construction in
the States will be curtailed.

I was interested in the personnel employed in this work. Here, as
elsewhere, I found that the engineering and organising brains of
America are largely in France. One colonel was head of the marble
industry in the States; another had been vice-president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Another man, holding a sergeant's rank was
general manager of the biggest fishing company. Another, a private
in the ranks, was chief engineer of the American Aluminum Company. A
major was general manager of The Southern Pacific. Another colonel was
formerly controller of the currency and afterwards president of the
Central Trust Company of Illinois. A captain was chief engineer and
built the aqueducts over the keys of the Florida East Coast Railroad.
As with us, you found men of the highest social and professional grade
serving in every rank of the American Army; one, a society man and
banker, was running a gang of negroes whose job it was to shovel sand
into cars. In peace times thirty thousand pounds a year could not
have bought him. What impressed me even more than the line of
communications itself was the quality of the men engaged on its
construction. As one of them said to me, "Any job that they give us
engineers to do over here is likely to be small in comparison with
the ones we've had to tackle in America." The man who said this had
previously done his share in the building of the Panama Canal. There
were others I met, men who had spanned rivers in Alaska, flung
rails across the Rockies, built dams in the arid regions, performed
engineering feats in China, Africa, Russia--in all parts of the world.
They were trained to be undaunted by the hugeness of any task; they'd
always beaten Nature in the long run. Their cheerful certainty that
America in France was more than up to her job maintained a constant
wave of enthusiasm.

It may be asked why it is necessary in an old-established country
like France, to waste time in enlarging harbours before you can make
effective war. The answer is simple: France has not enough ports of
sufficient size to handle the tonnage that is necessary to support
the Allied armies within her borders. America's greatest problem is
tonnage. She has the men and the materials in prodigal quantities, but
they are all three thousand miles away. Before the men can be
brought over, she has to establish her means of transport and line
of communications, so as to make ce