He made no attempt to fill his eloquent silences; and so I left.  As the car gathered speed, plunging into the pastoral solitudes, I looked back.  The last sight I had of Domremy was a grey little garden, made sacred by the centuries, and an American soldier standing with a French child in his arms, her golden hair lying thickly against his neck.

On the surface the American is unemotionally practical, but at heart he is a dreamer, first, last and always.  If the Americans have merited any criticism in France, it is owing to the vastness of their plans; the tremendous dream of their preparations postpones the beginning of the reality.  Their mistake, if they have made a mistake, is an error of generosity.  They are building with a view to flinging millions into the line when thousands a little earlier would be of superlative advantage.  They had the choice of dribbling their men over in small contingents or of waiting till they could put a fighting-force into the field so overwhelming in equipment and numbers that its weight would be decisive.  They were urged to learn wisdom from England’s example and not to waste their strength by putting men into the trenches in a hurry before they were properly trained.  England was compelled to adopt this chivalrous folly by the crying need of France.  It looked in the Spring of 1917, before Russia had broken down or the pressure on the Italian front had become so menacing, as though the Allies could afford to ask America to conduct her war on the lines of big business.  America jumped at the chance—­big business being the task to which her national genius was best suited.  If her Allies could hold on long enough, she would build her fleet and appear with an army of millions that would bring the war to a rapid end.  Her role was to be that of the toreador in the European bull-fight.

But big business takes time and usually loses money at the start.  In the light of recent developments, we would rather have the bird-in-the-hand of 300,000 Americans actually fighting than the promise of a host a year from now.  People at home in America realised this in January.  They were so afraid that their Allies might feel disappointed.  They were so keen to achieve tangible results in the war that they grew impatient with the long delay.  They weren’t interested in seeing other nations going over the top—­the same nations who had been over so many times; they wanted to see their sons and brothers at once given the opportunity to share the wounds and the danger.  Their attitude was Spartan and splendid; they demanded a curtailment of their respite that they might find themselves afloat on the crimson tide.  The cry of the civilians in America was identical with that of their men in France.  “Let them take off our khaki or else hurry us into the trenches.  We want to get started.  This waiting makes us tired.”

And the civilians in America had earned a right to make their demand.  Industrially, financially, philanthropically, from every point of view they had sacrificed and played the game, both by the Allies and their army.  When they, as civilians, had been so willing to wear the stigmata of sacrifice, they were jealous lest their fighting men should be baulked of their chance of making those sacrifices appear worth while.