General Pershing notes with just pride: "The place of honour in the
thrust towards Soissons on the 18th was given to our 1st and 2nd
divisions, in company with chosen French divisions. These two
divisions captured 7,000 prisoners and over 100 guns."

What one may call the "state entry" of America into the war had thus
been made, and Germany had been given full warning of what this new
element in the struggle must ultimately mean, were it given time to
develop. And during all these weeks of June and July, British and
American ships, carrying American soldiers, came in a never-ending
succession across the Atlantic. An American Army of 5,000,000 men was
in contemplation, and, "Why," said the President at Baltimore in
April, "limit it to 5,000,000?" While every day the British Navy kept
its grim hold on the internal life of Germany, and every day was
bringing the refreshed and reorganised British Army, now at the height
of its striking power, nearer to the opening on August 8th of that
mighty and continuous advance which ended the war.

CHAPTER VIII

"FEATURES OF THE WAR"

_April 15th._

In these April days Sir Douglas Haig's latest Despatch, dated the 21st
March, 1919--the first anniversary of those black days of last
year!--has just been published in all the leading English newspapers.
It is divided into three parts: "The Advance into Germany," "Features
of the War," and "My Thanks to Commanders and Staffs." It is on the
second part in particular that public attention has eagerly fastened.
Nothing could well be more interesting or more important. For it
contains the considered judgment of the British Commander-in-Chief on
the war as a whole, so far, at least, as Great Britain is concerned.
The strong and reticent man who is responsible for it broke through
the limitations of official expression on two occasions only during
the war: in the spring of 1917, in that famous and much criticised
interview which he gave to certain French journalists, an incident, by
the way, on which this Despatch throws a good deal of light; and in
the impassioned Order of last April, when, like Joffre on the Marne,
he told his country: that England had her back to the wall.

But here, for the first time, the mind on which for three and a half
years depended the military fortunes, and therewith the future destiny
of the British Empire, reveals itself with much fullness and freedom,
so far as the moment permits. The student of the