Then came the long-expected German offensive, and the cry went up in Europe for men. England, "her back against the wall," offered additional ships in which to transport six divisions over and above the number of troops already scheduled for embarkation, agreeing further to feed and maintain these men for 10 weeks while they were brigaded with British units for final training. After the six additional divisions had embarked there was still need of men, and the British continued their transports in our service. The high mark of shipment was in July, when 306,000 American soldiers were transported across the Atlantic, more than three times the number contemplated for July in the schedule adopted six months earlier. [Illustration: ACTUAL TROOP SAILINGS COMPARED WITH PROGRAMS.] The effect of this stepping up of the man-power program upon the shipment of supplies was described by Lieut. Col. Repington, the British military critic, writing in the Morning Post (London) on December 9, 1918, in part as follows: * * * they (the British war cabinet) also prayed America in aid, implored her to send in haste all available infantry and machine guns, and placed at her disposal, to her great surprise, a large amount of transports to hasten arrivals. * * * The American Government acceded to this request in the most loyal and generous manner. Assured by their Allies in France that the latter could fit out the American infantry divisions on their arrival with guns, horses, and transport, the Americans packed their infantry tightly in the ships and left to a later occasion the dispatch to France of guns, horses, transport, labor units, flying service, rolling stock, and a score of other things originally destined for transport with the divisions. If subsequently--and indeed up to the day that the armistice was signed--Gen. Pershing found himself short of many indispensable things, and if his operations were thereby conducted under real difficulties of which he must have been only too sensible, the defects were not due to him and his staff, nor to the Washington administration, nor to the resolute Gen. March and his able fellow workers, but solely to the self-sacrificing manner in which America had responded to the call of her friends. * * * * * [Illustration: BRITISH AND AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES ON WESTERN FRONT.] The really amazing thing which America did was to place in France in 19 months an army of the size and the ability of the American Expeditionary Force. The war taught us that America can organize, train, and transport troops of a superior sort at a rate which leaves far behind any program for the manufacture of munitions. It upset the previous opinion that adequate military preparedness is largely a question of trained man power.