Many apprehensions were fulfilled in fact, when the terrible winter weather came, the worst in years. The northern camps faced it with insufficient clothing. Pneumonia made its invasion. Artillerymen were trained with wooden guns; infantrymen with wooden rifles or antiquated Krags. But all the time the essential training proceeded and the calls for replacements sent by General Pershing in France were met.

The first and vital need was for officers to train the willing but inexperienced recruits. To meet this need a series of officers' training camps had been established in the spring of 1917 and continued for a year. Each camp lasted for three months, where during twelve hours a day the candidates for commissions, chiefly college graduates

430,000 men, two-thirds of the first draft. A single camp involved the expenditure of approximately $11,000,000. Camp Grant, at Rockford, Illinois, included 1600 buildings with space for 45,000 men and 12,000 horses. The water, which before use was tested and filtered, was supplied from six huge wells drilled 175 feet deep, carried through 38 miles of water main, and stored in reservoir tanks holding 550,000 gallons. For lighting purposes there were 1450 miles of electric wire, 1200 poles, 35,000 incandescent lamps. During the period of construction, 50 carloads of building material were daily unloaded, and for several weeks an average of 500,000 board feet of lumber set up daily. The entire construction of the camp demanded 50,000,000 feet of lumber, 700 tons of nails, 4,000,000 feet of roofing, and 3,000,000 square feet of wall board.

and young business men, were put through the most intensive drill and withering study. All told, more than eighty thousand commissions were granted through the camps, and the story of the battlefields proved at once the caliber of these amateur officers and the effectiveness of their training. Special camps, such as the school of fire at Fort Sill, carried the officers a step further, and when they went overseas they received in schools in France instruction in the latest experience of the Allied armies. The colleges of the country were also formed into training schools and ultimately about 170,000 young men, under military age, in five hundred institutions of learning, joined the Students' Army Training Corps.

In all the army schools French and British officers coöperated as instructors and gave the value of their three years' experience on the fighting front. But the traditions of the American regular army, formulated in the Indian and frontier fights, rather than the siege methods of the trenches, formed the basic principles of the instruction; General Pershing was insistent that an offensive spirit must be instilled into the new troops, a policy which received the enthusiastic endorsement of the President. The development of "a self-reliant

infantry by thorough drill in the use of a rifle and in the tactics of open warfare" was always uppermost in the mind of the commander of the expeditionary force, who from first to last refused to approve the extreme specialization in trench warfare that was advised by the British and the French.

The emergency nature of the military programme, resulting from the sudden decision to send a large army to France, the decentralization of army affairs, and the failure to prepare adequately in the years preceding entrance into the war-all these factors made a shortage of supplies in the training camps inevitable.

The first appropriation bill which was to provide the funds to purchase clothing, blankets, and other necessities was not passed until the 15th of June, leaving a pitifully brief space of time for the placing of contracts and the manufacture and transport of supplies. Many factories had to be built, and many delays resulted from the expansion of the Quartermaster Department, which had not been manned or equipped for such an emergency. The shortage of clothing was felt the more because of the extreme severity of the winter. After the initial difficulties had been passed supplies of this kind were furnished in profusion; but lack of preparation

on the part of the War Department and the slowness of Congress to appropriate promptly produced a temporary situation of extreme discomfort and worse. The provision of food supplies was arranged more successfully. Soldiers would not be soldiers if they did not complain of their "chow." But the quality and variety of the food given to the new troops reached a higher degree than was reasonably to have been expected. The average soldier gained from ten to twelve pounds after entering the service. Provision was also made for his entertainment. Vaudeville, concerts, moving pictures formed an element of camp life, much to the surprise of the visiting French officers and Civil War veterans.

Americans naturally look back with pride to the making of their new army. The draft was accomplished smoothly and rapidly. Demonstrations against conscription, which in view of the Civil War draft riots had caused some apprehension, were almost unheard of and never serious. Of the three million called for service on the first draft, all but 150,000 were accounted for, and of those missing most were aliens who had left to enlist in their own armies. The problem of the slacker and of the conscientious objector, although vexatious, was

never serious. The educative effect of the training upon the country was very considerable. All ranks and classes were gathered in, representing at least fifty-six different nationalities; artisans, millionaires, and hoboes bunked side by side; the youthful plutocrat saw life from a new angle, the wild mountaineer learned to read, the alien immigrant to speak English. Finally the purpose of the training was achieved, for America sent over a force that could fight successfully at the moment of crisis.

Amateur critics had assumed that the problem of raising an effective number of troops would prove far more difficult than that of producing the necessary equipment and munitions. It was generally believed that the industrial genius of America was such that American factories could provide all the artillery, small-arms, and aircraft that the armies could use. The most fantastic prophecies were indulged in. Experience showed, however, that it is easier to raise, train, and organize troops of superior sort in a brief period than it is to arm them. It stands as a matter of record that foreign artillery and machine guns alone made possible the attack on the St. Mihiel salient and the advance in the Argonne. As for military airplanes, had the Government relied upon those of American manufacture