training, and the task of organizing the service of supply was being undertaken. The training given in the United States before sailing had been in the ordinary forms of drill and tactics; now it was necessary that there should be greater specialization. Numerous schools for the training of officers were established. For the troops the plan for training allowed, according to the intent of General Pershing, "a division one month for acclimatization and instruction in small units from battalions down, a second month in quiet trench sectors by battalion, and a third month after it came out of the trenches when it should be trained as a complete division in war of movement." The entire process of training was a compromise between speed and efficiency. During the latter months of the war many of the American troops were put on the battle-line when they were by no means sufficiently trained. Certain draft units were transported and thrown up to the front after experience of a most superficial character; there are instances of men going into action without knowing how to load their rifles or adjust their gas masks properly. But on the whole the training given was surprisingly

1 This plan could not be fulfilled for troops coming to France in 1918, because of lack of time.

effective in view of the speed with which it was accomplished. American skill with the rifle won the envy of foreign officers, and the value of American troops in open warfare was soon to be acknowledged by the Germans.

The same sort of centralization sought by Wilson in America obviously became necessary in France with the expanding plans for an enormous army. In February, 1918, the Service of Supply was organized. With its headquarters at Tours, the S. O. S. was responsible for securing, organizing, and distributing all the food, equipment, building materials, and other necessities demanded by the expeditionary force. In order to provide for the quantities of essential supplies and to avoid the congestion of the chief ports of France, certain ports were especially allotted to our army, of which the most important were St. Nazaire, Bordeaux, and Brest. The first, a somnolent fishing village, was transformed by the energy of American engineers into a first-class port with enormous docks, warehouses, and supply depots; Brest rose in the space of twelve months from the rank of a secondclass port to one that matched Hamburg in the extent of its shipping. In all, more than a dozen ports were used by the Americans and in each

extensive improvements and enlargements proved necessary. At Bordeaux not more than two ships a week, of any size, could conveniently be unloaded prior to June, 1917. Eight months later, docks a mile long had been constructed, concrete platforms and electric cranes set up; within a year fourteen ships could be unloaded simultaneously, the rate of speed being determined only by the number of stevedores. For unloading purposes regiments of negroes were stationed at each port.

A few miles back from the coast were the base depots where the materials were stored as they came from the ships. Thence distribution was made to the intermediate depots in the cities of supply, and finally to the depots immediately behind the fighting front. All these depots involved enormous building operations; at first the lumber was shipped, but later, American lumber jacks were brought over to cut French forests. At one supply depot three hundred buildings were put up, covering an area of six square miles, operated by 20,000 men, and holding in storage a hundred million dollars' worth of supplies. For distribution purposes it proved necessary for American engineers to take over the construction and maintenance of communications. At first American

engines and cars were operated under French supervision; but ultimately many miles of French railroads were taken over bodily by the American army and many more built by American engineers. More than 400 miles of inland waterways were also used by American armies. This transportation system was operated by American experts of all grades from brakemen to railroad presidents, numbering altogether more than 70,000.

In order to meet the difficulty of securing tonnage for supplies and to avoid competition with the Allies, a General Purchasing Board was created for the coördination of all purchases. Agents of this board were stationed in the Allied countries, in Switzerland, Holland, and Spain, who reconnoitered resources, analyzed requirements, issued forecasts of supplies, supervised the claims of foreign governments on American raw materials, and procured civilian manual labor. Following the establishment of the supreme interallied command, the Interallied Board of Supplies was organized in the summer of 1918, with the American purchasing agent as a member. Other activities of the S. O. S., too numerous to recount in detail, included such important tasks as the reclassification of personnel, the installation and operation of a

general service of telephone and telegraph communication, with 115,500 kilometers of lines, and the renting and requisitioning of the land and buildings needed by the armies. It was a gigantic business undertaking, organized at top speed, involving tremendous expenditure. Its success would have been impossible without the coöperation of hundreds of men of business, who found in it a sphere of service which enabled the army to utilize the proverbial American genius for meeting large problems of economic organization. At the time of the armistice the S. O. S. reached a numerical strength in personnel of 668,000, including 23,000 civilian employees.

From the first, Pershing had been determined that the American Expeditionary Force should ultimately operate as an independent unit, although in close coöperation with the Allies. During the autumn of 1917 the disasters in Italy and the military demoralization of Russia had led to the formation of the Supreme Military Council of the Allies, upon which the United States was represented by General Tasker Bliss, whose rough visage and gruff manner gave little indication of his wide interests. Few suspected that this soldierly character took secret pleasure in the reading