In this little room Pétain had said, "They shall not pass," and so wrought that they did not pass; and Nivelle had shown me his maps and plans for the brilliant re-taking of Douaumont and Vaux in the fall of 1916, which was to make him commander-in-chief as the exemplar of a system of attack upon which he staked his reputation in the Allied offensive of 1917. In those days no one dreamed that American khaki would stream along the "sacred road," and American guns again set the hills trembling with their blasts; or that John Pershing of Missouri from this little room would direct the largest force we had ever sent into action in the battle which was to be the final answer to German aggression. The Chief of Staff's room, its walls hung with maps, was across the hall from the Commanding General's, as it had been in the Verdun days. Then as now it sent across to the General's desk slips of paper with the digested news of the battle, which he could follow by reference to his own maps. Now as then a cloistered quiet pervaded the building which had been the center of a small town. Orderlies stood on guard, and adjutants on guard above them. The lights behind the black-curtained windows burned late, as on the basis of the day's news plans for the next day's action were made--plans for another advance against the Germans, this time, instead of resistance to their advance. "You never know what is in the C.-in-C.'s mind, and how it is coming out," said his aide. "When it comes, it comes quick and definite--just like the outburst of a bombardment for an offensive which has been weeks in preparation." He listened to many counselors; but the decisive counsels he held behind the locked doors of his own mind. Those who thought they knew what he was going to do knew least; those who received the most affirmative smile bestowed in silence might receive the most positive of negative decisions when the time came. He was charged with "snap" judgments on some things; and with unduly delaying over others--while he smiled over both criticisms. In all events his word was supreme. Men might contrive to defeat his orders, but no man dared dispute them. He had continued to grow with the growth of his army; his grip of the lever strengthened as the machine became more ponderous. Others might build the parts of the machine; he brought them together in his own way and his own time.