t as gratifying, because it could be calculated to
create a greater measure of speed and assistance from the slowly
functioning powers in America. The reasoning was that any possible
pessimism would hurry to the wheel every American shoulder that had
failed to take up its individual war burden under the wave of optimism.
The army had another reason for its optimism. Our officers knew
something about the dark days that had preceded the first battle at the
Marne. They were familiar with the gloomy outlook in 1914 that had led
to the hurried removal of the French government from Paris to Bordeaux.
Our men recalled how the enemy was then overrunning Belgium, how the old
British "Contemptibles" were in retreat, and how the German was within
twenty miles of the French capital.

In that crisis had come the message by Foch and the brilliant stroke
with which he backed it up. What followed was the tumble and collapse of
the straddling German effort and the forced transformation in the
enemy's plans from a war of six weeks to a war of four years.

Our army knew the man who turned the trick at the Marne. We knew that we
were under his command, and not the slightest doubt existed but that it
was now our destiny to take part in another play of the cards which
would call and cash the German hand. Our forces in the coming
engagements were staking their lives, to a man, on Foch's ace in the
hole.

That was the deadly earnestness of our army's confidence in Foch. The
capture of a hill top in Picardy or the loss of a village in Flanders
had no effect upon that confidence. It found reinforcement in the
belief that since March 21st, America had gained a newer and keener
appreciation of her part in the war.

Our army began to feel that the American people, more than three
thousand miles away from the battle fronts, would have a better
understanding of the intense meaning that had been already conveyed in
General Pershing's words, "Confidence is needed but overconfidence is
dangerous." In other words, our soldiers in the field began to feel that
home tendencies that underrated the enemy's strength and underestimated
the effort necessary to overcome him, had been corrected. The army had
long felt that such tendencies had made good material for Billy Sunday's
sermons and spread-eagle speeches, but they hadn't loaded guns or placed
men in the front line.

We felt that this crisis had brought to America a better realisation of
the fact tha