new life into everything, and especially into the heart of France, the chief sufferer by three years of atrocious war.  As weary and devastated France watched the American stream of eager and high-hearted youth, flowing from Bordeaux eastwards, column after column, regiment after regiment, of men admirable in physique, fearless in danger, and full of a laughing and boundless confidence in America’s power to help, and resolve to win—­at last it seemed that the long horror of the war must be indeed coming to an end.  “Three thousand miles!” said the French villager or townsman to himself, as he turned out to see them pass—­“they have come three thousand miles to beat the Boche.  And America is the richest country in the world—­and there are a hundred millions of them.”  Hope rose into flood, and with it fresh courage to endure.

Nor was the effect less marked on the British nation, which had not known invasion, and on the British Army, for all its faith in itself.  The rapid growth of American strength in France from March onward in response to the call of the Allies, provided indeed a moral support to the two older armies, which was of incalculable value and “influenced the fighting qualities of both; while the knowledge of these mounting reserves enabled the Allied Commanders to take risks which otherwise could hardly have been faced.”  I am quoting a British military authority of high rank.

It was at Metz that—­outside Paris—­I first came in contact with this “America in France,” which History will mark on her coming page with all the emphasis that belongs to new chapters in the ever-broadening tale of man.  It was in the shape of some “Knights of Columbus,” pausing at Metz for a night on their way to Coblenz.  We only exchanged a few words on the steps of the hotel, but I had time to feel the interest and the strangeness of this American Catholicism in Europe, following in the track of war, and looking with its New World eyes at those old, old towns, those ancient churches in which American Catholics were at home, yet not at home.  At Strasbourg I saw no Americans that I can remember.  But our arrival at Nancy at midnight, very weary after a long day in the car, during which we had missed our way badly at least once, is linked in my recollection with the apparition of two young American officers just as we were being told for the third time that there was no room in the hotel to which we had driven up.  Should we really have to sleep in the car?  There seemed to be not a single vacant bedroom in Nancy; and there had been snow showers during the day!  But these two Americans heard from our French Lieutenant that there were two English ladies in the car, and they came forward at once, offering their rooms.  Luckily we found shelter elsewhere; but I shall not soon forget the kind readiness of the two young men, and the thrill of the whole scene.  There we stood in the beautiful Place Stanislas, that workmen from Versailles built