ed out and made speeches, utterly incomprehensible to the American
soldiers.

The engineering, building and machinery works the Americans put up were
astonishing. Gangs of workers went over in thousands; many of these were
college men. They dug and toiled as efficiently as any laborer. One
American major told with glee how a party of these young workers arrived
straight from America at 3.30 P. M. and started digging at 5 A. M. next
morning, "and they liked it, it tickled them to death." Many of these
draftees, in fact, were sick and tired of inaction in ports before their
departure from America, and they welcomed work in France as if it were
some great game.

Perhaps the biggest work of all the Americans performed was a certain
aviation camp and school. In a few months it was completed, and it was
the biggest of its kind in the world. The number of airplanes used
merely for training was in itself remarkable. The flying men--or
boys--who had, of course, already been broken-in in America, did an
additional course in France, and when they left the aviation camp they
were absolutely ready for air-fighting at the front. This was the
finishing school. The aviators went through eight distinct courses in
the school. They were perfected in flying, in observation, in bombing,
in machine-gun firing. On even a cloudy and windy day the air overhead
buzzed with these young American fliers, all getting into the pink of
condition to do their stunts at the front. They lived in the camp, and
it required moving heaven and earth for one of them to get leave to go
even to the nearest little quiet old town.

An impression of complete businesslike determination was what one got
when visiting the Americans in France. A discipline even stricter than
that which applied in British and French troops was in force. In towns,
officers, for instance, were not allowed out after 9 P. M. Some towns
where subalterns discovered the wine of the country were instantly put
"out of bounds." No officer, on any pretext whatsoever was allowed to go
to Paris except on official business.

The postal censors who read the letters of the American Expeditionary
Force were required to know forty-seven languages! Of these languages,
the two least used were Chinese and German.

The announcement of the organization of the first American Field Army was
contained in the following dispatch from France, August 11, 1918:

"The first American field army has been organized.