Young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one were allowed to continue their studies in colleges and technical schools, as the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.). They followed a curriculum prescribed by the military authorities. They were in uniform, under military discipline. On October 1 nearly 150,000 of these student-soldiers in five hundred educational institutions of the country took the oath of allegiance to the American flag.

The end of the war proved to be nearer than any of the statesmen or generals of the Allies had dreamed. In mid-July the four months' offensive of the Germans came to an end in the vain attempt of Ludendorff to outflank Reims on the east, extend the Marne salient to include the south bank of the river, and move down the valley upon the capital, forty-two miles away. The German chief, at the end of his tether, fell back on the defensive; while Foch struck the first blows of the four months' Allied offensive, which was steadily and remorselessly to push the German lines back across one third of Belgium and nearly to the border of northeastern France, and to end in the abdication and flight of the Kaiser and the collapse of the mighty military autocracy which Bismarck had built upon "blood and iron." In those closing months of the war the American troops, rapidly mounting from 1,300,000 to 2,000,000, played a glorious part. Two out of three of the soldiers saw active service in the combat lines. Our divisions were no longer scattered among the French and British armies, as in the spring months, but were concentrated into two American field armies-the first formed. in August, of eighteen divisions or three army corps, under the command of General Pershing himself (later under General Hunter Liggett), and the second in October, under the command of General Robert L. Bullard. Up to the beginning of September our troops had not been handled in units larger than a division or, at most, an army corps of six divisions; but now our commander in chief (always under the supervision of General Foch) planned major American operations on a complete equality with the British and the French. Indeed, there were frequently French divisions in the American armies under Amer

ican command. In none of the allied defensives from March to June had as many as 30,000 American troops been engaged. But 85,000 took part in the Marne-Champagne battles of July 15-17, and 1,200,000 in the great Meuse-Argonne offensive of September 20-November 11. When the German drive began in March, our soldiers were holding only 12 miles of the front line, in quiet sectors. When Foch's counter drive was launched in July, they were holding 60 miles, and by the middle of October, 101 miles, extending from Sedan on the Meuse to a point on the Moselle midway between Metz and Nancy-nearly a quarter of the entire front.

American troops participated in thirteen major operations against the enemy in France, earning from General Foch the laconic praise, "The American soldiers are superb." The two outstanding exploits of the American army were the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient and the clearing of the Argonne forest in the drive to the Meuse. Since September, 1914, the Germans had held a triangle of high ground some two hundred miles in area, jutting into the French lines southeast of Verdun, with its apex at St. Mihiel on the Meuse River. The position was one of great importance, for from the heights of Mont Sec back of St. Mihiel the German artillery fire could interrupt traffic on the Paris-Nancy railroad; and the salient served as an outpost protecting the fortifications of Metz and the rich Briey coal fields to the northeast. In his early conversations with General Pétain in the summer of 1917 General Pershing had shown his desire to wipe out the St. Mihiel salient, but the French army command did not feel strong enough, after an unsuccessful attack on the position in 1915 and after the losses at Verdun in 1916, to resume the attempt. Early in September, 1918, General Pershing, with his American forces increased to over 1,000,000, got the consent of Marshal Foch for the undertaking. Seven American divisions were massed on the southern face of the salient and two on the western side. Four divisions of French troops were included in Pershing's command, ready to assault the apex of the salient at St. Mihiel, as the American troops pinched the flanks. In addition to 70,000 French troops, about 2000 French and

British guns, 273 tanks, and 192 airplanes were put at Pershing's disposal. He had altogether 500,000 men, 2900 guns, and the largest aviation force hitherto assembled in the war. Before the attack was launched on the early morning on September 12, the Germans, realizing the hopelessness of holding the salient, had begun to withdraw; but they were caught by the rapid flanking movement of Pershing's army. The American attack

was irresistible. It swept through the wire entanglements and stormed the fortified ridges. In three days' fighting and at the cost of only 7000 casualties (mostly slight wounds), our army cleared the entire salient, capturing 16,000 prisoners, 443 guns, and vast quantities of military stores and equipment abandoned by the enemy in his hasty retreat. Many French villages were liberated from their long domination by the German invader, and the Allies were established in a position to threaten Metz and the important railroad lines northward to Luxemburg and the Belgian border. The French troops took St. Mihiel; and on the morning of September 13 Generals Pershing and Pétain en

tered the town together, crossing the Meuse by "a rough wooden bridge hastily thrown over the river near the spot where stood the old stone arches blown up in 1914." The people received them with enthusiastic greetings. The principal street of the town was rechristened Rue du General Pershing. The President of the French Republic and the American Secretary of War arrived on the scene to add their congratulations.

"The material results of the victory achieved," wrote General Pershing in his Final Report (p. 43), "were very important. An American army was an accomplished fact, and the enemy had felt its power. No form of propaganda could overcome the depressing effect on the morale of the enemy. . . . Our divisions concluded the attack with such small losses and such high spirits that, without the usual rest, they were immediately available for heavy fighting in a new theater of operations."

The new theater of operations proved to be the stage of the greatest battle of American history, a titanic struggle of fortyseven days, involving 22 divisions, with a total of 1,200,000 soldiers, many of whom had seen no actual combat service before. They were pitted against more than 40 German divisions, or about one fourth of the total enemy strength on the western front. The scene of the conflict was the region between the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River, and the objective was the Carignan-Sedan-Mézières railroad, upon which the Germans depended for the movement of men and supplies, in connection with the roads from Luxemburg, Thionville, and Metz. It was the desire to reënforce this strategic position on the middle Meuse that had led to the desperate struggle of the Crown Prince's army to capture the forts of Verdun in the spring of 1916. Failing this, the Germans had made the Argonne a fortified wilderness. Mile on mile of barbed-wire entanglements crisscrossed the pathless wastes pitted with shell craters. Dense undergrowth hid the ravines and ridges which sheltered nests of machine guns. The French officers had declared the position impenetrable and impregnable. Yet our army never faltered. After a fortnight's incessant fighting they had cleared the Germans out of the Argonne (October 4), and at the end of another