discipline even stricter than that which applies in British and French troops is enforced. In towns, officers, for instance, are not allowed out after 9 P. M. Some towns where subalterns discovered the wine of the country have instantly been put "out of bounds." No officer, on any pretext whatsoever, is allowed to go to Paris, except on official business. From the camps they are not even allowed to go to the neighboring towns. They have, to put it quite frankly, a reputation of wild Americanism to live down, and they sometimes surprise the French by their seriousness. It is a striking sight to see American officers and men flocking into tiny little French Protestant churches on Sundays in this Catholic heart of France. The congregation is a handful of old French Huguenots, and the ancient, rigid French pasteur never in his life preached to so many, and certainly never to soldiers from so far. They come from so far, and from such various parts, these Americans, and for France, as well as for themselves, it is a wonderful experience. I was told that the postal censors who read the letters of the American expeditionary force are required to know forty-seven languages. Of these languages the two least used are Chinese and German.
[Month Ended May 15, 1918]
All shipbuilding records have been broken by American builders in the last month. On May 14 it was announced that the first million tons of ships had been completed and delivered to the United States Government under the direction of the Shipping Board. The actual figures on May 11 showed the number of ships to be 159, aggregating 1,108,621 tons. More than half of this tonnage was delivered since Jan. 1, 1918. Most of these ships were requisitioned on the ways or in contract form when the United States entered the war. This result had been anticipated in the monthly records, which showed a steady increase in the tonnage launched:
The rapidity with which ships are being produced was shown by the breaking of the world's record on April 20 and in turn the breaking of this record on May 5. On the former date the 8,800-ton steel steamship West Lianga was launched at Seattle, Wash., fifty-five working days from the date the keel was laid. This was then the world's record. But on May 5 at Camden, N. J., the steel freight steamship Tuckahoe, of 5,548 tons, was launched twenty-seven days after the keel was laid.
Ten days after this extraordinary achievement the Tuckahoe was finished and furnished and ready for sea—another record feat.
Charles M. Schwab, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, was on April 16, 1918, appointed Director General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation to speed up the Government's shipbuilding program. He was invested with practically unlimited powers over all construction work in shipyards producing vessels for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Charles Piez in consequence ceased to be General Manager of the Corporation, remaining, however, as Vice President to supervise administrative details of construction and placing contracts.
Mr. Schwab, who was the fifth man to be put in charge of the shipbuilding program, was not desirous of accepting the position when first approached because he considered his work in producing steel of first importance in the carrying out of the nation's war program. But after a conference with President Wilson, Edward N. Hurley, Chairman of the Shipping Board; Bainbridge Colby, another member of the board, and Charles Piez, he decided to accept the new position.
Almost the first thing Mr. Schwab did was to move his headquarters to Philadelphia as the centre of the steel-shipbuilding region, taking with him all the division chiefs of the Fleet Corporation directly connected with construction work and about 2,000 employes. The Shipping Board and Mr. Piez retained their offices in Washington with 1,500 subordinates and employes. As a further step toward decentralization it was arranged to move the operating department, including agencies such as the Interallied Ship Control Committee, headed by P. A. S. Franklin, to New York City.
The original "cost-plus" contract under which the Submarine Boat Corporation of Newark was to build 160 ships of 5,000 tons for the Government was canceled by Mr. Schwab as an experiment to determine whether shipyards operating under lump-sum contracts and accepting all responsibility for providing materials could make greater speed in construction than those operating with Government money, such as the Hog Island yards. The result was to increase the cost of each of the 160 ships from $787,500 to $960,000.
A request for an appropriation of $2,223,835,000 for the 1919 program was presented by Mr. Hurley and Mr. Schwab to the House Appropriations Committee on May 8.
Of this total $1,386,100,000 was for construction of ships and $652,000,000 for the purchasing and requisitioning of plants and material in connection with the building program.
When the Third Liberty Loan, raised to finance America's war needs, closed on May 4, 1918, the subscriptions were well over $4,000,000,000, a billion in excess of the amount called for. The total was announced on May 17 as $4,170,019,650. Secretary McAdoo stated that he would allot bonds in full on all subscriptions.
The loan was regarded as the most successful ever floated by any nation, not so much because of the volume of sales, but because of the wide distribution of the loan. Approximately 17,000,000 individuals subscribed, that is, about one person in every six in the United States. The number of buyers in the Third Loan exceeded those in the Second by 7,000,000 and those in the First by 12,500,000.
