For to show that, in a strictly military sense, the British and Dominion Armies, backed by the British Navy, brought the war to a successful end--a simple matter of figures and dates--is not all, or nearly all. The American intervention, and especially the marvellous speeding-up of American action, from March to the end of the war, quite apart from the brilliant promise of America's first appearances in the field, had an effect upon Europe--Great Britain, France, Italy--akin to that which the American climate and atmosphere produces on the visitor from this side of the Atlantic. It breathed new life into everything, and especially into the heart of France, the chief sufferer by three years of atrocious war. As weary and devastated France watched the American stream of eager and high-hearted youth, flowing from Bordeaux eastwards, column after column, regiment after regiment, of men admirable in physique, fearless in danger, and full of a laughing and boundless confidence in America's power to help, and resolve to win--at last it seemed that the long horror of the war must be indeed coming to an end. "Three thousand miles!" said the French villager or townsman to himself, as he turned out to see them pass--"they have come three thousand miles to beat the Boche. And America is the richest country in the world--and there are a hundred millions of them." Hope rose into flood, and with it fresh courage to endure. Nor was the effect less marked on the British nation, which had not known invasion, and on the British Army, for all its faith in itself. The rapid growth of American strength in France from March onward in response to the call of the Allies, provided indeed a moral support to the two older armies, which was of incalculable value and "influenced the fighting qualities of both; while the knowledge of these mounting reserves enabled the Allied Commanders to take risks which otherwise could hardly have been faced." I am quoting a British military authority of high rank.