Let us hope that neither will any among us ever forget for a single instant how much was paid for us in blood and anguish by those who held the beast at bay from us for long years before we put forth a stroke in our own defense or in friendly help or in support of our ideals.

That our aid arrived in time to help turn the tide, that our men were magnificent when their opportunity was given them, is cause not for vaunting ourselves, but only for gratefulness that our honor remains to us—­that we have not had to accept life and liberty at other men’s hands while our hands stayed in our pockets.

Our fighting men redeemed us in our own eyes; they restored our souls’ dignity; for this we can never be grateful enough to them.  But we can never be braggart about it.  It might so easily have come too late!

On August 6, Foch was made Marshal of France.

And two days later, the British, on the Somme, launched the first really successful offensive of the war—­not stopping a drive, but inaugurating one.

At last Foch was able to make war as he had for years contended that war should be made:  The way to make war is to attack.

It was his plan, now that he had the men to make this possible, to keep the enemy busy by striking first at one point of the long line running from Belgium to the Piave, and then at another.  And by the first of September the Allied line on the Western front was back where it ran in the deadlock of 1915-16 while the attack on Verdun was raging.

“General Pershing,” Foch has said, “wished to have his army concentrated, as far as possible, in an American sector.  The Argonne and the heights of the Meuse were a sector hard to tackle.  So I said to him:  ’All right; your men have the devil’s own punch.  They will get away with it.  Go to it.’”

And they went!  That was the famous St. Mihiel salient.  The American infantry started their advance there on September 26.  They went forward with a rush.  On their left, the French advanced as rapidly, and on October 1 re-took St. Quentin, which the Germans had held since the beginning of the war.  October 2 the British, operating on the left of the French, reached Cambrai which also had been in German hands for more than four years.

October 4 the Hohenzollern King of Bulgaria deserted his doomed allies and his throne and began looking for a place of refuge.

And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little relish for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of the United States “to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all the belligerent states with this request and invite them to send plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. . . .  With a view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in air.”

October 10, Austria and Turkey joined Germany in appealing for peace terms.  Notes continued to pass between the Germanic capitals and Washington, D. C.