ety, including that of
different parts of the United States. One day I received a letter from a
fellow countryman which read like this:

"I'm out here in the R.F.A. with 'krumps' bursting on my cocoanut and am
going to see it through. If you've got any American newspapers or
magazines lying loose please send them to me, as I am far from
California."

The clans kept arriving. Every day saw new battalions and new guns
disembark. England was sending to Sir Douglas Haig men and material, but
not an army in the modern sense. He had to weld the consignments into a
whole there in the field in face of the enemy. Munitions were a matter
of resource and manufacturing, but the great factory of all was the
factory of men. It was not enough that the gunners should know how to
shoot fairly accurately back in England, or Canada, or Australia. They
must learn to cooeperate with scores of batteries of different calibers
in curtains of fire and, in turn, with the infantry, whose attacks they
must support with the finesse of scientific calculation plus the
instinctive _liaison_ which comes only with experience under trained
officers, against the German Army which had no lack of material in its
conscript ranks for promotion to fill vacancies in the officers' lists.

From seventeen miles of front to twenty-seven, and then to sixty and
finally to nearly one hundred, the British had broadened their
responsibility, which meant only practice in the defensive, while the
Germans had had two years' practice in the offensive. The two British
offensives at Neuve Chapelle had included a small proportion of the
battalions which were to fight on the Somme; and the third, incomparably
more ambitious, faced heavier concentration of troops and guns than its
predecessors.

What had not been gained in battle practice must be approximated in
drill. Every battalion commander, every staff officer and every general
who had had any experience, must be instructor as well as director. They
must assemble their machine and tune it up before they put it on a
stiffer road than had been tried before.

The British Army zone in France became a school ground for the Grand
Offensive; and while the people at home were thinking, "We've sent you
the men and the guns--now for action!" the time of preparation was
altogether too short for the industrious learners. Every possible kind
of curriculum which would simulate actual conditions of attack had been
devised. In moving