Up to this time the phrase "Too proud to fight" had haunted the minds of the Allied peoples when they thought of American troops. They considered that we had been very slow in beginning active warfare. Our losses in the quiet trenches that we had occupied had been thus far normally slight compared with those in an active battle sector. There was a disposition to think that probably America was not sufficiently in earnest to make any great sacrifice of lives. We were willing to loan the Allies money, to supply them with materials of war and to make some show of military force; but the contemplation of a nation three thousand miles away from Europe fighting with all the heroic disregard of life of the Allies on their own soil seemed a little out of keeping with the accepted traditions of military history to Europeans. Never were soldiers watched with more critical interest or deeper appreciation of the influence of the result than our divisions when they were first engaged in violent action at Cantigny and in the Château-Thierry operations in the course of the trying months of the German offensives and the subsequent Allied counteroffensives. Not only had the Europeans wondered if we would fight, but they had grave doubts of our battle skill. The seriousness of the situation deepened their concern. Anyone who really knew America had no doubt that we would fight. At the same time thoughtful Americans, familiar with the increasingly difficult technique which was the accumulation of more than three years' experience, when they thought of how relatively little experience our citizen soldiers had had, saw them go into action beside veteran French and British divisions with misgivings lest their skill might not be in keeping with their valor. Their initiative and furious application led to more rapid learning than the most optimistic of their teachers had imagined. The American army had been trained for the offensive. We had, at the start, the natural initiative which the Canadians had so abundantly shown, and which in the introduction of the trench raid they applied in the only innovation of tactics with the exception of the tanks which the British army developed. The Canadians, coming from a more sparsely settled country than ours, with a larger percentage of its citizens of English-speaking origin than we have, if we except the French Canadian population, had the advantage, in the views of many, over American forces which must include a large number of draft men unfamiliar with the English language who had had only a brief residence in the United States.