This was America in France in every sense of the word. One felt the atmosphere of rush. In the buildings, which should have been left when materials failed, but which had been carried to completion by pioneer methods, one recognised the resourcefulness of the lumberman of the West. Then came a touch of Eastern America, to me almost more replete with memory and excitement. In a flash I was transferred from a camp in France to the rock-hewn highway of Fifth Avenue, running through groves of sky-scrapers, garnished with sunshine and echoing with tripping footsteps. I could smell the asphalt soaked with gasolene and the flowers worn by the passing girls. The whole movement and quickness of the life I had lost flooded back on me. The sound I heard was the fate motif of the frantic opera of American endeavour. The truly wonderful thing was that I should hear it here, in a woodland in France—the rapid tapping of a steel-riveter at work.
I learnt afterwards that I was not the only one to be carried away by that music, as of a monstrous wood-pecker in an iron forest. The first day the riveter was employed, the whole camp made excuses to come and listen to it. They stood round it in groups, deafened and thrilled—and a little homesick. What the bag-pipe is to the Scotchman, the steel-riveter is to the American—the instrument which best expresses his soul to a world which is different.
I found that the riveter was being employed in the erection of an immense steel and concrete refrigerating plant, which was to have machinery for the production of its own ice and sufficient meat-storage capacity to provide a million men for thirty days. The water for the ice was being obtained from wells which had been already sunk. There was only surface water there when the Americans first struck camp.
As another clear-cut example of what America is accomplishing in France, I will take an aviation-camp. This camp is one of several, yet it alone will be turning out from 350 to 400 airmen a month. The area which it covers runs into miles. The Americans have their own ideas of aerial fighting tactics, which they will teach here on an intensive course and try out on the Hun from time to time. Some of their experts have had the advantage of familiarising themselves with Hun aerial equipment and strategy; they were on his side of the line at the start of the war as neutral military observers. I liked the officer at the head of this camp; I was particularly pleased with some of his phrases. He was one of the first experts to fly with a Liberty engine. Without giving any details away, he assured me impressively that it was "an honest-to-God engine" and that his planes were equipped with "an honest-to-God machine-gun," and that he looked forward with cheery anticipation to the first encounter his chaps would have with "the festive Hun." He was one of the few Americans I had met who spoke with something of our scornful affection for the enemy. It indicated to me his absolute certainty that he could beat him at the flying game. On his lips the Hun was never the German or the Boche, but always "the festive Hun." You can afford to speak kindly, almost pityingly of some one you are going to vanquish. Hatred often indicates fear. Jocularity is a victorious sign.
When I was in America last October a great effort was being made to produce an overwhelming quantity of aeroplanes. Factories, both large and small, in every State were specializing on manufacturing certain parts, the idea being that so time would be saved and efficiency gained. These separate parts were to be collected and assembled at various big government plants. The aim was to turn out planes as rapidly as Ford Cars and to swamp the Hun with numbers. America is unusually rich in the human as well as the mechanical material for crushing the enemy in the air. In this service, as in all the others, the only difficulty that prevents her from making her fighting strength immediately felt is the difficulty of transportation. The road of ships across the Atlantic has to be widened; the road of steel from the French ports to the Front has to be tracked and multiplied in its carrying capacity. These difficulties on land and water are being rapidly overcome: by adding to the means of transportation; by increasing the efficiency of the transport facilities already existing; by lightening the tonnage to be shipped from the States by buying everything that is procurable in Europe. In the early months much of the available Atlantic tonnage was occupied with carrying the materials of construction: rails, engines, concrete, lumber, and all the thousand and one things that go to the housing of armies. This accounts for America's delay in starting fighting. For three years Europe had been ransacked; very much of what America would require had to be brought. Such work does not make a dramatic impression on other nations, especially when they are impatient. Its value as a contribution towards defeating the Hun is all in the future. Only victories win applause in these days. Nevertheless, such work had to be done. To do it thoroughly, on a sufficiently large scale, in the face of the certain criticism which the delay for thoroughness would occasion, demanded bravery and patriotism on the part of those in charge of affairs. By the time this book is published their high-mindedness will have begun to be appreciated, for the results of it will have begun to tell. The results will tell increasingly as the war progresses. America is determined to have no Crimea scandals. The contentment and good condition of her troops in France will be largely owing to the organisation and care with which her line of communications has been constructed.
The purely business side of war is very dimly comprehended either by the civilian or the combatant. The combatant, since he does whatever dying is to be done, naturally looks down on the business man in khaki. The civilian is inclined to think of war in terms of the mobile warfare of other days, when armies were rarely more than some odd thousands strong and were usually no more than expeditionary forces. Such armies by reason of their rapid movements and the comparative fewness of their numbers, were able to live on the countries through which they marched. But our fighting forces of to-day are the manhood of nations. The fronts which they occupy can scarcely boast a blade of grass. The towns which lie behind them have been picked clean to the very marrow. France herself, into which a military population of many millions has been poured, was never at the best of times entirely self-supporting. Whatever surplus of commodities the Allies possessed, they had already shared long before the spring of 1917. When America landed into the war, she found herself in the position of one who arrives at an overcrowded inn late at night. Whatever of food or accommodation the inn could afford had been already apportioned; consequently, before America could put her first million men into the trenches, she had to graft on to France a piece of the living tissue of her own industrial system—whole cities of repair-shops, hospitals, dwellings, store-houses, ice-plants, etc., together with the purely business personnel that go with them. These cities, though initially planned to maintain and furnish a minimum number of fighting men, had to be capable of expansion so that they could ultimately support millions.
Here are some facts and statistics which illustrate the big business of war as Americans have undertaken it. They have had to erect cold storage-plants, with mechanical means for ice-manufacture, of sufficient capacity to hold twenty-five million pounds of beef always in readiness.
They are at present constructing two salvage depots which, when completed, will be the largest in the world. Here they will repair and make fit for service again, shoes, harness, clothing, webbing, tentage, rubber-boots, etc. Attached to these buildings there are to be immense laundries which will undertake the washing for all the American forces. In connection with the depots, there will be a Salvage Corps, whose work is largely at the Front. The materials which they collect will be sent back to the depots for sorting. Under the American system every soldier, on coming out of the trenches, will receive a complete new outfit, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. "This," the General who informed me said tersely, "is our way of solving the lice-problem."
The Motor Transport also has its salvage depot. Knock-down buildings and machinery have been brought over from the States, and upwards of 4,000 trained mechanics for a start. This depot is also responsible for the repairs of all horse-drawn transport, except the artillery. The Quartermaster General's Department alone will have 35,000 motor propelled vehicles and a personnel of 160,000 men.
Every effort is being made to employ labour-saving devices to the fullest extent. The Supply Department expects to cut down its personnel by two-thirds through the efficient use of machinery and derricks. The order compelling all packages to be standardized in different graded sizes, so that they can be forwarded directly to the Front before being broken, has already done much to expedite transportation. The dimensions of the luggage of a modern army can be dimly realized when it is stated that the American armies will initially require twenty-four million square feet of covered and forty-one million of unroofed storage—not to mention the barrack space.