At first the French, great as was their admiration for these guns and the astonishingly accurate marksmanship which they had displayed on their trials, believed that their railroad beds and their bridges could not sustain such a weight; the French engineers, indeed, declined at the beginning to approve our request for the use of their rails. The constant rain of German shells on Paris, however, modified this attitude; the situation was so urgent that such assistance as these American guns promised was welcome. One August morning, therefore, the first train started for Helles Mouchy, the point from which it was expected to silence the "Big Bertha." The progress of this train through France was a triumphant march. Our own confidence in the French road bed and bridges was not much greater than that of the French themselves; the train therefore went along slowly, climbed the grades at a snail's pace, and took the curves with the utmost caution. As they crossed certain of the bridges, the crews held their breath and sat tight, expecting almost every moment to crash through. All along the route the French populace greeted the great battery train with one long cheer, and at the towns and villages the girls decorated the long muzzle of the gun with flowers. But there were other spectators than the French. Expertly as this unusual train had been camouflaged, the German airplane observers had detected its approach. As it neared the objective the shells that had been falling on Paris ceased; before the Americans could get to work, the Germans had removed their mighty weapon, leaving nothing but an emplacement as a target for our shells. Though our men were therefore deprived of the privilege of destroying this famous long-range gun, it is apparent that their arrival saved Paris from further bombardment, for nothing was heard of the gun for the rest of the war. The guns proved exceedingly effective in attacking German railroad centres, bridges, and other essential positions; and as they could be fired from any point of the railroad tracks behind the Western Front, and as they could be shifted from one position to another, with all their personnel and equipment, as fast as the locomotives could haul them, it was apparent that the more guns of this design that could be supplied the better. These qualities were at once recognized by the Army, which called upon the Navy for assistance in building a large number of railway batteries; and if the war had continued these great guns would soon have been thundering all along the Western Front.