You'd see how big our country looks from a distance.

It's gigantic, I assure you.
The above letter was written on what was perhaps the darkest day of the whole war.

The German attack on the Western Front, which had been long expected, had now been launched, and, at the moment that Page was penning this cheery note to Mr.Polk, the German armies had broken through the British defenses, had pushed their lines forty miles ahead, and, in the judgment of many military men, had Paris almost certainly within their grasp.

A great German gun, placed about seventy miles from the French capital, was dropping shells upon the apparently doomed city.
This attack had been regarded as inevitable since the collapse of Russia, which had enabled the Germans to concentrate practically all their armies on the Western Front.
The world does not yet fully comprehend the devastating effect of this apparently successful attack upon the allied morale.

British statesmen and British soldiers made no attempt to conceal from official Americans the desperate state of affairs.