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gallantly until overwhelmed by numbers. In the trenches the fighting was hand to hand, brief but fierce. Three Americans were killed and four wounded. The raid was carried out against members of the second American contingent, who had entered their trenches for training but had been in only a few days. Before dawn the Germans shelled vigorously the barbed-wire front of the trenches, and dropt high explosives of large caliber. A heavy artilleryfire was then directed at all adjacent territory, including the passage leading up to the trenches, thereby forming an effective barrage in the rear as well as front. Germans to the number of 210 rushed through breaches and wireentanglements on each side of the salient, and after their barrage in the fore-field was lifted, went into the trenches where pistols, grenades, knives, and bayonets were used.

For many minutes there was confusion, the Germans stalking the Americans, and the Americans stalking the Germans. In one section an American private engaged two Germans with the bayonet and after the raid his body was found. Another American was killed by a blow on the head with a rifle butt from above. The raid had nothing unusual about it. It was such as was happening all along the line. There was reason for believing that the Germans were greatly surprized to find Americans in the trenches instead of French. While the skirmish was of infinitesimal significance, it brought uppermost to the public mind in this country a sobering realization of the task ahead of us. A few of our men, under the tuition of French officers, had now seen fighting in earnest. Those killed were the first of our dead in France. They were buried on November 4, with military honors at Bathlémont, French artillery men, infantry and sailors present with American infantry, an address by General Bordeaux, and three volleys fired over the grave. By the end of 1917 it was no longer a secret that American troops were fighting on that part of the battlefront facing the German Lorraine. That Pershing's troops were finishing their intensive training in trenches on "a quiet sector on the French front" had been announced as early as October 27. Simultaneously, the Germans had boasted of capturing some "North Americans" in the neighborhood

of the Meuse Canal. Since then scouting parties of Americans had come in contact with Germans, and small raids and artillery-duels had taken place with casualties on both sides.

This Lorraine front was the only one through which war could be carried into the heart of Germany. Thus far Germans at home had viewed the conflict from a distance, they had not been brought face to face with it in their homes, had not known what war had meant to Belgians and French. The German position in Lorraine gave command of the iron mines of the Basin de Briey, which furnished Germany with 80 per cent. of the steel she used in her armaments, and without which she could not have carried on the war. The prospect for the Americans in Lorraine was inviting because it had the approval of at least two of the foremost French strategists-Pétain, and the man who had fought in this territory, at the Grand Couronné, one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the war- -Castelnau. American troops had engaged in the war for the purpose of whipping Germany. How could they better perform this work than by carrying the war into German territory on a front that had the approval of Pétain and Castelnau-the front of Lorraine? More than 42,000 dead Germans lay already buried there, the flower of the army of the Crown Prince of Bavaria. For twenty-eight days in August and September 1914, five French army corps under Castelnau here fought seven under the Crown Prince, in a great battle that had been comparatively ignored except in the Bulletin des Armées. The reason was that it occurred while the great German advance on Paris was going on, and reached its climax simultaneously with the beginning of the battle of the Marne, while its end came with the retreat of the Germans to the Aisne. Strange and inspiring, indeed, were the hopes raised by the thought that to Americans might eventually fall the happy destiny of redeeming for France her lost provinces.

The coming of a political crisis in Germany was foreshadowed early in the summer, when, among other evidences a statement was issued from the Imperial Bank

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showing that the bank's gold holdings had decreased 76,470,000 marks during the preceding week. Meanwhile, the exchange rate on the German mark had risen in Holland to 33.95 guilders. The decrease in gold holdings was obviously due to exports of gold made to neutral markets in order to check the decline in exchange. As far back as when the United States ceased to deal in drafts on Germany (in March, 1917), exchange on Berlin had depreciated 27 per cent. from normal parity. At Amsterdam, in the week that we declared war, the discount had

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widened to 343% per cent. and in June private cables from European neutral markets reported a depreciation of 472 per cent. The Dutch rate, late in June, of 33.95 guilders per 100 German marks, worked out as a discount of 4234 per cent., showing a partial recovery in consequence of the gold exports from Berlin.

When on July 9 the Kaiser arranged to hold a Crown. Council, it was generally understood that a decision of momentous issues was about to be made. In fact, all doubt as to the extreme gravity of the political situation in Ger

many was dissolved by plain statements made in some of the German papers. The Weser Zeitung, of Bremen, said the question of the Chancellor's political existence was at stake, but "far graver issues" had been raised by a peace-speech from Herr Erzberger in the Reichstag, and by the strong demand that had grown up for electoral reforms in Germany which would wipe out the Junker influence in the Reichstag. Bethmann-Hollweg favored electoral reform. His "woe to the statesman" speech of six months before was not yet forgotten. The political turmoil finally culminated in his resignation, and the installation in his place of Dr. George Michaelis, Prussian UnderSecretary of Finance and Food Controller.

The deposed Chancellor was a weak man thrown upon iron times. He had become the sport of powers too weighty for him. No enemy could have written a deadlier memorial for him than he himself did in his "scrap of paper" phrase, and in his standing up in the Reichstag to confess in the face of all the world that Germany was beginning the war by trampling upon her treaty with Belgium and defying the laws of nations. What stood out above his humiliation was proof that the German people were more and more asserting their right to be masters of their own destiny, and were with ever greater eagerness turning their eyes toward peace. Michaelis lasted until the end of October, when it was announced that Count George F. von Hertling, the Bavarian Prime Minister, had been appointed Chancellor. Nobody in Germany was thought to entertain more bitter hatred toward England than Count Hertling. He had been one of the chief advocates of unrestricted U-boat warfare, and believed in annexation. "We have won all we want,' he said in February, 1917. "From Germany's point of view, there is no reason why the war should continue.'

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Principal Sources: The London Times' "History of the War," The Daily Chronicle, The Fortnightly Review, London; The Times, The Tribune, New York; Associated Press and United Press dispatches, The Evening Post (New York).

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