In the conferences in London and Paris the American representatives looked into the minds of the allied leaders and saw the situation as it was. Two dramatic factors colored all the discussions—the growing need for men and the gravity of the shipping situation. The German submarines were operating so effectively as to make exceedingly dark the outlook for the transport on a sufficient scale either of American troops or of American munitions.
As to man power, the Supreme War Council gave it as the judgment of the military leaders of the Allies that, if the day were to be saved, America must send 1,000,000 troops by the following July. There were in France then (on Dec. 1, 1917) parts of four divisions of American soldiers—129,000 men in all.
The program of American cooperation, as it crystallized in these conferences, may be summarized as follows:
1. To keep the Allies from starvation by shipping food.
2. To assist the Allied armies by keeping up the flow of matériel already in production for them in the United States.
3. To send as many men as could be transported with the shipping facilities then at America's command.
4. To bend energies toward a big American Army in 1919 equipped with American supplies.
In these conferences sat the chief military and political figures of the principal European powers at war with Germany. In the Supreme War Council were such strategists as Gen. Foch for the French and Gen. Robertson for the British, Gen. Bliss representing the United States. The president of the Interallied Conference was M. Clemenceau, the French prime minister. Mr. Winston Churchill, the minister of munitions, represented Great Britain, while Mr. Lloyd-George, the Prime Minister of England, also participated to some extent in the conferences.
Out of bodies of such character came the international ordnance agreement. It will be apparent to the reader that this agreement must have represented the best opinion of the leaders of the principal Allies, initiated out of their intimate knowledge of the needs of the situation and concurred in by the representatives of the United States. The substance of this agreement was outlined for Washington in a cabled message signed by Gen. Bliss, a document that had such an important bearing upon the production of munitions in this country that its more important passages are set down at this point:
The representatives of Great Britain and France state that their production of artillery (field, medium, and heavy) is now established on so large a scale that they are able to equip completely all American divisions as they arrive in France during the year 1918 with the best make of British and French guns and howitzers.