t was he who
commanded the French army that broke the German line at the marshes of
St. Gond, in the battle of the Marne, thus assuring victory to Joffre,
and he had later in the year secured fresh laurels in the first battle of
the Yser. At the moment of extreme danger to Italy, after Caporetto, in
1917, he had been chosen to command the assisting force sent down by the
French. Unsentimental and unswayed by political factors, he was
temperamentally and intellectually the ideal man for the post of supreme
Allied commander; he was furthermore supported by the capacity of General
Petain, the French commander-in-chief, and by a remarkable group of army
commanders, among whom Fayolle, Mangin, and Gouraud were to win
particular fame. But he lacked troops, the Germans disposing of 200
divisions as against 162 Allied divisions.

Hence the hurry call sent to America and hence the heavy sacrifice now
forced upon Pershing. Much against his will and only as a result of
extreme pressure, the American commander-in-chief agreed to a temporary
continuance of the brigading of American troops with the British and the
French. He had felt all along that "there was every reason why we could
not allow them to be scattered among our Allies, even by divisions, much
less as replacements, except by pressure of pure necessity." He disliked
the emphasis placed by the Allies upon training for trench warfare; he
feared the effect of the lack of homogeneity which would render the mixed
divisions "difficult to maneuver and almost certain to break up under the
stress of defeat," and he believed that the creation of independent
American armies "would be a severe blow to German morale." When the pinch
of necessity came, however, Pershing sank his objections to amalgamation
and, to his credit, agreed with a _beau geste_ and fine phrase which
concealed the differences between the Allied chiefs and won the heartiest
sympathy from France and England. The principle of an independent American
force, however, Pershing insisted upon, and he made clear that the
amalgamation of our troops with the French and British was merely a
temporary expedient.

Immediately after the stabilization of the battle-line near Amiens, the
Germans began their second great drive, this time against the British
along the Lys, in Flanders. The initial success of the attack, which began
on the 9th of April, was undeniable, and Sir Douglas Haig himself admitted
the danger of the moment: