While we were building ships; while we were drafting and drilling men over here; while the despised woodcutters and railroad men and the vigorous young engineers were laying the basis for a long war if necessary, but a clean victory in the end, our soldiers, waiting in scores of camps to take their places in the lines, were being given an intensive training, which I think would astonish even the war-efficient Germans. We have also special schools for officers, and they are still in full blast, and will be continued as long as they are needed. Our supply of officers will never run short, for the schools will continue to turn them out. The schools give the superior enlisted men a chance to earn commissions. Officers in every regiment are on a constant watch for men who show signs of leadership and military intelligence. Such men are officer material, and on the recommendation of their superiors they are sent to one or another of the schools which have been established over there. When our men go to France from the cantonments here their training is by no means complete. They have been licked into soldier shape, they are in good physical and mental condition, they have learned to march, to drill, and to shoot. They can use the bayonet, they know something about artillery, about grenades and bombs. But they still have much to learn. They begin to learn soon after they arrive in France. They learn in camps and schools, but the German government doesn’t tell its people about that. It was a cold, drizzly day in March that I visited a school where infantry, artillery, sanitary and gas lore was being instilled into the intelligence of nearly two thousand hot-blooded young Americans. Some of them were being trained for non-commissioned officers who would be in direct command of squads of soldiers in battle. There were also large classes for lieutenants and captains of infantry, artillery, engineering and aviation. I can not in one chapter or in two give anything more than an outline of the courses studied. The schedules announcing the classes lie on my desk as I write. They cover eighteen closely typewritten pages. Take a class of enlisted infantry men who were expected to command squads. These are some of the things they did in school the week of March 4 to March 9, 1918: On Monday and Tuesday they had inspection and drill from 7:50 to 8:45. From 9 until 11:45 they had instruction in musketry, grenade and bayonet work. They went to their noon dinner, and from 1:15 to 4:30 they had more of the same kind of drill. They repeated this during the rest of the week, and on Wednesday they had besides a lecture on some theoretical problem of their work by a veteran colonel, a West Point man. They also studied a map problem, and in the evening they saw in the engineers’ school a night demonstration of wiring in the field. They finished on Saturday afternoon with a “tactical walk.” Quite a busy week.