the berthing capacity trebled, the unloading facilities multiplied by ten.  A railroad yard is being laid which will contain 225 miles of track and 870 switches.  An immense locomotive-works is being erected for the repairing and assembling of rolling-stock from America.  It was originally planned to bring over 960 standard locomotives and 30,000 freight-cars from the States, all equipped with French couplers and brakes so that they could become a permanent part of the French railroad system.  These figures have since been somewhat reduced by the purchase of rolling-stock in Europe.  Reservoirs are being built at some distance from the town which will be able to supply six millions gallons of purified water a day.  In order to obtain the necessary quantity of pipe, piping will be torn up from various of the water-systems in America and brought across the Atlantic.  As the officer, who was my informant remarked, “Rather than see France go short, some city in the States will have to haul water in carts.”

As proof of the efficiency with which materials from America are being furnished, when the engineers arrived on the scene with 225 miles of track to lay, they found 100 miles of rails and spikes already waiting for them.  Of the 870 switches required, 350 were already on hand.  Of the ties required, one-sixth were piled up for them to be going on with.  Not so bad for a nation quite new to the war-game and living three thousand miles beyond the horizon!

On further enquiry I learnt that six million cubic yards of filling were necessary to raise the ground of the railroad yard to the proper level.  In order that the work may be hurried, dredges are being brought across the Atlantic and, if necessary, harbour construction in the States will be curtailed.

I was interested in the personnel employed in this work.  Here, as elsewhere, I found that the engineering and organising brains of America are largely in France.  One colonel was head of the marble industry in the States; another had been vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.  Another man, holding a sergeant’s rank was general manager of the biggest fishing company.  Another, a private in the ranks, was chief engineer of the American Aluminum Company.  A major was general manager of The Southern Pacific.  Another colonel was formerly controller of the currency and afterwards president of the Central Trust Company of Illinois.  A captain was chief engineer and built the aqueducts over the keys of the Florida East Coast Railroad.  As with us, you found men of the highest social and professional grade serving in every rank of the American Army; one, a society man and banker, was running a gang of negroes whose job it was to shovel sand into cars.  In peace times thirty thousand pounds a year could not have bought him.  What impressed me even more than the line of communications itself was the quality of the men engaged on its construction.  As one of them said to me, “Any job that they give us engineers