With Russia out of the war, Rumania crippled, the Servian army reduced to a small body of veterans and the Italian offensive making no decisive progress, it was evident that unless Germany could be starved into submission by the blockade, which seemed out of the question from the information in possession of Allied councils, we must have a fighting force in France which should be as strong as either that of the British or the French while its transport across the Atlantic through the submarine zone was by no means assured. Trusting to no adventitious event to make so large an army unnecessary, General Pershing and his staff, after they had studied the situation and conferred with the Allied command, decided that their duty as pioneers was to prepare for the operations in France of an army of at least one million men with the communications and plant for their support capable of expansion for the care of two million men. As the Allies throughout the war had depended very largely for war material upon America and overseas countries, it was essential that we should be capable of largely providing for our army from the resources of our own country. With the French railway system strained to capacity, and France suffering from a shortage of labor behind the lines, owing to all her able-bodied males being in active service, we must furnish transportation as well as labor from home. Despite the strong influences brought to bear to have our soldiers introduced by regiments and battalions into the French and British armies, it was our duty, not only to our national spirit but to our conception of our duty to the Allies, to form an integral American army which should fight as a unit in the same manner that the British and French armies were fighting. A glance at the map of the whole western front, in reference to the coast line and the harbors of France and its railway systems, will readily indicate to any observer the strategic character of the conception of General Pershing in 1917, which had its climax of success in November, 1918. The British army was on the left of the long battle line from Switzerland to Flanders, with its bases close to the Channel and home bases. The French army was to hold the center of the line, fighting for the heart of France, and on the right the American army, drawing its supplies three thousand miles across the sea and across southern and central France, was to face the Rhine.