Perhaps the most gratifying tribute I have heard paid to the American Battle Squadron which has been for many months incorporated in and working with the Grand Fleet was an unconscious one. "How are the Americans getting on?" I asked an officer of the Commander-in-Chief's staff a few days ago. "The Americans?" he repeated. "Oh, you mean the 'Xth B. S.' They have merged so completely into the Grand Fleet that we long ago ceased to think of them as anything but a part of ourselves. Indeed, that's just what they have become--a part of ourselves. They're doing their part. I couldn't say more for them." The world was a good deal impressed when, just after the German offensive started last March, President Wilson, acting on General Pershing's suggestion, agreed to the brigading of the American troops in France with the British and French armies until such time as they were in sufficient strength to form an army of their own. It was a wise action from the military point of view alone, but doubly so in giving our allies so unmistakable example of the spirit in which America was entering the common fight. It is characteristic of the essential difference between land and sea operations that the announcement of a similar sacrifice of national pride in the furtherance of Allied unity--this time on the part of the American Navy, and antedating the other by several months--should have to be withheld from the public until the significance of it was largely overshadowed by the more dramatic conditions under which the decision to brigade the American troops with the Allied armies was taken. Yet it is a fact that, until the arrival of the American battleships, white with brine of the Atlantic across which they had ploughed their way, last winter, never before in history had the warships of one nation endeavoured to co-operate with those of another save as a separate fleet. Never, indeed, up to that time, had such a consummation been deemed practicable.