the Yankee forces, forsaking the Teutons and taking their departure homeward. We saw the American army on September 12 in a wonderful dash of a few hours flatten out the St. Mihiel salient that had existed for four years and that now turned over 16,000 prisoners. We saw the young soldiers from the United States with the skill and determination and valor of veterans address themselves to the grim business around Metz, the most formidable fortress that German ingenuity could construct, the siege of which, however, they were not yet ready to begin, for they had another objective. Toward that as a prior attainment we saw them advancing in spite of the greatest natural obstacles, reinforced by barbed wires and concrete trenches and thousands of machine guns. We saw them engaging in the greatest battle of American history, dwarfing to small proportions the largest and most sanguinary of the civil war, for Major-General Maurice of the British Staff of military operations says they numbered nearly three- quarters of a million. Of all American engagements, this was the battle royal. It was to be pressed day after day, and it was to end only with the cessation of the great conflict. To wipe out the St. Mihiel salient, there were employed approximately 500,000, of whom 70,000 were Frenchmen, officially reported our commander-in-chief to his government at Washington, while he added that his First Army increased till, including those engaged in Services of Supply and those held for replacements, it "exceeded 1,000,000 men," with a considerable number of the French again coöperating. For the march through the Argonne forest and along the Meuse river, the vast hosts were equipped with 2,700 guns, with 189 tanks (of which the enemy in this section had none), and with 821 airplanes, of which 604 were manned.

by Americans. This was the greatest assembling, that had yet occurred, of aviation forces, to which both France and England contributed, giving us the superiority in the air, and we caught Tennyson's vision, poetic and prophetic. "Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue."

We saw our heroes forging ahead with such eagerness that on September 27, Major Whittlesey's special command got separated from their comrades and found themselves surrounded by Germans, but they held on with tenacity and desperateness, until after the lapse of three perilous days "The Lost Battalion" was rescued. We saw our dauntless soldiers going over the top as if in a football action, and we cheered, for they were too busy to do so. We saw them gather in prisoners by the thousand in successive hauls. We saw them break through crack divisions that were massed in almost unbelievable strength, and we saw them everywhere shattering enemy resistance, though reserves were thrown in with great rapidity here and there to stem the onrolling flood. We saw them firing monster guns, which hurled projectiles weighing three-quarters of a ton each, which got the exact range of vital railway lines miles away, and which played havoc therewith in hits that raised young volcanoes of earth and iron and bursting shells and exploding powder. We saw them surging on northward of Verdun, which the Germans earlier had failed to take after months of fruitless effort because General Petain had made good his watchword, "They shall not pass." After the hardest kind of fighting for six weeks, they had their brilliant, culminating triumph on November 6 at Sedan,

when the Teutons were glad to ask for an armistice, and where nearly half a century before France had been overwhelmed in the historic disaster wherein a French army of over 80,000 was surrounded and forced to surrender, and wherein the Emperor Napoleon himself was captured. The French fittingly were given the honor of the first entry into Sedan.

Soon after the arrival of our first troops in France, a group of them reverently uncovered at the tomb of the illustrious Frenchman who came to the aid of Washington in our struggle for national independence, and General Pershing or one of his Staff said what the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers by their deeds now echoed, "Lafayette, we are here." Of that sobering fact the Germans at this point, where they made their last unsuccessful stand, no longer had any doubt. It was here where the first Sedan-chair was made, but they were not allowed to sit down on this spot, they were kept moving, and were signally defeated. "Sedan Day" will henceforth be celebrated with paeans of victory in Paris rather than in Berlin. Specifically the Americans in penetrating to Sedan severed an important arterial line of communication, cut off a main avenue of retreat, and made certain very soon an irretrievable catastrophe to the enemy, if the armistice had not been signed, securing the desired end without farther needless fighting. In General Pershing's own words, "Nothing but surrender or an armistice could save him from complete disaster." Brigaded with the English and the French at various vital points, the Americans acted well their part here and there, but as a separate and independent army they attained their greatest glory in hammering their way

through almost impregnable positions from St. Mihiel to Sedan.

Events followed one another in rapid succession. Revolutionists seized the German navy at its base, German cities rocked with riotings, a great German popular gathering proclaimed Bavaria a republic. There were runs on German banks, and November 8 the German emperor agreed to sign an abdication, and he afterward did, while the crown prince promised his signature to a renunciation of the throne, and he subsequently kept his word. Naturally, it was said, that William Hohenzollern shivered, even as Felix once trembled at Paul's preaching of "judgment to come." Father and son became fugitives in Holland. German envoys bearing the white flag of truce sought Marshal Foch to learn what the terms of surrender were, and these after vain attempts to get them modified were accepted November 11, though they were even more rigorous than those which had been submitted to Austria. It was a hard dose to swallow, and it went down only with many grimaces, while Doctor Foch for 72 hours, the time-limit for the acceptance of the armistice, held the nose of the kicking patient. It was no "soft peace," as the Kaiser himself expressed the idea, when he was expecting to win. The situation had been strangely reversed, the shoe was on the other foot, and it must have pinched dreadfully, the humiliation must have been most galling. The last antagonist had fallen, and though, as Scripture says, "There is no peace to the wicked," (the defeated could have had little repose of mind), nevertheless the hallelujah sounding forth from most of mankind was that of the heavenly host ushering in the first Christmas.