The campaign throughout the country was conducted with all the thoroughness of a great political struggle, with the difference that there were no contending parties and all forces were marshaled to make the loan a success. Nor was the campaign merely a display of efficient organization and vigorous propaganda. It had many features of dramatic and picturesque interest, not only in the large cities, but in almost every smaller centre of the nation. A noonday rally of 50,000 men and women in Wall Street, New York, on the closing day, was typical. An eyewitness described it thus:
The Police Department Band appeared and the band of the 15th Coast Artillery from Fort Hamilton. Taking advantage of the occasion, James Montgomery Flagg now appeared in his studio van on the southern fringe of the Broad Street crowd. A girl with him played something on the cornet. It was a good deal like a show on the Midway at a Western county fair. But this was no faker—one of the most famous artists in America, throwing in a signed sketch of whoever bought Liberty bonds. Those near him began pushing and crowding to take advantage of the offer.And now, suddenly, a tremendous racket up the street toward Broadway. Who comes?Cheer on cheer, now. It is the "Anzacs." Twelve long, rangy fellows, officers all, six or seven of them with the little brass "A" on the shoulder, which signifies service at Gallipoli and in Flanders. They are members of the contingent of 500 which arrived here yesterday on its way to the battlefields of France. They run lightly up the Sub-Treasury steps and take their stand in a group beside the soldier band.And now they all come—all the actors in the drama of the day. Governor Whitman, bareheaded, solemn-faced; Rabbi Stephen Wise, with his rugged face and his shock of blue-black hair; Mme. Schumann-Heink, panting a little with excitement; Auguste Bouilliz, baritone of the Royal Opera of Brussels, who later is to thrill them all with his singing of the "Marseillaise"; Cecil Arden, in a shining helmet and draped in the Union Jack, come to sing "God Save the King," while the sunburned Australian officers stand like statues at salute; Oscar Straus, and then—"Yee-ee-ee-eee."Oh, how they cheered! For the "Blue Devils" of France had poured out of the door of the Sub-Treasury and, with the fitful sun shining once more and gleaming on their bayonets, were running down the steps in two lines, past the "Anzacs," past the soldier band, to draw up in ranks at the bottom.Lieutenant de Moal speaks. What does he say? Who knows? But he is widely cheered, just the same, as he gives way to Governor Whitman."There are gatherings like this, though not so large, all over our land today," cries the Governor. "In every town andcity we Americans are gathered together at this moment to demonstrate that we are behind our army, behind our navy, behind our President."The cheers that acclaimed his mention of the President drowned his voice for several moments."Here are the Australians," he cries, pointing to the "Anzac" officers. "They have brought us a message, but we are going to give them a message, too."As the Governor stepped back to cheers that rocked the street, Lieutenant de Moal barked a sharp order, and the "Blue Devils" shouldered their guns with fixed bayonets, the six trumpeters ta-ra-ta-raed, and the soldiers of France moved off up the sidewalk lane to the side door of the Stock Exchange, where all business was suspended during the fifteen minutes of their visit on the floor.Four of the "Anzacs" meanwhile were taken from their ranks on the steps of the building up to the pedestal of the statue of Washington, which was used as speaker's platform, and Captain Frank McCallam made a brief address."We haven't many men left," he said simply. "And it is up to you people to help us out to the best of your ability."More cheers, and then Cecil Arden sang "God Save the King." The American regular fired a blank volley over the heads of the crowd, and the kids scrambled for the empty shells.Following Wise and Straus, Bouilliz, the Belgian baritone, sang the "Marseillaise," and then, after the soldier band had played "Where Do We Go from Here, Boys?" Mme. Schumann-Heink advanced and sang the national anthem, following it up with an appeal that was the climax to the play.
The Police Department Band appeared and the band of the 15th Coast Artillery from Fort Hamilton. Taking advantage of the occasion, James Montgomery Flagg now appeared in his studio van on the southern fringe of the Broad Street crowd. A girl with him played something on the cornet. It was a good deal like a show on the Midway at a Western county fair. But this was no faker—one of the most famous artists in America, throwing in a signed sketch of whoever bought Liberty bonds. Those near him began pushing and crowding to take advantage of the offer.
And now, suddenly, a tremendous racket up the street toward Broadway. Who comes?
Cheer on cheer, now. It is the "Anzacs." Twelve long, rangy fellows, officers all, six or seven of them with the little brass "A" on the shoulder, which signifies service at Gallipoli and in Flanders. They are members of the contingent of 500 which arrived here yesterday on its way to the battlefields of France. They run lightly up the Sub-Treasury steps and take their stand in a group beside the soldier band.
