r as to their
destination. The world was, therefore, fairly electrified when the
announcement was made that in defiance of the German submarines,
thousands of seasoned regulars and marines, trained fighting men, with
the tan of long service on the Mexican border, in Haiti, or Santo
Domingo still on their faces, had arrived in France to fight beside the
French, the British, the Belgians, the Russians, the Portuguese and the
Italian troops on the Western front.

Despite the enormous difficulties of unpreparedness and the submarine
dangers that faced them, the plans of the army and navy were carried
through with clock-like precision.

When the order came to prepare immediately an expeditionary force to go
to France, virtually all of the men who first crossed the seas were on
the Mexican border. General Pershing himself was at his headquarters in
San Antonio. There were no army transports available in the Atlantic.
The vessels that carried the troops were scattered on their usual
routes. Army reserve stores were still depleted from the border
mobilization. Regiments were below war strength. That was the condition
when President Wilson decided that the plea of the French high
commission should be answered and a force of regulars sent at once to
France.

At his word the War Department began to move. General Pershing was
summoned quietly to Washington. His arrival created some speculation in
the press, but at the request of Secretary Baker the newspapers
generally refrained from discussion of this point.

There were a thousand other activities afoot in the department at the
time. All the business of preparing for the military registration of
10,000,000 men, of providing quarters and instructors for nearly 50,000
prospective officers, for finding arms and equipment for millions of
troops yet to be organized, of expanding the regular army to full war
strength, of preparing and recruiting the National Guard for war was at
hand.

PERSHING SETS UP HEADQUARTERS.

General Pershing dropped quietly into the department and set up the
first headquarters of the American expeditionary forces in a little
office, hardly large enough to hold himself and his personal staff.
There, with the aid of the general staff, of Secretary Baker and of the
chiefs of the War Department bureaus, the plans were worked out.

Announcement of the sending of the force under General Pershing was made
May 18. The press gave the news to the country and t