n were
magnificent when their opportunity was given them, is cause not for
vaunting ourselves, but only for gratefulness that our honor remains to
us--that we have not had to accept life and liberty at other men's hands
while our hands stayed in our pockets.

Our fighting men redeemed us in our own eyes; they restored our souls'
dignity; for this we can never be grateful enough to them. But we can
never be braggart about it. It might so easily have come too late!

On August 6, Foch was made Marshal of France.

And two days later, the British, on the Somme, launched the first really
successful offensive of the war--not stopping a drive, but inaugurating
one.

At last Foch was able to make war as he had for years contended that war
should be made: The way to make war is to attack.

It was his plan, now that he had the men to make this possible, to keep
the enemy busy by striking first at one point of the long line running
from Belgium to the Piave, and then at another. And by the first of
September the Allied line on the Western front was back where it ran in
the deadlock of 1915-16 while the attack on Verdun was raging.

"General Pershing," Foch has said, "wished to have his army concentrated,
as far as possible, in an American sector. The Argonne and the heights
of the Meuse were a sector hard to tackle. So I said to him: 'All right;
your men have the devil's own punch. They will get away with it. Go to
it.'"

And they went! That was the famous St. Mihiel salient. The American
infantry started their advance there on September 26. They went forward
with a rush. On their left, the French advanced as rapidly, and on
October 1 re-took St. Quentin, which the Germans had held since the
beginning of the war. October 2 the British, operating on the left of
the French, reached Cambrai which also had been in German hands for more
than four years.

October 4 the Hohenzollern King of Bulgaria deserted his doomed allies
and his throne and began looking for a place of refuge.

And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little
relish for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of
the United States "to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all
the belligerent states with this request and invite them to send
plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. . . . With a
view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the
immediate concl