ever forgetting the human reality which is the
foundation of it all. Soon the number of effective infantry divisions
on the British front had risen from forty-five to fifty-two. And
meanwhile American energy was pouring men across the Atlantic, and
everywhere along the Allied front and in the Allied countries, but
especially in ravaged, war-weary France, the news of the weekly
arrivals, 80,000, 100,000, 70,000 men, was exactly the stimulus that
the older armies needed.

It was a race between the German Army and the growing strength of the
Allies--and it was presently a duel between Ludendorff and Foch.
"Attack! attack!" was the German military cry, "or it will be too
late!" And on July 15th Ludendorff struck again to the east and
south-west of Rheims. General Gouraud, who was in command of the
Fourth French Army to the east of Rheims, told me at Strasbourg the
dramatic story of that attack and of its brilliant and overwhelming
repulse. I will return to it in a later letter. Meanwhile the German
Command in the Marne salient plunged blindly on, deepening the pocket
in which his forces were engaged--striking for Montmirail, Meaux, and
Paris.

But Foch's hour had come, and on July 18th he launched that
ever-famous counter-offensive on the Soissons-Chateau-Thierry front,
which, in Sir Douglas Haig's quiet words, "effected a complete change
in the whole military situation."

After a moment of bewilderment, attacked on both flanks by
irresistible forces of French, British, and Americans, von Boehm
turned to escape from the hounds on his track. He fought, as we all
know, a skilful retreat to the Vesle, leaving prisoners and guns all
the way, and on the Vesle he stood. But the last German offensive was
done, and Foch was already thinking of other prey.

On the 23rd of July there was another conference of the military
leaders, held under other omens, and in a different atmosphere from
that of March 25th. At that conference Foch disclosed his plans and
gave each army its task. The French and American Armies--the American
Army now in all men's mouths because of its gallant and distinguished
share in the June and July fighting on the Marne--were to attack
towards Mezieres and Metz, while the British Armies struck towards St.
Quentin and Cambrai--in other words, looked onward to the final
grapple with the "great fortified zone known as the Hindenburg line."
So long as Germany held that she was undefeated. With that gone she
was