Upon being transferred to Camp Funston near Fort Riley in Kansas, Wood began in the first days of September, 1917, the training of a new division of raw recruits from the selective draft. He had the assistance of a nucleus of army officers and some few army men, but the bulk of the division consisted of new men and of new officers recently from the officers' training camps. And this work was well on its way and the division {238} taking form when he received orders to go to Europe. It is difficult in this limited space to go into the details of his work abroad, and most of it in any case was technical matter more adapted to a military report. The results of some of his conversations are, however, of interest now as showing the situation as it appeared to important men, military and political, in Europe at that time. Some one said during the summer of 1918 when asked how much the American man and woman in the street really knew of what was going on in Europe, that if the headlines of American newspapers were disregarded and the actual telegraphic reports themselves read day by day, nearly everything that anybody from commanding generals down knew was known to that reader. There were, of course, many discussions amongst the guiding intellects, political and military, which never saw the light. There were, naturally, plans discussed and never carried out which the American citizen did not hear of at any time. But the general consensus of opinion seems to be that the {239} American newspaper reader knew almost as much as any one of what was happening and that he certainly knew as much of what was going to happen as the men in the inner circle. Much that has come out since the armistice shows a condition of affairs almost as the man in the street knew it at the time. In the winter of 1917-18 we knew that a huge drive was scheduled by the Germans on the Franco-Belgian front in the spring. In the following summer we knew the doubtful situation around Château-Thierry. In the middle of July we knew that something was happening, that the Americans were beginning to go in in large numbers, that the German "push" was slowing up; and that a turn had been made. Finally we knew that the German army was suddenly retiring, and for a month before the armistice was signed we knew that it was going to be signed. Indeed so sure was the American public of this last that they celebrated the end of the war throughout this great land a week ahead of time, because of a report which, though literally incorrect, was in essence true and known to be true. {240} It is not uninteresting, therefore, to review the sentiments and opinions which Wood found upon his arrival amongst the French and English statesmen and soldiers between January 1 and February 26th, 1918.