Thus they had fallen back after their defeat on the Marne, from before Warsaw, and from Bapaume to the Hindenburg line. Again and again their morale had been reported breaking, and they had seemed in a disadvantageous position, only to recover their spirit as by imperial command and to extricate themselves in a reversal of form. The German Staff was still in being; the German Army still had reserve divisions and was back on powerful trench systems with ample artillery, machine-guns, and ammunition. Whether Ludendorff was to stand on the old line or withdraw to a new line, either operation would be imperiled by the loss of those heights between the Argonne and the Meuse. He must say, as Pétain had said at Verdun: "They shall not pass!" In my "America in France" I have told of our project, formed in June, 1917, when we had not yet a division of infantry in France and submarine destruction was on the increase, for an army of a million men in France, capable of the expansion to two million which must come, General Pershing thought, before the war could be won. That far-sighted conception and the decision which was now taken are the two towering landmarks of the troublous road of our effort in France. By July 1st, 1918, we had a million men in France, or nearly double the number of the schedule arranged between the French and American governments. We should soon have two millions. [Illustration: MAP NO. 2 WHERE AMERICAN DIVISIONS WERE IN LINE, FROM OUR ENTRY INTO THE TRENCHES UNTIL THE ARMISTICE.] When the Allies called for more man-power, in the crisis of the German offensive of March, 1918, the British had supplied the shipping that brought the divisions from our home training camps tumbling into France. They were divisions, not an army; and in equipment they were not even divisions. They had been hurried to the front to support the British and French as reserves, and they had been thrown into battle to resist the later German offensives. There had been no niggardliness in our attitude. We offered all our man-power as cannon-fodder to meet the emergency. Across the Paris road behind Château-Thierry we had given more than the proof of our valor. In the drive toward Soissons and to the Vesle we had established our personal mastery over the enemy. We had pressed him at close quarters, and kept on pressing him until he had to go. The confidence inherent in our nature, strengthened by training, had grown with the test of battle. We had known none of the reverses which lead to caution. More than ever our impulse was to attack.