, on our way to St.
Menehould and Chalons, passing by the wholly ruined village of
Clermont in Argonne. The forest ran past us, a wintry fairyland, dimly
lit by our quickly moving lamps, and apparently impenetrable beyond
their range, an optical effect, however, that may be produced in
darkness by a mere fringe of trees along the roadside. But I knew
while I watched the exquisite effects of brown and silver, produced by
the succession of tall, pale trunks rising above the lace-work of the
underwood, as scene after scene pressed upon us out of the dark, that
we were indeed in a forest country, only some twenty miles away from
the scene of General Pershing's drive at the end of last September,
when he achieved on the first day an advance of seven miles through
difficult country, while General Gouraud was pushing forward in
Champagne; and I found myself speculating in the dark on the many
discussions I had heard both among English and Americans of that
advance, and of the checks and difficulties which, as I suppose is now
generally admitted, followed on the first brilliant operations.

During the last few weeks further information has been forthcoming
about the Meuse-Argonne battle, as the American operations between the
Argonne and the Meuse from September 26th to November 11th are
apparently to be known. But a good deal of obscurity still hangs over
the details of the fighting. In the British Army I came across the
very general belief that the staff and transport work of the advance
had been--in the words of a well-known historian of the war--"as was
natural with a new army, scarcely adequate to the fighting qualities
of the troops engaged." And I often heard regret expressed that the
American Command had not been more willing to avail itself of the
staff experience of either or both of the older armies, which
might--so the British or French spectator thinks--have lessened the
casualty lists among extraordinarily gallant but inexperienced troops.
"Replacements fresh from home were put into exhausted divisions with
little time for training," says General Pershing's report. And "some
of the divisions were fighting their first battle." They were faced
also at the beginning of the advance by some of the best remaining
German troops. When one thinks of all the long and bitter training in
the field that went to the perfecting of French or British staff work,
and then of the difficult nature of the ground over which the First