Thank God, we did not win without America! The effects, the far-reaching effects, of America's intervention, of her comradeship in the field of suffering and sacrifice with the free nations of old Europe, are only now beginning to show themselves above the horizon. They will be actively and, as at least the men and women of faith among us believe, beneficently at work, when this generation has long passed away. CHAPTER VII AMERICA IN FRANCE (CONTINUED) It was late when we left Verdun, on the afternoon of the day which saw us at its beginning on the southern edge of the St. Mihiel battle-field, and the winter daylight had passed into darkness before we began to run through a corner of the Argonne, on our way to St. Menehould and Châlons, passing by the wholly ruined village of Clermont in Argonne. The forest ran past us, a wintry fairyland, dimly lit by our quickly moving lamps, and apparently impenetrable beyond their range, an optical effect, however, that may be produced in darkness by a mere fringe of trees along the roadside. But I knew while I watched the exquisite effects of brown and silver, produced by the succession of tall, pale trunks rising above the lace-work of the underwood, as scene after scene pressed upon us out of the dark, that we were indeed in a forest country, only some twenty miles away from the scene of General Pershing's drive at the end of last September, when he achieved on the first day an advance of seven miles through difficult country, while General Gouraud was pushing forward in Champagne; and I found myself speculating in the dark on the many discussions I had heard both among English and Americans of that advance, and of the checks and difficulties which, as I suppose is now generally admitted, followed on the first brilliant operations.