For instance, if you ask an English railway porter for such a simple thing as the check-room or the news-stand, he will simply gape at you; whereas, if you stride into a French country hotel and hold up one finger—naturally one has to employ gesture just a little with the Latin races—and say “Oon room!” in a firm voice, the proprietor will comprehend at once, and smilingly hand you a key right away. One can only ascribe this instant sympathy to the freemasonry of a common democratic ideal. Or it may be that a room is the only thing which a hotel proprietor could expect a stranger carrying a grip to ask for.
However, this by the way. The main point is that we are at last in France—France, the land of the Great Adventure, for which our ardent dreams and hard training have been shaping us for months past.
Still, at first sight it is not too easy to realize that we are there at all; for the surroundings in which we found ourselves on landing might have been lifted bodily from Hoboken.
Speaking of Hoboken, we note that the prevailing slogan of the moment, posted on barrack walls, painted on transport wagons, even blazoned in stencilled letters across the wind-shields of Staff automobiles, is: Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken by Christmas! To this pious aspiration one ardent spirit has added, in smaller lettering: But let it be Hoboken, please, via Berlin!
Certainly, the Armies of Invasion, both friendly and hostile, have transformed France, each in its own way. The Hun in the east has effected his share of the transformation in his own way, by fire, rapine, and pillage. But the British and Americans in the west have left a mark just as unmistakable and, it is to be hoped, more enduring. A great army cannot disembark upon the soil of another people’s country without importing a great deal of its own personality at the same time. That accounts for the foregoing reference to Hoboken. The amount of portable property that we have brought with us is enormous. There were days, not far distant, when a soldier subsisted upon the country wherein he found himself. During the Shenandoah Valley campaign Stonewall Jackson’s men lived on unripe corn and green apples, for the very good reason that there existed no means of providing them with anything else. Throughout the centuries this fact has kept expeditionary forces down to reasonable numbers; the size of an army was limited to the capacity of the country to support it. But modern science has changed all that. Canned meat has revolutionized warfare far more surely and permanently than the aeroplane or the submarine. It is now possible, by modern methods of food preservation and transportation, to arm practically a whole nation and maintain it continuously and comfortably in the field thousands of miles from its base of supplies. That is why France is the most overcrowded and best-fed country in the world to-day.
Modern transportation has also made possible—which in warfare means indispensable—the intensive employment of heavy artillery. We use siege guns to-day where yesterday we employed eighteen-pounders and seventy-fives. That involves the construction of complicated railroad systems—tracks, sidings, locomotives, ammunition-wagons—all over the country, operating forward and sideways behind the line. Two years ago—twelve months ago—the spot where we find ourselves was a sleepy third-rate seaport, whose very existence was known to few English-speaking people, save the captains of Channel coasters. To-day that port still slumbers in the Brittany sunshine, but it has thrown out an annexe many times larger than itself, comprising a complete system of docks and basins, two hundred and fifty miles of railroad siding, and enough storage accommodation to house two million tons of military supplies.
But American activity has not halted there. To secure a provision of fair drinking-water for the huge population of this mushroom city the Engineers have constructed a great reservoir among the foothills a few miles away—an enterprise which frankly astonishes the natives, to whom, in common with the rest of their countrymen, water as a beverage is unknown.
One other item—an inevitable item—swells the population of the district. This is the great American Base Hospital, which has been erected by the side of the main road leading inland from the coast. The hospital is a city in itself. Its buildings, cunningly isolated one from another, cover many acres, and contain twenty-four thousand beds. Thank God, these have never yet all been occupied at one time.
And this great base port is only one of several. That fact is borne in upon us at every turn by the prevalence of large printed signs, headed, Race to Berlin! which plaster the town. Upon these signs are printed in column down the left-hand side the names of all the base ports used by American troops—our own port among the number. At the opposite edge of the sign there is a great black splash, marked Berlin. The splash is connected to each of the base ports by a straight black line. On each line, at varying distances from the base ports, stands a small movable flag. The big idea, any passer-by will tell you, is to stimulate activity among the units forming the Service of Supply by means of healthy competition. Every good day’s work in any port sets the flag of that port an inch or two nearer Berlin. A port is not called upon to compete with other ports (which would be manifestly unfair, for some are larger and better equipped than others), but only with its own previous record in the matter of unloading ships, and the like.
Attached to each diagram is a printed notice, pointing out in simple language that hard work at the base is just as indispensable as hard fighting at the front, and that when Victory comes the credit will be shared equally by both departments. The notice is signed John J. Pershing, and it has roused the dusky warriors at the various base ports to a fever of emulation.