the German Goeben, which four years before had sought refuge there together with the companion cruiser Breslau.

Still there was no abating of the deluge. Attention now was fixed upon Austria. Her soldiers were fast being cleared out of Serbia, whose troops on November 3 reoccupied Belgrade, their former capital. But it was on the Italian front where the Dual Monarchy was receiving her most serious gruelling. The whirlwind campaign of General Diaz after about ten days of furious fighting had a speedy climax in the capture of the fortified town of Trent in the Austrian Tyrol, in the occupation of Trieste the Austrian naval base on the Adriatic Sea, in the taking of 5,000 cannon and of a immense booty, in the bagging of half a million prisoners, and in the putting to a headlong flight the remainder of the army. Panic-stricken Austria-Hungary then applied directly for an armistice to its military conqueror, and he, receiving the terms through the Allies whose Council determined them in each case, at once submitted them, and had the satisfaction of seeing them accepted November 4. The ultimatum, the irreducible minimum, included such rigorous provisions as the disarmament of the Austrian forces, their retirement, in the oft-repeated phrase of the enemy when retreating to "positions previously prepared," prepared this time by the Allies. Other concessions were the control of Italia Irredenta, Italy's long lost provinces, military occupation of strategic points, the use of railroads and waterways for attacking Germany from the east, the surrender of fifteen submarines, three battleships, three cruisers, twelve torpedo boats and six Danube monitors, and time would fail to tell what else. Without controversy the requirements were strenuous enough to make certain the discharging in full of the obligations to be imposed.

Only Germany now stood out. Would she bow the knee? We are reminded of Margaret Fuller, who put on airs of intellectual superiority, and who was quite disposed to be condescending and patronizing. When Emerson reported to Carlyle as one of her wise sayings that she "accepted the universe," the laconic reply of the Scotch author was, "She had better." Germany boasting of being a nation of supermen, to whom all the rest of mankind were inferior, came to a position as to whether she would accept the verdict of the world against her, and the general opinion was, "She had better." John Burroughs in his latest volume, "Accepting the Universe," has set forth the same truth (among other views not so commendable) that we should yield cheerfully and uncomplainingly to the inevitable. But the Teuton was never inclined to do that. In the ordinary and not in the special Shakesperean sense, he "doth protest too much." He has continually protested that he was not to blame, and he has steadily refused to accept the common judgment against him that he was the aggressor, and in his final defeat he has persistently maintained his defiant and rebellious attitude. When we think of how much that is praiseworthy has been accomplished by the fine German mind, and when we reflect upon the recent madness of intellect that has been running riot, we can say in this case what was said of Hamlet in his derangement.

"Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.'

'Where do we go next?" as the soldiers used to say, and in their proverbial phrase, "Let's go." Swinging back again to the Western front, where the real decision was to be made, we saw 40,000 Austrian troops, who were facing

the Yankee forces, forsaking the Teutons and taking their departure homeward. We saw the American army on September 12 in a wonderful dash of a few hours flatten out the St. Mihiel salient that had existed for four years and that now turned over 16,000 prisoners. We saw the young soldiers from the United States with the skill and determination and valor of veterans address themselves to the grim business around Metz, the most formidable fortress that German ingenuity could construct, the siege of which, however, they were not yet ready to begin, for they had another objective. Toward that as a prior attainment we saw them advancing in spite of the greatest natural obstacles, reinforced by barbed wires and concrete trenches and thousands of machine guns. We saw them engaging in the greatest battle of American history, dwarfing to small proportions the largest and most sanguinary of the civi! war, for Major-General Maurice of the British Staff of military operations says they numbered nearly three- quarters of a million. Of all American engagements, this was the battle royal. It was to be pressed day after day, and it was to end only with the cessation of the great conflict. To wipe out the St. Mihiel salient, there were employed approximately 500,000, of whom 70,000 were Frenchmen, officially reported our commander-in-chief to his government at Washington, while he added that his First Army increased. till, including those engaged in Services of Supply and those held for replacements, it "exceeded 1,000,000 men,' with a considerable number of the French again coöperating. For the march through the Argonne forest and along the Meuse river, the vast hosts were equipped with 2,700 guns, with 189 tanks (of which the enemy in this section had none), and with 821 airplanes, of which 604 were manned

by Americans. This was the greatest assembling, that had yet occurred, of aviation forces, to which both France and England contributed, giving us the superiority in the air, and we caught Tennyson's vision, poetic and prophetic.

"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue."

We saw our heroes forging ahead with such eagerness that on September 27, Major Whittlesey's special command got separated from their comrades and found themselves surrounded by Germans, but they held on with tenacity and desperateness, until after the lapse of three perilous days "The Lost Battalion" was rescued. We saw our dauntless soldiers going over the top as if in a football action, and we cheered, for they were too busy to do so. We saw them gather in prisoners by the thousand in successive hauls. We saw them break through crack divisions that were massed in almost unbelievable streth, and we saw them everywhere shattering enemy resistance, though reserves were thrown in with great rapidity here and there to stem the onrolling flood. We saw them firing monster guns, which hurled projectiles weighing three-quarters of a ton each, which got the exact range of vital railway lines miles away, and which played havoc therewith in hits that raised young volcanoes of earth and iron and bursting shells and exploding powder. We saw them surging on northward of Verdun, which the Germans earlier had failed to take after months of fruitless effort because General Petain had made good his watchword, "They shall not pass." After the hardest kind of fighting for six weeks, they had their brilliant, culminating triumph on November 6 at Sedan,

when the Teutons were glad to ask for an armistice, and where nearly half a century before France had been overwhelmed in the historic disaster wherein a French army of over 80,000 was surrounded and forced to surrender, and wherein the Emperor Napoleon himself was captured. The French fittingly were given the honor of the first entry into Sedan.

Soon after the arrival of our first troops in France, a group of them reverently uncovered at the tomb of the illustrious Frenchman who came to the aid of Washington in our struggle for national independence, and General Pershing or one of his Staff said what the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers by their deeds now echoed, "Lafayette, we are "re." Of that sobering fact the Germans at this point, where they made their last unsuccessful stand, no longer had any doubt. It was here where the first Sedan-chair was made, but they were not allowed to sit down on this spot, t were kept moving, and were signally defeated. "Sedan Day" will henceforth be celebrated with paeans of victory in Paris rather than in Berlin. Specifically the Americans in penetrating to Sedan severed an important arterial line of communication, cut off a main avenue of retreat, and made certain very soon an irretrievable catastrophe to the enemy, if the armistice had not been signed, securing the desired end without farther needless fighting. In General Pershing's own words, "Nothing but surrender or an armistice could save him from complete disaster." Brigaded with the English and the French at various vital points, the Americans acted well their part here and there, but as a separate and independent army they attained their greatest glory in hammering their way