were followed in June and July, 1917, by sufficient
additional forces to make up a division. Wilson had been authorized by
Congress, under the Selective Service Act, to send four volunteer
divisions abroad under the command of Roosevelt. But he refused to
interfere with the plans of the military experts, who strongly objected
to any volunteer forces whatever. Neither the valiant ex-President nor
the prospective volunteers were trained for the warfare of the moment,
and their presence in France would bring no practical good to the Allied
cause; moreover the officers whom Roosevelt requested were sorely needed
in American training camps.

General Pershing, to whom was now entrusted the military fortunes of the
American army abroad, was an officer fifty-seven years old, who had
undergone wide military and administrative experience in Cuba and the
Philippines; he had been given extraordinary promotion by President
Roosevelt, who had jumped him from the rank of captain to that of
Brigadier General; and he had been selected to lead the punitive force
dispatched in pursuit of Villa in the spring of 1916. Distinguished in
appearance, with superb carriage, thin lips, and squarely-chiselled chin,
he possessed military gifts of a sound rather than brilliant character. A
strict disciplinarian, he failed to win from his troops that affection
which the _poilus_ gave to Petain, while he never displayed the genius
that compelled universal admiration for Foch. Neither ultimate success
nor the stories of his dramatic remarks (as at the grave of La Fayette:
"La Fayette, we are here!") succeeded in investing him with the heroic
halo that ought to come to a victorious commander. As time passes,
however, Pershing takes higher rank. His insistence upon soldierly
qualities, his unyielding determination to create American armies under
an independent command, his skill in building up a great organization,
his successful operations at St. Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne drive,
despite faulty staff work--all these facts become more plain as we
acquire perspective. If historians refuse to recognize him as a great
general, they will surely describe his talents as more than adequate to
the exigencies of the military situation.

The sending of the Pershing expedition did not at once alter
fundamentally the original programme for raising an army of about a
million men to be kept in the United States, as a reserve in case of
emergency. There was no int