a mixture of wonder and irritation.  A friend of mine, on coming back from France, described to me his going over a new American dock with two French officers:  “Magnificent!” said the Frenchmen, in a kind of despair—­“but when are they going to begin?  Suppose the war is over, and France swallowed up, before they begin?” A large section of American opinion was shaken with the same impatience.

American letters to English friends, including those of Mr. Roosevelt to his many English correspondents, among whom, to some small extent, I was proud to reckon myself, expressed an almost fierce disappointment with the slow progress of things.  Ultimately, of course, an independent American Army, under its own Commander-in-Chief, and fully equipped from American factories.  But why not begin by sending men in as large numbers as possible to train with the British and French Armies, and to take their places as soon as possible in the fighting line, as integral parts of those armies, allowing the Allies to furnish all equipment till America was really ready?  It was pointed out that Canada and Australia, by sending officers and men over at once to train and fight with the British, and leaving everything else to be supplied by the Allies, had in nine months from the outbreak of war already taken part in glorious and decisive battles.  Or why not adopt a two-fold policy—­of supplying men to the Allies as rapidly as possible, for immediate aid, carrying on preparations the while for an independent American Army with all its own supplies, as the ultimate goal?  Time, it was urged, was of the utmost importance.  And what object was served by experimenting with new types of munitions, instead of adopting the types of the Allies, which the American factories were already turning out in profusion?  And so on.

With such feelings did many of us on this side of the water, and a large section apparently of American friends of the Allies on the other side, watch the gradual unravelling of America’s tangled skeins.  The North American Review asked in December, 1917:  “Are we losing the war?  No.  But we are not winning it.”  In January, 1918, the editor warned his readers:  “The Allied forces are not in condition to withstand the terrific onslaught which Germany is bound to make within six months.  America must win the war.”  In April the New York Bankers’ Bulletin said:  “We have not made progress as far as we might or could,” while months later, even in its September number (1918), the North American Review still talked of “our inexplicable military sluggishness,” and rang with appeals for greater energy.  There was of course an element of politics in all this; but up to March last year it is clear that, in spite of many things not only magnificently planned, but magnificently done, there was a great deal of sincere anxiety and misgiving in both countries.