That was true. Our young officers, and some of our old ones, liked to "pull the leg" of any American who sat at table with them. They made jocular remarks about President Wilson as a complete letter-writer. That unfortunate remark, "too proud to fight," was too good to miss by young men with a careless sense of humor. It came in with devilish appropriateness on all sorts of occasions, as when a battery of ours fired off a consignment of American shells in which some failed to explode.
"They're too proud to fight, sir," said a subaltern, addressing the major, and there was a roar of laughter which hurt an American war correspondent in English uniform.
The English sense of humor remains of schoolboy character among any body of young men who delight in a little playful "ragging," and there is no doubt that some of us were not sufficiently aware how sensitive any American was at this time, and how a chance word spoken in jest would make his nerves jump.
But I am sure that the main body of English opinion was not impatient with America before she entered the war, but, on the contrary, understood the difficulty of obtaining a unanimous spirit over so vast a territory in order to have the whole nation behind the President. Indeed we exaggerated the differences of opinion in the United States and made a bogy of the alien population in the great "melting-pot." It seemed to many of us certain that if America declared war against Germany there would be civil riots and rebellions on a serious scale among German-Americans. That thought was always in our minds when we justified Wilson's philosophical reluctance to draw the sword; that and a very general belief among English "intellectuals" that it would be well to have one great nation and democracy outside the arena of conflict, free from the war madness that had taken possession of Europe, to act as arbitrator if no decision could be obtained in the battlefields. It is safe to say now that in spite of newspaper optimism, engineered by the propaganda departments, there were many competent observers in the army as well as in the country who were led to the belief, after the first eighteen months of strife, that the war would end in a deadlock and that its continuance would only lead to further years of mutual extermination. For that reason they looked to the American people, under the leadership of President Wilson, as the only neutral power which could intervene to save the civilization of Europe, not by military acts, but by a call back to sanity and conciliation.
It was not until the downfall of Russia and the approaching menace of an immense concentration of German divisions on the western front that France and England began to look across the Atlantic with anxious eyes for military aid. Our immense losses and the complete elimination of Russia gave the Germans a chance of striking us mortal blows before their own man-power was exhausted. The vast accession of power that would come to us if the United States mobilized her manhood and threw them into the scale was realized and coveted by our military leaders, but even after America's declaration of war the imagination of the rank and file in England and France was not profoundly stirred by a new hope of support. Vaguely we heard of the tremendous whirlwind efforts "over there" to raise and equip armies, but there was hardly a man that I met who really believed in his soul that he would ever hear the tramp of American battalions up our old roads of war or see the Stars and Stripes fluttering over headquarters in France. Our men knew that at the quickest it would take a year to raise and train an American army, and in 1917 the thought of another year of war seemed fantastic, incredible, impossible. We believed—many of us—that before that year had passed the endurance of European armies and peoples would be at an end, and that in some way or other, by German defeat or general exhaustion, peace would come. To American people that may seem like weakness of soul. In a way it was weakness, but justified by the superhuman strain which our men had endured so long. Week after week, month after month, year after year, they had gone into the fields of massacre, and strong battalions had come out with frightful losses, to be made up again by new drafts and to be reduced again after another spell in the trenches or a few hours "over the top." It is true they destroyed an equal number of Germans, but Germany seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of "gun-fodder." Only extreme optimists, and generally those who were most ignorant, prophesied an absolute smash of the enemy's defensive power. By the end of 1917, when the British alone had lost 800,000 men in the fields of Flanders, the thought that another year still might pass before the end of the war seemed too horrible to entertain by men who were actually in the peril and misery of this conflict. Not even then did it seem likely that the Americans could be in before the finish. It was only when the startling menace of a new German offensive, in a last and mighty effort, threatened our weakened lines that England became impatient at last for American legions and sent out a call across the Atlantic, "Come quickly or you will come too late!"
America was ready. In a year she had raised the greatest army in the world by a natural energy which was terrific in its concentration and enthusiasm. We knew that if she could get those men across the Atlantic, in spite of submarines, the Germans would be broken to bits, unless they could break us first by a series of rapid blows which would outpace the coming of the American troops. We did not believe that possible. Even when the enemy broke through the British lines in March of 1918, with one hundred and fourteen divisions to our forty-eight, we did not believe they would destroy our armies or force us to the coast. Facts showed that our belief was right, though it was a touch-and-go chance. We held our lines and England sent out her last reserves of youth—300,000 of them—to fill up our gaps. The Germans were stopped at a dead halt, exhausted after the immensity of their effort and by prodigious losses. Behind our lines, and behind the French front, there came now a tide of "new boys." America was in France, and the doom of the German war machine was at hand.
It would be foolish of me to recapitulate the history of the American campaign. The people of the United States know what their men did in valor and in achievement, and Europe has not forgotten their heroism. Here I will rather describe as far as I may the impressions created in my own mind by the first sight of those American soldiers and by those I met on the battle-front.
The very first "bunch" of "Yanks" (as we called them) that I met in the field were non-combatants who suddenly found themselves in a tight corner. They belonged to some sections of engineers who were working on light railways in the neighborhood of two villages called Gouzeaucourt and Fins, in the Cambrai district. On the morning of November 30, 1917, I went up very early with the idea of going through Gouzeaucourt to the front line, three miles ahead, which we had just organized after Byng's surprise victory of November 20th, when we broke through the Hindenburg lines with squadrons of tanks, and rounded up thousands of prisoners and many guns. As I went through Fins toward Gouzeaucourt I was aware of some kind of trouble. The men of some labor battalions were tramping back in a strange, disorganized way, and a number of field batteries were falling back.
"What's up?" I asked, and a young officer answered me.
"The Germans have made a surprise attack and broken through."