We are over here in this mess up to our ears and we know what has taken place when the whole ocean seems to tremble and that sickening, muffled roar, whose direction defies discovery, comes to our ears. We know that another torpedo has found its mark. Does it make us gloomy? It does not. It cheers us up. Why? Because we can instantly diagnose just how it was done and we recognize that our enemy is becoming more timid, impotent, and desperate. Very soon every successfully exploded torpedo will cost the life of the sub that sent it. Instead of being the terror of the seas that they were last June and July, the U-boats now advertise the fact that the terror of the seas is the American destroyer. The war goes booming along on an ever greater scale, and to those who are given this opportunity of viewing the panorama, it unfolds itself with a magnitude that defies all description. Could I but tell you of the vast works that America alone has put upon the landscapes here in France, you would believe my enthusiasm exaggerated. Details I cannot give, but as a comparison imagine a contract for the construction of a series of communities, each one about as large as Newark was ten years ago, and imagine them equipped with every modern improvement such as wharfage on a river-bank formerly barren, manufacturing plants for the fabrication of everything from wooden legs to steel ships, and then accept this as a fact already accomplished and doing business, and you can gather some idea of the tremendous efforts that have been put forth. [Illustration: ROLLING OUT TO FIND A CONVOY] [Illustration: A LITTLE WATER ON DECK] For all this we are indebted, not nearly so much to the men here at the front as to those whose untiring efforts at home, in face of all kinds of criticism of the most venomous kind, have driven this enormous task to a successful culmination. I have a wonderful respect for our men at home who have had to stay home and accomplish things which they could never disclose to a naturally impatient and clamoring public. Had the Germans done such things as I have seen here accomplished by Americans, I would have taken off my hat to them and acknowledged the fact that German efficiency coupled with the advantages of a despotism was at least worthy of a close look. I dwell upon this phase of the situation because it has recently come to my attention, from most reliable sources, that there is a tendency toward gloom in certain quarters at home. The constant attacks made by conscientious critics, aside from the braying of the eternally discontented and the insidious whispers of the disloyal, are liable to make even the stoutest hearts falter at times.