ng out of their heads,
and with reports that will transform all our similar work at home." So
that we may perhaps trace some at least of those large and admirable
conceptions of Base needs and Base management, with which the American
Army prepared its way in France, to these early American visits and
reports, as well as to the native American genius for organisation and
the generosity of American finance.

But if the spectacle of "the back of the Army" was a wonderful one in
1916, it became doubly wonderful before the end of the war. The
feeding strength of our forces in France rose to a total approaching
2,700,000 men. The Commander-in-Chief tries to make the British public
understand something of what this figure means. Transport and shipping
were, of course, the foundation of everything. While the British Fleet
kept the seas and fought the submarine, the Directorate of Docks
handled the ports, and the Directorate of Roads, with the Directorates
of Railway Traffic, Construction and Light Railways, dealt with the
land transport. During the years of war we landed ten and a half
millions of persons in France, and last year the weekly tonnage
arriving at French ports exceeded 175,000 tons. Meanwhile four
thousand five hundred miles of road were made or kept up by the
Directorate of Roads. Only they who have seen with their own eyes--or
felt in their own bones!--what a wrecked road, or a road worn to
pieces by motor lorries, is really like, can appreciate what this
means. And during 1918 alone, the Directorate of Railway Traffic built
or repaired 2,340 miles of broad-gauge and 1,348 miles of narrow-gauge
railway. Everywhere, indeed, on the deserted battle-fields you come
across these deserted light railways by which men and guns were fed.
May one not hope that they may still be of use in the reconstruction
of French towns and the revival of French agriculture?

As to the feeding and cooking and washing of the armies, the story is
no less wonderful, and I remember as I read the great camp laundry at
Etaples that I went through in 1917, with its busy throng of
Frenchwomen at work and its 30,000 items a day. Twenty-five thousand
cooks have been trained in the cookery schools of the Army, while a
jealous watch has been kept on all waste and by-products under an
Inspectorate of Economies. As to the care of the horses, in health or
in sickness, the British Remount and Veterinary Service has been famed
throughout Europe for eff