During the last few weeks further information has been forthcoming about the Meuse-Argonne battle, as the American operations between the Argonne and the Meuse from September 26th to November 11th are apparently to be known. But a good deal of obscurity still hangs over the details of the fighting. In the British Army I came across the very general belief that the staff and transport work of the advance had been--in the words of a well-known historian of the war--"as was natural with a new army, scarcely adequate to the fighting qualities of the troops engaged." And I often heard regret expressed that the American Command had not been more willing to avail itself of the staff experience of either or both of the older armies, which might--so the British or French spectator thinks--have lessened the casualty lists among extraordinarily gallant but inexperienced troops. "Replacements fresh from home were put into exhausted divisions with little time for training," says General Pershing's report. And "some of the divisions were fighting their first battle." They were faced also at the beginning of the advance by some of the best remaining German troops. When one thinks of all the long and bitter training in the field that went to the perfecting of French or British staff work, and then of the difficult nature of the ground over which the First American Army had to make its way, one can only feel the deepest sympathy for the losses sustained by the fresh and eager troops. The Argonne forest itself had long been recognised as impenetrable to frontal attack, and on the Argonne side of the American twenty-mile front, along the western edge of the valley of the Aire, the ground is still heavily wooded and often very hilly. As one of the ablest military critics, himself a soldier of great distinction, expressed it to me: "Foch had set the Americans an uncommonly hard task!" But if there was some failure in those matters where neither bravery nor natural intelligence can take the place of long training, and experience in the field, there was no failure in ardour or in spirit. In spite of heavy losses, General Pershing never failed to push on. Starting from a line on the northern edge of the great Verdun battle-field, Montfaucon, the German headquarters during the Verdun fighting of 1916, was captured in three days. Then came severe fighting against fierce counter-attacks, and great difficulties with transport over shell-torn ground and broken roads, difficulties increased by bad weather. But on October 4th the gallant attack was renewed, and by October 10th, owing to the combined effects of the British drive in the north and the pressure on both sides of the Argonne, from General Gouraud on the west and the Americans on the east, the enemy fell back and the famous forest was cleared.