sides of the Atlantic, both here and in America, was the extent
of the British set-back hi March and April, and its effect on the
general situation. That is clear, I think, when we look back on our
own Press at home, and still more on American utterances, both in the
States and in France. In _August_ of last year Mr. Secretary Baker
said: "We are only just beginning"--and he pointed to the millions of
men that America would have in France by 1919. On August 7th General
March, Chief of the American General Staff, said in the Senate
Committee, that America would have four millions of men in France,
with one million at home, for the campaign of 1919. "The only way that
Germany can be whipped is by America going into this thing with her
whole strength. It is up to us to win the war.... We must force the
issue and win." The editor of the _North American Review_ wrote in
August, and published in his September number, phrases like the
following: "But the hand of the enemy cannot be struck down for a long
time to come." "Virtually impregnable positions" are still held by
him. "No military observer is so sanguine as to anticipate anything
like conclusive results from the present campaign. The real test will
come next year, in the late spring and summer of 1919." By then the
Allies must have "a great preponderance of men and guns. These America
must supply."

But when General March said in August: "It is up to us to win the
war," and the _North American Review_ talked of "virtually impregnable
positions," and the impossibility of "anything like conclusive results
from the present campaign"--the capture of those "impregnable
positions" by the British Army, and thereby the winning of the war,
were only a few weeks away! Similar phrases could be quoted from the
British Press, and from prominent Englishmen, though not, unless my
memory plays me false, from any of our responsible military leaders.
The fact is that the view I represented, in my second article, as the
view taken by the heads of the British Army, of the March retreat, had
turned out by the summer to be the true one. The German armies _had_
to a large extent beaten themselves out against the British defensive
battle of the spring: and while the Americans were making their
splendid spurt from April to August, and entering the fighting field
in force for the first time, the British Army, having absorbed its
recruits, taken huge toll of its enemies, and profited by all there