CHAPTER XVIII

AMERICA'S AID TO HER ALLIES

That our country is a unit in this war was shown by Congress when it passed the appropriation bill for the war unanimously in both houses. The bill called for seven billion dollars, which is the largest loan bill in the history of the world.

Our nation started out to aid the Allies in different ways. First, to help put the submarines out of action and protect the shipping of the United States. The newer submarines have noiseless engines and are able to make long voyages. They can stay away from the home base for many days. They are very hard to capture. As they were sinking ships in large numbers England began to tremble for her food supplies, which must come largely from abroad. The United States sent a fleet of destroyers, under Admiral Sims, to European waters, where they soon began to show good results.

To replace the hundreds of ships that have been sunk, our country has set apart millions of dollars to build merchant ships, both of wood and of steel, as rapidly as possible. General Goethals, the builder of the Panama Canal, has been given charge of the shipbuilding.

Secondly, we are expected to feed the Allies to the end of the war. So many farmers in England FOOD AND and France had gone to the front to fight MONEY that the Allied nations were not raising

as much food as they did before the war. Food prices soared and we know that a hungry army cannot fight. Our people set out to raise bumper crops of all food products during the season of 1917. Thousands of new gardens were planted by city people to help in the food supply, and high school boys were sent to the farms in large numbers to enable the farmers to raise as great an acreage of wheat, corn and potatoes as possible.

The Allies called upon us also for money. We are the richest nation in the world, and we promptly replied that we would loan them three billion dollars at a low rate of interest. In order to get ready money, the United States said they would ask their people to buy two billion dollars worth of bonds. This was called the Liberty Loan. With great patriotism our people not only subscribed for two billion dollars, but for three billions, a billion dollars more than they had been asked for. Now our Allies are enabled to buy food, steel, copper and a hundred other things which they need.

The great generals and statesmen of the Allied countries which came to our shores for a friendly visit and to take counsel with the leaders of our government were all received with great honor and enthusiasm. Especially was this true of General Joffre, of France, the hero of the Marne.

The United States has much sympathy for Russia which is struggling to establish a republic. We sent some of our leading statesmen, among them Elihu Root, to give them advice as to how they should start a republic. And we sent engineers to help them to build railroads and aid them in carrying on the war, for a victory by the Kaiser would be a death blow to their new republic, and it might restore the Czar

to his throne.

IN FRANCE

France and England, Italy and Russia sent representatives to our country. Among other things U.S. SOLDIERS they desired that we should send them at least a small army as quickly as possible to encourage their brave defenders in France. General Pershing was soon in Paris getting ready for our men. Food ships reached France safely and landed a big supply of food for our army. In spite of the U-boats a body of our troops were welcomed in France late in June. They celebrated the Fourth of July in Paris amid great enthusiasm. Congress, in order to get a large American army ready for 1918 ordered all our young men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one to register their names, and we found that they numbered nearly ten millions of fighting age. From these our first army was drafted. President Wilson also called out all the national guards for war service.

During the war many neutral countries aided the Allies in trying to save the millions of starving people in the regions Germany had conquered. The United States sent Herbert C. Hoover to Belgium to see that the food supply sent by our country and the Allies reached the needy French and Belgians. When the United States took up arms Mr. Hoover was called home and made food administrator to look after the providing of food for us and our Allies. President Wilson issued an embargo to stop the shipping of food, munitions and steel to neutral nations to prevent these supplies from reaching Germany through such neutrals as Holland, Denmark and Sweden. The world was short of food, especially wheat, and American housewives united behind Mr. Hoover to give their aid.

CHAPTER XIX

CAMPAIGN OF 1917

WEST FRONT

Bad weather interrupted the British advance at the Somme early in the autumn of 1916, and had it BATTLE OF not been for this the Germans would ARRAS likely have had to retreat before winter set in. But as it was, the German line held. The British officers were confident, however, of breaking the German line in the spring of 1917. Early in February, 1917, there began the great German retreat which in March broadened into the most considerable withdrawal of the Germans since the Battle of the Marne.

They retreated for two reasons: First, in the Somme campaign the British had forced a wedge into the German lines in such fashion that the Germans were threatened on the flank and the rear. In addition to this the British had driven squarely through the old system of the Kaiser's trench lines for many miles and the walls that the Germans had thrown up were not calculated to withstand another such attack as they had suffered at the Somme.

FRANCE

So the Germans drew out of this half circle and fell back gradually to a line between Arras and A DESERT IN Soissons. There they build a new trench line forty miles shorter than the other, known as the Hindenburg line. The retreat was a model of German efficiency. They left to the British only a few guns and about 1400 prisoners. They

laid waste the country over which they retreated, burning all buildings, cutting down orchards and ruining wells and made a desert some 20 miles in width.

The French and British had to advance over this desert and cover it with new lines of communication. Much of their preparation for the spring offensive was made useless. Their great railroad depots and supply stations had been constructed directly behind the old front and now had to be moved forward to the new line, which was a laborious undertaking. The Germans believed that this maneuver would hinder a British attack for several months.

ARRAS

North of Arras the Germans still held their old lines. Here the English trenches were still close upon those of the enemy. The GerBATTLEFIELD mans were protected near Arras by Vimy Ridge which is about 500 feet high. The German gun positions were behind this ridge. The French had worked for three months to take Vimy Ridge only to lose it again. If you should stand on the Ridge and look east you would see almost at your feet the city of Lens, with its vast suburbs built around the entrance to the coal mines, for Lens is the great coal center of France.

If the British could gain possession of Vimy Ridge they would dominate Lens and clear out the Germans from the suburbs of Arras and deprive them of their good gun positions. This would force the Germans into a bad position in the broad plain of the valley. The Germans thought their lines upon Vimy could not be taken. Had they not made it a "graveyard of the French" in 1915? Not less than 100,000 Frenchmen had been killed and wounded at this same mountain.