ive action, I am filled with emotion which I
am unable to express. Their deeds are immortal, and they have earned the
eternal gratitude of our country.

I am, Mr. Secretary, very respectfully,

JOHN J. PERSHING,

General, Commander-in-Chief,

American Expeditionary Forces.

To the Secretary of War.

CHAPTER XXXI

WHEN THE DAYS OF RECKONING DAWNED

_American Troops on All Fronts--Changes Come Fast and Furious--First
Hun Cry for Peace--Virtue, Vice and Violence--Austria
Surrenders--Opens Up the Dardanelles--Closing Days of Hohenzollern
Reign--Killing of Tisza--Terms Prepared for Germany--
Armistice Signed by Germany_.

AMERICAN TROOPS ON ALL FRONTS

The collapse of Russia in 1917 had released vast bodies of German troops
for service in France, but the calamities that overtook them on the
French front were so destructive that insufficient man power was left
to take care of the southeastern fronts, so that Serbia was enabled to
institute a new offensive, and with the aid of Greece, in a few days cut
Bulgaria out of the German horde, pressed forward in Serbia, and pushed
ahead through the Balkan regions. Meanwhile American strength was
greatly augumented in the west and at the same time American troops
appeared on the Murman coast in the north and Siberia on the Pacific
east, on the Piave front in Italy, and at every other point where
hostile strength was greatest or strategic advantage was to be gained by
their presence.

Concurrently, the United States navy swept the western seas of Europe
free of German submarines. Our naval forces were combined with those of
Great Britain as the sea arm of a united command, under the joint name
of the Grand Fleet; and American troop ships landed newly trained
American soldiers in France at the average number of about 250,000 a
month--over 2,200,000 in little more than a year; at the same time
helping to reopen in safety the lanes of ocean commerce by which the
trade of our European allies was fully restored, German ports corked
tight, and Germany thereby thrown back absolutely upon her own interior
resources. Out of this vigorous and abundant American action emerged the
conditions that insured a "Peace of Justice."

These things were the quick work of the latter part of 1917 and the
campaigns of 1918. The achievement was gigantic, but it had no effect in
taking attention or diverting action from those movements that offered
at once an advantage to our com