The cry grew louder for ships. The submarine was cutting down the world’s whole fleet by a third. In February the Germans sank the Tuscania, loaded with American soldiers, 324 and 159 of them were lost. Uncle Sam tightened his lips and added the Tuscania’s dead soldiers to the Lusitania’s men and women and children on the invoice against Germany. He tightened his belt, too, and cut down his food for Europe’s sake. He loosened his purse-strings and poured out gold and bonds and war-savings stamps, borrowing, lending, and spending with the desperation of a gambler determined to break the bank.
While Davidge was still in the hospital the German offensive broke. It succeeded beyond the scope of the blackest prophecy. It threw the fear of hell into the stoutest hearts. All over the country people were putting pins in maps, always putting them farther back. Everybody talked strategy, and geography became the most dreadful of topics.
On March 29th Pershing threw what American troops were abroad into the general stock, gave them to Haig and Foch to use as they would.
On the same day the mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of Gott sent this harbinger of good-will.
The Germans began to talk of the end of Great Britain, the erasure of France, and the reduction of America to her proper place.
Spring came to the dismal world again with a sardonic smile. In Washington the flower-duel was renewed between the Embassy terrace and the Louise Home. The irises made a drive and the forsythia sent up its barrage. The wistaria and the magnolia counterattacked. The Senator took off his wig again to give official sanction to summer and to rub his bewildered head the better.
The roving breezes fluttered tragic newspapers everywhere––in the parks, on the streets, on the scaffolds of the buildings, along the tented lanes, and in the barrack-rooms.
This wind was a love-zephyr as of old. But the world was frosted with a tremendous fear. What if old England fell? Empires did fall. Nineveh, Babylon, and before them Ur and Nippur, and, after, Persia and Alexander’s Greece and Rome. Germany was making the great try to renew Rome’s sway; her Emperor called himself the Cæsar. What if he should succeed?
Distraught by so many successes, the Germans grew frantic. They were diverted from one prize to another.