Longings were about evenly divided between the two directions. If they could not go up to the front, whither they had been headed for these many months, they would have liked to go to Paris. Failing of both the front and Paris, they would have liked to go "any old place away from here." Which is typical of the soldier, "here," wherever it may be, always being the least desirable place in the world. So the doughboys and engineers whiled away the long, warm days, drilling and hiking, doing much bayonet work, polishing and cleaning rifles and other equipment and variously putting in the time as best they could, and fretting all the time for a chance at real action. That may be said to have been one of the most trying periods of their long probation. It may not be amiss to recall the general situation on the Western Front at this time. After a winter of boastful preparation, during which they advertised in every possible way that they expected to launch in the spring the greatest effort they had yet put forth to break through the Allied lines, the Germans, on March 21st, strengthened by hundreds of thousands of veteran soldiers released from Russia through the farcical Brest-Litovsk treaty, boiled forth from their lines on the fifty-mile front from Arras to La Fere. This was an effort to force a break at the juncture of the French and British lines about St. Quentin. It did not succeed in this, but a great wedge was thrust out to become a grave menace to Amiens, an important British distribution center. Very shortly after this move was checked, the British army in Flanders was heavily attacked, on April 9th, in the region of Ypres, and thrown back so badly that Field Marshal Haig issued his famous appeal to the troops "fighting with their backs to the wall." The British line finally held, and, French reinforcements arriving, began to react strongly in counter-attacks. Again the boiling western line simmered down, but on May 27th the German Crown Prince's army flung itself out from the Chemin des Dames, in Champagne, and by June 3d had reached the Marne at Château-Thierry. Here forces which made their way across the river were hotly attacked and driven back, and this drive came to a halt. One week later, on June 10th, the fighting was renewed from Montdidier to Noyon in a thrust for Compiegne as a key to Paris. This was plainly an effort to widen the wedge whose apex was at Château-Thierry, but Foch had outguessed the Germans, knew where they would strike and held them. The attack was fairly well checked in two days.