arrived.

On May 30th General Pershing announced the complete repulse of further
enemy attacks from the new American positions near Cantigny. This time
he says: "there was considerable shelling with gas, but the results
obtained were very small. The attempt was a complete failure. Our
casualties were very light. We have consolidated our positions."

The London Evening News commenting on this fact says: "Bravo the young
Americans! Nothing in today's battle narrative from the front is more
exhilarating than the account of their fight at Cantigny. It was clean
cut from beginning to end, like one of their countrymen's short stories,
and the short story of Cantigny is going to expand into a full-length
novel which will write the doom of the Kaiser and Kaiserism. Cantigny
will one day be repeated a thousand fold."

The Germans, in reporting this fight, avoided mention of the fact that
the operation had been conducted by American troops. This seemed to
indicate that they feared the moral effect of such an admission in
Germany. Up to this time, with the exception of small brigades, the
American army had been held as a reserve. After the Cantigny fight they
were hurried to the front. The main point to which they were sent at
first was Chateau-Thierry, north of the Marne, the nearest point to
Paris reached by the enemy. There, at the very critical point of the
great German Drive, they not only checked the enemy but, by a dashing
attack, threw him back.

This may be said to be the turning point in the whole war. It not only
stopped the German Drive at this point, but it gave new courage to the
Allies and took the heart out of the Germans. The troops were rushed to
the battle front at Thierry, arriving on Saturday, June 1st. They
entered the battle enthusiastically, almost immediately after they had
arrived. A despatch from Picardy says: "On their way to the battle lines
they were cheered by the crowds in the villages through which they
passed; their victorious stand with their gallant French Allies, so soon
after entering the line, has electrified all France."

General Pershing's terse account of what happened reads as follows: "In
the fighting northwest of Chateau-Thierry our troops broke up an attempt
of the enemy to advance to the south through Veuilly Woods, and by a
counter-attack drove him back to the north of the woods."

The American troops had gone, into the action only an hour or so after
their arrival on the banks