many, for which
preparations on a vast scale were being made, until reinforcements from
the United States could reach them sufficient to enable them to take the
offensive in their turn. Germany hastened its preparations through the
winter months of 1917-18, for they knew they must win a decisive victory
to crush the armies of France and England before the United States could
give efficient assistance. It was a race between America and Germany,
and America won. With the assistance of the British and French merchant
marine and such shipping as could be procured at home the American
forces were landed in France in the most astonishing numbers ever
recorded. The fears of Germany, the hopes of the Allies were alike
exceeded by the forces sent across the ocean. The first of July, 1918,
there were one million American soldiers in France. They came just in
time to avert disaster.

GERMAN OFFENSIVE IN 1918.

The initiative was with Germany, and the German command selected the
British army in position along the Scarpe River, north of Cambria, to
the Oise River--a distance of sixty miles--as the object of the first
drive. The assault began the morning of March 21, 1918. Along the entire
front the artillery fire that opened the drive was on the scale never
before approached in war. More than one million men, the choicest troops
of Germany, were ready to assault the British lines and they came on,
wave after wave, and Germany came perilously near success in her efforts
to break through the British lines. The British were driven back beyond
the lines of the battle of the Somme in 1916, important towns were
captured, but their lines still held. The first phase of the great
battle--known in history as the battle of Picardy--was a defeat to
German hopes.

WHEN THE AMERICANS CAME.

From the opening of the great offense of March 21, 1918, to the signing
of the armistice, November 11, 1918, there were few days when there were
not battles raging at several places along the west front extending
from near Metz in a prolonged sweep, west to Rheims, thence in an
irregular curved line convex toward Paris curving to the North Sea near
Dixmude approximately 250 miles in length. There were days and weeks
when battles of great intensity raged at certain sections, then died
away in that vicinity to break in fury elsewhere. Organized efforts on a
large scale in certain directions were called drives. Until July the
initiative was with Germany,