He had just inquired of General Sir Julian Byng, who had accidentally had the assistance of some American engineers at Cambrai, what they should be valued at, and Sir Julian had answered: "Very earnest, very modest, and very helpful."
"I must say that is my opinion, too," said Sir Walter, when he came to camp. "They are fine fellows to look at—as good-looking soldiers as any man might wish to see. They have a wonderfully springy step, much more springy than one sees in other soldiers. They are clean, well set up, and they are always cheerful. They are splendidly fed and well quartered, and they are desperately keen to learn, and as desperately keen to get into the thick of things. If they seem to have any worries it is that they are not getting in as quickly as they would like to.
"The American troops have everywhere made a decidedly favorable impression. I am extremely proud of my British citizenship, I have been all my life, but if I were an American I would be insufferably proud of my citizenship. In all history there is nothing that approaches her transporting such an enormous army so great a distance oversea to fight for an ideal."
After the new year W. A. Appleton, secretary of the General Federation of Trades Unions in England, made a visit to France, and described the American camps for his own public through the Federation organ.
"I see everywhere," he wrote, "samples of the American armies that we are expecting will enable the Allies to clear France of the Germans. Most of the men are fine specimens of humanity, and those with whom I spoke showed no signs of braggadocio, too frequently attributed to America. They were quiet, well-spoken fellows, fully alive to the seriousness of the task they have undertaken, and they apparently have but one regret—that they had not come into the war soon enough. It was pleasant to talk to these men and to derive encouragement from their quiet, unobtrusive strength."
These were the things which were playing upon public opinion in France and England, reinforcing the good-will with which the first American soldiers were welcomed there.
When United States soldiers paraded again in the streets of London, late in the spring of 1918, and when they marched down the new Avenue du Président Wilson in Paris, on July 4, 1918, the greetings to them had lost in hysteria and grown in depth, till the magnitude of the demonstrations and the quality of them drew amazement from the oldest of the old stagers.
CHAPTER XII
THE MEN WHO DID EVERYTHING
IF the American Expeditionary Force had landed in the middle of the Sahara Desert instead of France, it would not have been under greater necessity to do things for itself, and immediately. For even where the gallant French were entirely willing to pull their belts in one more notch and make provision for the newcomers, the moral obligation not to permit their further sacrifice was enormous. And although, as it happened, there were many things, at first, in which the A. E. F. was obliged to ask French aid, this number was speedily cut down and finally obliterated.
The men on whom fell the largest burden of making American troops self-sufficing in the first half-year of war, were the nine regiments of engineers recruited in nine chief cities of America before General Pershing sailed. They were officered to a certain extent by Regular Army engineers, but more by railroad officials who were recruited at the same time from all the large railroads of America.