In this field her help had been incalculably great.

In the matter of munitions and stores for the Allies she had done all that the state of her railways, the weather of her winter, and the drawbacks of the American Constitution, considered as a military machine, as yet allowed her to do.

Meanwhile one saw the President, aided by a score of able and energetic men, constantly at work removing stones in the path, setting up a War Industries Board, reorganising the Shipping Board and the Air Service, and clearing the way for those food supplies from the great American and Canadian wheatfields without which Europe could not endure, and which were constantly endangered by the pressure of the submarine attack.

Perhaps in all that anxious winter the phase of American help which touched us English folk most deeply was the voluntary rationing by which hundreds and thousands of American families, all over the vast area of the States, eagerly stinted themselves that they might send food overseas to Great Britain and the Allies--sixty million bushels of wheat by January 1st--ninety millions before the 1918 harvest.

We knew that it was only done by personal sacrifice, and we _felt_ it in our hearts.
Meanwhile, on this side of the sea, the anxiety for _men_ grew steadily stronger.