What was the greatest thing America did in the World War?" That is a question I have often been asked, and it is easily answered. It was the raising and training of an army of 4,000,000 men, a navy of over 600,000, and the safe transportation of more than two million troops to Europe. And all this was accomplished in eighteen months. When the issue hung in the balance, in the spring of 1918, Lloyd George said: "It is a race between Wilson and Hindenburg." Could America land enough soldiers in France in time to check the German offensive? That was the one vital question. Carrying the American Expeditionary Force across the Atlantic and bringing our troops home has been justly termed the "biggest transportation job in history." Sailing through submarine-infested seas, they constantly faced the menace of attack from an unseen foe, as well as the perils of war-time navigation. Yet not one American troop-ship was sunk on the way to France, and not one soldier aboard a troop transport manned by the United States Navy lost his life through enemy action. That achievement has never been equalled. It was not only the most important but the most successful operation of the war. The Germans never believed it could be done. When Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves, commander of the Cruiser and Transport Force, came to Washington for his final instructions, just before the first troop convoys sailed for Europe, as he was leaving my office, I said to him: Admiral, you are going on the most important, the most difficult, and the most hazardous duty assigned to the Navy. Good bye. That was not overstating it in any particular. No nation in history had ever attempted to transport so huge an army overseas. It would have been difficult enough under the most ideal conditions, with nothing to hinder or molest. The German navy could have no greater object than to prevent our troops from getting to France. There could have been no greater victory for them than to have sunk a transport loaded with American soldiers. Words can hardly express the strain of those anxious days when our first transports were running the gauntlet to France; or our relief when we received the news that they had all arrived safely at St. Nazaire. Sailing in a dense fog on June 14, 1917, the first group arrived on June 26th; the last, the cargo ships, on July 2nd. The first group, Gleaves reported, was attacked by submarines the night of June 22nd, at 10:15 p. m.; the second group encountered two, and a torpedo was fired at the fourth group on June 28th. That they had escaped the submarines was an added cause for rejoicing. Not a ship was damaged or a man injured, and an officer reported: "We didn't lose but one horse, and that was a mule." "The German Admiralty had boasted that not one American soldier should set foot in France," Gleaves said. "The bluff had been called, and it could not have been called at a more psychological moment."