communication between those ports and the front is inadequate to handle very large bodies of men. You may notice that General Pershing recommended that Christmas boxes should not be sent to the men. That sounded like a pretty hard piece of advice, but if you could go to those ports and see those Christmas boxes which are still there, you would know why he didn't want them sent. There was no means of getting them to the front. Vast accumulations of these gifts were piled up there with no means of storing them adequately even. I just wanted to create for you this picture, that the channels have been inevitably choked. Now we believe that, inasmuch as the impediments on the other side are being largely removed, we can go ahead with the original programme and add to it in proportion as the British can spare us the tonnage, and they are going to spare us the tonnage for the purpose. And with the extra tonnage which the British are going to spare us we will send our men, not to France but to Great Britain, and from there they will go to the front through the channel ports. You see that makes a new line where the means of handling them are already established and where they are more abundant than they are at the French ports. Now, I want to say again that none of this involves the least criticism of the French authorities, because I think they have done their very best in every respect, but they couldn't make ports out of hand, they couldn't build new facilities suddenly, and their man power was being drawn on in very much larger proportion than our man power. Therefore, it was perfectly proper that we should send men over there and send materials to make the means of handling the troops and the cargoes more expeditiously. I want you gentlemen to realize that there was no wave-like motion in this thing so far as our purpose and preparation are concerned. We have met with delays, of course, in production, some of which might have been avoided and ought to have been avoided, and which are being slowly corrected, but apart from that the motive power has been back of this thing all the time. It has been the means of action that has oscillated, it has been sometimes greater and sometimes less than was necessary for the programme.