were the subordinate services more faultlessly efficient. An American officer who had served with distinction in the British Army before the entry of his own country into the war, spoke to me in Paris with enthusiasm of the British Staff work during this three months' advance. "It was simply _marvellous!_--People don't understand." "Everything was ready," writes an eye-witness of the First Army.[7] The rapidity of our advance completely surprised the enemy, some of whose batteries were captured as they were coming into action. Pontoon and trestle bridges were laid across the canal with lightning speed. The engineers, coming close behind the firing line, brought up the railways, light and heavy, as though by magic--built bridges, repaired roads. The Intelligence Staff, in the midst of all this rapid movement "gathered and forwarded information of the enemy's forces in front, his divisions, his reserves, his intentions." Telephones and telegraphs were following fast on the advance, connecting every department, whether stationary or still on the move. News was coming in at every moment--of advances, captures, possibilities in new country, casualties, needs. All these were being considered and collated by the Staff, decisions taken and orders sent out. [7] The following paragraphs are based on the deeply interesting account of the First Army operations of last year, written by Captain W. Inge, Intelligence and Publicity Officer on Sir Henry Home's Staff. Meanwhile divisions were being relieved, billets arranged for, transport organised along the few practicable roads. Ambulances were coming and going. Petrol must be accessible everywhere; breakdown gangs and repair lorries must be ready always to clear roads, and mend bridges. And the men doing these jobs must be handled, fed, and directed, as well as the fighting line. Letters came and went. The men were paid. Records of every kind were kept. New maps were made, printed, and sent round--and quickly, since food and supplies depended on them. "One breakdown on a narrow road, one failure of an important message over a telephone wire--and how much may depend on it!" "Yet thanks to intelligent and devoted work, to experience and resource, how little in these later stages of the war has gone wrong!" The fighting men, the Staff work, the auxiliary services of the British Army--the long welding of war had indeed brought them by last autumn to a wonderful efficiency. And that efficiency was never so sharply tested as by the exchange of a stationary war for a war of movement. The Army swept on "over new but largely devastated country," into unknown land, where all the problems, as compared with the long years of trench war, were new. Yet nothing failed--"except the astounded enemy's power of resistance."