III

FINAL PEACE BIDS, WITH “PARIS BY APRIL 1” AS THE ALTERNATIVE-AMERICANS ON

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THE FIRING-LINE

February, 1918-March 21, 1918

ITH the failure of peace proposals to the Entente through the Bolsheviki, there came, early in February, new reports from German sources of a great offensive in the west. Major Von Olberg, head of the War Press Bureau in Berlin, published in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, an official organ, an authorized statement that "the year of decision has dawned." Everything the Entente could do was belittled; the Americans would arrive too late; they had only "a wooden sword" and victory was certain for Germany. "The great blow can now fall," said Olberg, "whenever and wherever Hindenburg wishes. "We know," this inspired writer added, "that he will choose the time and place that will lead to victory." America might do her utmost to "assist with money and war material," and might send many "technical troops and aviators," but they would be inexperienced and lack training, while "we Germans are prepared for every contingency." Hindenburg at this time proclaimed that his army "would be in Paris by April 1," which fixt the time at what had familiarly been known outside of Germany, if not in Germany, as "All Fools' Day." Hindenburg made his statement in reply to a delegation of thirty German newspaper editors who called to tell him that by May 1 "there would be no food left in Germany." That the Germans would be in Paris on April 1, it was learned afterward, had for many weeks been the general expectation of the German army men in Berlin and elsewhere. Indeed they had referred to it as a matter of common understanding.

Newspaper boastings from Germany aroused new suspicion among the Entente. Germany at no other time in the war

had announced in advance any of her offensives-not the one before Verdun in 1916, not the attack on the Dunajec in 1915, nor the drive into Italy in 1917. Some readers were reminded of German boasts, after the retreat east of Arras in 1917, that the retreat was a "victorious" one, to be followed by an early offensive, and they recalled that no real German offensive had ever come. In fact, for months after this retreat Germany had been kept on the defensive and subjected to heavy losses in men, guns and territory-on the Flemish ridges on the Chemin-des-Dames, at Cambrai, and around Verdun.

A statement made at this time in the Bavarian Diet that the German dead now numbered 1,500,000, was the first German estimate of losses made public since the Imperial Government, by the end of June, 1917, ceased to publish casualty lists when the lists showed 1,105,760 dead, with 592,000 missing and about 3,000,000 wounded. These figures tended to confirm current estimates that not many more than 2,000,000 fighting men were on the Western Front after the Russian front had been combed of its best effectives, which meant that the Germans were outnumbered by the Entente forces, and that this preponderance of the Entente would be increased. Such were some of the conditions under which an offensive by the Germans would have to be undertaken.

American forces in France now held a position on the firing-line in Lorraine, which put them in the neighborhood of St. Mihiel, some twenty miles south of Verdun. Included in the area was Domrémy, the birthplace of Joan of Arc. Here small fighting and raiding had begun early in February and afforded an indication as to how soon our men might be expected to play a part in the war. Here French

forces alone had defended France until now. Except for the stand before Paris and its sequel, in September, 1914, no British major units had operated east of the River Oise, which, after descending from the Belgian frontier running southeastward, joins the Seine west of Paris. Not even the peril of Verdun had drawn a British army across the Oise, but Pershing having started in Lorraine, the promise was that he would continue to operate in that area. It gratified many Americans to know that their flag was in Lorraine, for

the time might come when United States troops would cover а large part of Alsace-Lorraine, and that territory be regained for France as part of our national purpose. The home country soon caught the fervor of that idea, especially when the American sector began in February to resound with the boom of guns. Americans in this action tore up German front trenches, blew up several dugouts and cut wire entanglements. Little damage was done to the American position which, in fact, was afterward extended over a wider region. Aerial reconnaissance showed that the gun-fire of America had a destructive effect. At least three German dugouts were demolished.

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When the United States entered the war practically all the ports of northern France had become congested by the transport service from British and French fronts, so that new means of receiving the American army and its supplies had to be found, such as would not embarrass the British and French. France, for other reasons, wanted the American troops to fight alongside her own soldiers. The result was the selection for the Americans of this region eastern France. During seven months a tremendous amount of railroad work comprising more than 600 miles of new construction, had been done by the Americans with terminals and dock facilities on the coast entirely independent of the French and British, but this work did not include any new line of road across France. In total this new construction was about equal to three times our Lehigh Valley system. As already stated, Colonel Parsons and Colonel Wilgus were the American engineers directly in charge of the work, altho General William W. Atterbury, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was the director of operations in France.

A sense of the dramatic seemed to have dictated February 1 as the day when American troops should be definitely in the trenches, and under gun-fire. Just one year before that date the unrestricted U-boat war had been declared by Germany. Elsewhere on the Western Front for several weeks inactivity had prevailed, but scarcely any word even of minor sections had reached this country. Philip Gibbs thought all

8

8 Correspondent of The Daily Chronicle (London) and The Times (New York).

this was merely "the hush before the storm." Here and there along the front for an hour or two might be seen fire that was fierce and concentrated as long as it lasted, to which British guns would answer with sudden gusts of fury, but there was nothing systematic, only "the harassing fire of winter warfare." There still reigned over battlefields "a strange, unearthly silence between these bouts," when it seemed as tho nature herself was in suspense, waiting,

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watching, and listening for the beginning of that conflict which was expected to occur before the year grew much older, perhaps before the first crocus thrust itself up through the moist leaves, and before there was the first glint of green in the woods." Sometimes over a wide expanse not a gun would be fired. At such times "life seemed to have gone from, the land; no bird sang in thickets, no smoke curled from chimneys behind the German lines; all was dead

and still." Even the wind, soft and warm, "seemed to hold its breath, expectant of things that one day would break the spell of silence and shock the sky."

German artillery on February 10 began an intensive bombardment of British positions in the Houtholst Forest and at points north of Ypres and southwest of Cambrai. Violent duels at the same time were in progress between the Germans and French in the Champagne, on the Verdun sector and in the Vosges. There was increased activity on both sides of the Moselle, where artillery was engaged in a terrific duel, the horizon suddenly breaking out "in a saw-toothed ribbon of flame" at 7 o'clock at night. Guns here began to pound the American position and American guns set the sky ablaze. "Whole sprays and clusters of vari-colored rockets and star shells" shot up from the German side, while signals and revealed lights hovered over No Man's Land, "casting a weird glare over the tangle of weeds and wire." Occasional flashes of flames showed where the shells were bursting, but the explosions being of different kinds, were indistinguishable one from another in the roaring din. Americans were getting experience in what a Frenchman called "the small change of war," which was indispensable to them before thinking about participating in real battles. It needed such an experience as this to convince unreasoning optimists at home and at the front that one American could not "lick ten Germans." The German was in general a good fighter, but this was mainly true only when three or four of them had only one man as an antagonist. Germans often dodged a fight where the odds were not that way. Here on the Lorraine front the Germans seemed anxious to gage the position occupied by the Americans and to ascertain the number of men employed. German aircraft hovered every day over the lines, taking photographs and making observations.

The American forces were now protecting something less than an eight-mile stretch of line on the Lorraine sector, from near Flirey westward toward Apremont. Their front. lay in the larger section which extended eastward from St. Mihiel to Pont-à-Mousson. A highway connected these points. Americans and French had trenches north of this highway.