And now they all come—all the actors in the drama of the day. Governor Whitman, bareheaded, solemn-faced; Rabbi Stephen Wise, with his rugged face and his shock of blue-black hair; Mme. Schumann-Heink, panting a little with excitement; Auguste Bouilliz, baritone of the Royal Opera of Brussels, who later is to thrill them all with his singing of the "Marseillaise"; Cecil Arden, in a shining helmet and draped in the Union Jack, come to sing "God Save the King," while the sunburned Australian officers stand like statues at salute; Oscar Straus, and then—
"Yee-ee-ee-eee."
Oh, how they cheered! For the "Blue Devils" of France had poured out of the door of the Sub-Treasury and, with the fitful sun shining once more and gleaming on their bayonets, were running down the steps in two lines, past the "Anzacs," past the soldier band, to draw up in ranks at the bottom.
Lieutenant de Moal speaks. What does he say? Who knows? But he is widely cheered, just the same, as he gives way to Governor Whitman.
"There are gatherings like this, though not so large, all over our land today," cries the Governor. "In every town andcity we Americans are gathered together at this moment to demonstrate that we are behind our army, behind our navy, behind our President."
The cheers that acclaimed his mention of the President drowned his voice for several moments.
"Here are the Australians," he cries, pointing to the "Anzac" officers. "They have brought us a message, but we are going to give them a message, too."
As the Governor stepped back to cheers that rocked the street, Lieutenant de Moal barked a sharp order, and the "Blue Devils" shouldered their guns with fixed bayonets, the six trumpeters ta-ra-ta-raed, and the soldiers of France moved off up the sidewalk lane to the side door of the Stock Exchange, where all business was suspended during the fifteen minutes of their visit on the floor.
Four of the "Anzacs" meanwhile were taken from their ranks on the steps of the building up to the pedestal of the statue of Washington, which was used as speaker's platform, and Captain Frank McCallam made a brief address.
"We haven't many men left," he said simply. "And it is up to you people to help us out to the best of your ability."
More cheers, and then Cecil Arden sang "God Save the King." The American regular fired a blank volley over the heads of the crowd, and the kids scrambled for the empty shells.
Following Wise and Straus, Bouilliz, the Belgian baritone, sang the "Marseillaise," and then, after the soldier band had played "Where Do We Go from Here, Boys?" Mme. Schumann-Heink advanced and sang the national anthem, following it up with an appeal that was the climax to the play.
Less exciting but more impressive was the parade on April 26, when thousands of mothers who had sent their sons to the front marched in a column of 35,000 men and women in the Liberty Day parade in New York City. This day had been proclaimed as such by President Wilson for "the people of the United States to assemble in their respective communities and liberally pledge anew their financial support to sustain the nation's cause, and to hold patriotic demonstrations in every city, town, and hamlet throughout the land."
The challenge of the mothers was inscribed on one of the banners they carried: "We give our sons—they give their lives—what do you give?"
Remarkable as was the appearance of these mothers with the little service flags over their shoulders, many of them so old that they marched with difficulty, the spectators who flanked the line of march along Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to Fifty-ninth Street found it even more thrilling to note that so very many of them, whether they were mothers or young wives, or just young girls proud of the brothers that had gone forth to service—so very many of them carried service flags with three and four and five and even six stars, and occasionally a glint of the sun would even carry the eye to a gold star, which meant, whenever it appeared, a veil of mourning for a wooden cross somewhere in France.
Among the minor but ingenious forms of publicity was the Liberty Loan ball which was rolled from Buffalo to New York, a distance of 470 miles, and which ended its journey of three weeks on May 4 at the City Hall. The ball was a large steel shell covered with canvas.
Every community that reached or exceeded its quota to the loan was entitled to raise a flag of honor specially designed for the purpose. At least 32,000 communities gained the honor and raised the flag.
To strengthen the financial basis of the nation's war industries and use monetary resources to the best advantage the War Finance Corporation bill was passed by Congress and approved by President Wilson on April 5, 1918. The two main purposes of the act are to provide credits for industries and enterprises necessary or contributory to the prosecution of the war and to supervise new issues of capital. The act creates the War Finance Corporation, consisting of the Secretary and four additional persons, with $500,000,000 capital stock, all subscribed by the United States. Banks and trust companies financing war industries or enterprises may receive advances from the corporation.