But with the outbreak of the German offensive in March, as we all know, everything changed.  American troops began to rush over:—­366,000 in round numbers, up to the end of March, and 440,000 more, up to the end of June, 70 per cent, of them carried in British ships; a million by the end of July, nearly a million and a half before the Armistice.  Wonderful story!  Nobody, I think, can possibly exaggerate the heartening and cheering effect of it upon the Allies in Europe, especially on France—­wounded and devastated France—­and on Italy, painfully recovering from Caporetto.  How well I remember the thrill of those days in London, the rumours of the weekly landings of troops—­70,000—­80,000 men—­and the occasional sight of the lithe, straight-limbed, American boys marching through our streets!

And yet, curiously enough—­what was exaggerated all the time, on both sides of the Atlantic, both here and in America, was the extent of the British set-back hi March and April, and its effect on the general situation.  That is clear, I think, when we look back on our own Press at home, and still more on American utterances, both in the States and in France.  In August of last year Mr. Secretary Baker said:  “We are only just beginning”—­and he pointed to the millions of men that America would have in France by 1919.  On August 7th General March, Chief of the American General Staff, said in the Senate Committee, that America would have four millions of men in France, with one million at home, for the campaign of 1919.  “The only way that Germany can be whipped is by America going into this thing with her whole strength.  It is up to us to win the war....  We must force the issue and win.”  The editor of the North American Review wrote in August, and published in his September number, phrases like the following:  “But the hand of the enemy cannot be struck down for a long time to come.”  “Virtually impregnable positions” are still held by him.  “No military observer is so sanguine as to anticipate anything like conclusive results from the present campaign.  The real test will come next year, in the late spring and summer of 1919.”  By then the Allies must have “a great preponderance of men and guns.  These America must supply.”

But when General March said in August:  “It is up to us to win the war,” and the North American Review talked of “virtually impregnable positions,” and the impossibility of “anything like conclusive results from the present campaign”—­the capture of those “impregnable positions” by the British Army, and thereby the winning of the war, were only a few weeks away!  Similar phrases could be quoted from the British Press, and from prominent Englishmen, though not, unless my memory plays me false, from any of our responsible military leaders.  The fact is that the view I represented, in my second article, as the view taken by the heads of the British Army, of the March retreat, had turned out by the