"The color line has about died out in the American army--in France. They play together, sing their songs together--the blacks and the white--and they go over the top together. They come back together, too, the wounded, and there is no thought of the color of a man's skin. They mix together on the convoy trains going up to the front, and all sing together, sharing each other's dangers and their joys. It is not an uncommon sight to see a crowd of white doughboys around a piano in some 'Y' or Red Cross hut, singing to beat the band, with a colored jass expert pounding the stuffing out of the piano. The white boys enjoy immensely the wit of the colored comrades, and many a bleak and drab day of privation and suffering is made a bit brighter by the humor that comes spontaneously to the lips of the 'bronze boys.' "The children of France love them. I suppose that is because they wear American soldiers' uniforms. I have seen scores of white children holding the hands of colored boys and trudging along on the march with them or romping into their tents and sitting on their knees and just exuding the affection that all the children of France have for anything and everybody from the United States." CHAPTER V. THE WAR IN THE AIR The Hughes report on air craft, submitted in October, 1918, contained a full account of the difficulties, drawbacks and questionable management that had held back the manufacture and shipment of airplanes to Europe. In September there were on the French-Belgian front between 300 and machines, all of which were in the scout and observation classes, with no regulation combat planes of American build; but American airmen had conducted many successful actions against German battle planes, and a good many Americans were operating French and British battle planes in action back of the German lines. The combined American, British, French and Canadian planes had before that time cleared the air of German observation and other machines in front of the allied lines, thereby preventing hostile observation of allied camps and artillery positions and movements of troops preparatory to attack.