road was laid by the British
Expeditionary Forces from Egypt into Palestine.

Despite the magnitude of the Australian contribution to the Allied
military and naval forces, the east and west transcontinental railway,
begun in 1912, was completed in 1917. In all, more than 3,500 miles of
track were built in the commonwealth in the years 1915-17.

In Canada, the work of providing two transcontinental railroads was
completed; feeders were added, and a line from La Pas to Hudson Bay was
under construction. From 1912 to 1916 more than 10,000 miles of track
were put in operation, nearly 7,000 of which were added in the first two
years of the war.

CHAPTER XL

SHIPS AND THE MEN WHO MADE THEM.

When the United States of America entered the World War she was
confronted at once by a serious question. The great Allied nations were
struggling against the attempt of the Germans, through the piratical use
of submarines, to blockade the coast of the Allied countries. It was
this German action which had led America to take part in the war. It is
true that America had other motives. Few wars ever take place among
democratic nations as a result of the calculation of the nation's
leaders. The people must be interested, and the people must sympathize
with the cause for which they are going to fight. The people of America
had sympathized with Belgium, and had become indignant at the brutal
treatment of that inoffensive nation. They had sympathized with France
in its gallant endeavor to protect its soil from the inroads of the Hun.
This feeling had become a personal one as they reviewed the lists of
Americans lost in the sinking of the Lusitania, and this sympathy had
gradually grown into indignation when the Germans, after having promised
to conduct submarine warfare according to international law, again and
again violated that promise. When, then, the Germans declared that they
would no longer even pretend to treat neutral shipping according to the
laws of maritime warfare the people with one accord approved the action
of the President of the United States in declaring war. The Germans at
this time were making a desperate effort to starve England, by
destroying its commerce, and it was in the endeavor to accomplish this
purpose that they thought it necessary to attack American ships.

The first effort of Americans, therefore, was naturally to use every
power of the navy to destroy the lurking submarines, and in the second
place t