When you went to Summerall's headquarters by day, you were pretty certain, unless there were a big action in progress, to find him absent, looking in on divisional, brigade, regimental, or battalion headquarters, moving about among the guns and transport and troops--wherever it pleased him to go in his insistence upon keeping in close human touch with the forces under his command. He left routine to his staff officers, and he expected much of his chief of staff. How his staff officers, hard master though he was, respected his ability! He could be forensic on occasion, as he was searchingly brief at others. It was not beneath his military dignity to make a speech, either. On the day before the great final attack on November 1st, when the German line was broken, he was out from morning to night, gathering officers in groups around him and addressing his soldiers, reminding them of their duties on the morrow, when there must be no faint-heartedness. They must go through. When he returned to his headquarters, hoarse from talking in the raw open air, General Maistre, who had come from Marshal Foch, was there, and General Pershing came in a little later. Both asked the one question of Summerall: would he go through? He answered that he would, with the positiveness that he had been instilling into his troops. If he had ever failed in one of his drives, there would certainly have been a smash, but he made no blind charges. He wanted to know where he was going, and he wanted to be sure that he had his bridge of shells for the men to cross in their advance. He prepared his lightnings well, but when they were loosed he would not stay them. Major-General John L. Hines, the new commander of the Third Corps, had been a colonel under Bullard in the 1st Division, and had commanded the bull-dog 4th Division in the Third Corps, under Bullard, in the trough of the Meuse. He was of a wholly different type from Summerall, with whom he shared the honor for swift promotion won in the field. It was said of him that he was the best linguist of the A. E. F., as he could be equally silent in all languages, including English. If the accepted idea of General Grant is true, he and Grant could have had a most sociable evening together by the exchange of a half dozen sentences, of which I am certain that General Hines would not have used more than his share.