The General had under him commanders of brigade who had commanded posts that contained only fragments of regiments. Their brigades, never assembled in any one place, not only did not approximate to war conditions, but had to be disrupted and divided and re-formed before the General could dare to offer them in battle. Hardly a brigade commander had under him troops that he had known and trained and handled himself.[54] With exception of those who had been on the Mexican border, when a part of the small army had been mobilized in a body for the first time, these men had tried to prepare themselves with the best that Congress would give them--battalions and companies and single batteries instead of assembled armies, because the politicians would not let the army come together. The 49 army posts of the United States, long a subject of derision among all except those who fattened on them, might well have been symbolized now in that camp by forty-nine skeletons--a skeleton army waiting to lead the other skeleton army to death.[55] To none was this better known than to the enemy. The invaders’ commander, standing idly with his hands in his pockets, was able to say confidently: “They’ll not bother us seriously. The only thing they’ll do, the only thing they _can_ do, is to retreat when we begin to threaten them.” He held in his grip the sea, the land and the air. In shore lay ships ready to sweep part of his front with protective fire. On land his advance forces had seized roads and railroads, his engineers were repairing what had been destroyed, and his cavalry was guarding all approaches. His air-men, overwhelmingly numerous, spied on the American army almost with impunity, and parried with sure aerial thrusts all American attempts to spy on their own lines. The aerial guard, steel-breasted, with the wings of speed and talons of fire, could be broken only by equal numbers, equally terrible. Individual daring, individual skill, were nothing against this armored brood. Five times American fliers rose to try it; and five times they were grappled in mid-air and torn with shot, and dropped to the earth far below. “No more!” said the General in command. He sat with his chin in his hand, studying the dispatches that were laid before him. They were piled high, though twenty operators and half a dozen aides struggled to eliminate from the torrential confusion the news that might be deemed most reliable.[56] _The “Fog of War”_ There were messages from Washington, messages from coast defenses, messages from patrols and outposts, from scouts and from company commanders. There were wild reports of enemy invasion from places so far inland that it was palpable that they could not be true. There were reports from places so nearby that they might mean imminent danger. Excited officials of towns and cities sent long, involved dispatches or hung for long minutes to telephones to recount interminable tales.