"Three thousand miles!" said the French villager or townsman to himself, as he turned out to see them pass--"they have come three thousand miles to beat the Boche.

And America is the richest country in the world--and there are a hundred millions of them." Hope rose into flood, and with it fresh courage to endure.
Nor was the effect less marked on the British nation, which had not known invasion, and on the British Army, for all its faith in itself.
The rapid growth of American strength in France from March onward in response to the call of the Allies, provided indeed a moral support to the two older armies, which was of incalculable value and "influenced the fighting qualities of both; while the knowledge of these mounting reserves enabled the Allied Commanders to take risks which otherwise could hardly have been faced." I am quoting a British military authority of high rank.
It was at Metz that--outside Paris--I first came in contact with this "America in France," which History will mark on her coming page with all the emphasis that belongs to new chapters in the ever-broadening tale of man.

It was in the shape of some "Knights of Columbus," pausing at Metz for a night on their way to Coblenz.

We only exchanged a few words on the steps of the hotel, but I had time to feel the interest and the strangeness of this American Catholicism in Europe, following in the track of war, and looking with its New World eyes at those old, old towns, those ancient churches in which American Catholics were at home, yet not at home.

At Strasbourg I saw no Americans that I can remember.