As to the Rearward and Transport Services, seeing that the Army was really the nation, with the best of British intelligence everywhere at its command, it is not surprising perhaps that a business people, under the pressure of a vital struggle, obtained so brilliant a success.  In 1916, I saw something of the great business departments of the Army—­the Army Service, Army Ordnance, and Motor Transport depots at Havre and Rouen.  The sight was to me a bewildering illustration of what English “muddling” could do when put to the test.  On my return to London, Dr. Page, the late American Ambassador, who during the years when America was still neutral had managed, notwithstanding, to win all our hearts, gave me an account of the experience of certain American officers in the same British bases, and the impression made on them.  “They came here afterwards on their way home,” he said—­I well remember his phrase, “with the eyes starting out of their heads, and with reports that will transform all our similar work at home.”  So that we may perhaps trace some at least of those large and admirable conceptions of Base needs and Base management, with which the American Army prepared its way in France, to these early American visits and reports, as well as to the native American genius for organisation and the generosity of American finance.

But if the spectacle of “the back of the Army” was a wonderful one in 1916, it became doubly wonderful before the end of the war.  The feeding strength of our forces in France rose to a total approaching 2,700,000 men.  The Commander-in-Chief tries to make the British public understand something of what this figure means.  Transport and shipping were, of course, the foundation of everything.  While the British Fleet kept the seas and fought the submarine, the Directorate of Docks handled the ports, and the Directorate of Roads, with the Directorates of Railway Traffic, Construction and Light Railways, dealt with the land transport.  During the years of war we landed ten and a half millions of persons in France, and last year the weekly tonnage arriving at French ports exceeded 175,000 tons.  Meanwhile four thousand five hundred miles of road were made or kept up by the Directorate of Roads.  Only they who have seen with their own eyes—­or felt in their own bones!—­what a wrecked road, or a road worn to pieces by motor lorries, is really like, can appreciate what this means.  And during 1918 alone, the Directorate of Railway Traffic built or repaired 2,340 miles of broad-gauge and 1,348 miles of narrow-gauge railway.  Everywhere, indeed, on the deserted battle-fields you come across these deserted light railways by which men and guns were fed.  May one not hope that they may still be of use in the reconstruction of French towns and the revival of French agriculture?