It was somewhat difficult for the caller to comprehend the full extent of the power and responsibility of this self-made leader at his desk in a great room overlooking Whitehall Place, for he had so simplified an organization that had been brought into being in two years that it seemed to run without any apparent effort on his part. The methods of men who have great authority interest us all. I had first seen Sir William at a desk in a little room of a house in a French town when his business was that of transport and supply for the British Expeditionary Force. Then he moved to a larger room in the same town, as Chief of Staff of the army in France. Now he had a still larger one and in London. I had heard much of his power of application, which had enabled him to master languages while he was gaining promotion step by step; but I found that the new Chief of Staff of the British Army was not "such a fool as ever to overwork," as one of his subordinates said, and no slave to long hours of drudgery at his desk. "Besides his routine," said another subordinate, speaking of Sir William's method, "he has to do a great deal of thinking." This passing remark was most illuminating. Sir William had to think for the whole. He had trained others to carry out his plans, and as former head of the Staff College who had had experience in every branch, he was supposed to know how each branch should be run. When I returned to the front, my first motor trip which took me along the lines of communication revealed the transformation, the more appreciable because of my absence, which the winter had wrought. The New Army had come into its own. And I had seen this New Army in the making. I had seen Kitchener's first hundred thousand at work on Salisbury Plain under old, retired drillmasters who, however eager, were hazy about modern tactics. The men under them had the spirit which will endure the drudgery of training. With time they must learn to be soldiers. More raw material, month after month, went into the hopper. The urgent call of the recruiting posters and the press had, in the earlier stages of the war, supplied all the volunteers which could be utilized. It took much longer to prepare equipment and facilities than to get men to enlist. New Army battalions which reached the front in August, 1915, had had their rifles only for a month. Before rifles could be manufactured rifle plants had to be constructed. As late as December, 1915, the United States were shipping only five thousand rifles a week to the British. Soldiers fully drilled in the manual of arms were waiting for the arms with which to fight; but once the supply of munitions from the new plants was started it soon became a flood.