did. A regimental chaplain went to the assistance of a battery which was

hard pressed, and carried ammunition for them for hours, then took his turn at the gun.

These make no roster of the heroes of Seicheprey. There were hundreds of them. But the censor's passionate aversion to details of all battles has scotched the narrative of heroes for the present.

Cantigny will warm the cockles of the American heart as long as it beats. There was a battle that for spirit, flare, brilliancy, came up to the rosiest dream that ever was dreamed, in Washington, or London, or Paris.

Cantigny, like Seicheprey, was not an engagement of great numbers. It was a little town that was hard to capture. It commanded a fine view of the American lines for miles back, and it had been able to withstand some violent attempts earlier, so it was particularly desirable. And it was in a salient, so that it formed an angle in the line. Its taking straightened the line, heartily disgruntled the Boches, who lost 200 prisoners and many hundred wounded and dead in defending it, and it gave the American troops their first taste of the offensive. But more than all that, it gave these same troops a record of absolutely flawless workmanship which, if not large, was at least complete.

The capture of Cantigny and 200 yards beyond it, which included the German second line, took just three-quarters of an hour.

In the niggardly terms of the communique: "This morning in Picardy our troops attacked on a front of one and a fourth miles, advanced our lines, and captured the village of Cantigny. We took 200 prisoners and inflicted on the enemy severe losses in killed and wounded. Our casualties were relatively small. Hostile counter-attacks broke down under our fire."

It was on the morning of May 28. At a quarter to six a bombardment began. At a quarter to seven the troops went over the top. The barrage went first, a dense gray veil. Then came twelve French tanks. Just behind the tanks stalked the doughboys.

The soldiers moved like clockwork. There were no unruly fringes to be nipped by the barrage. There was no break in the methodical stride. They went forward first a hundred yards in two minutes. Then the barrage slowed to a hundred yards in four minutes. In a little while the troops had arrived at the edge of the village; then the close-quarter fighting began.

At 7.30 a white rocket rose from the centre of Cantigny, dim against the smoky sky, to tell the men behind that "the objective is reached and prisoners are coming."

The Americans found the enemy in confusion and unreadiness, and the initial resistance from machine-guns at the town's edge was easily overcome. Where the burden of hard fighting came was in routing the Germans out from the caves and tunnels and cellars of the town into which they had retired.

There was a long tunnel in the town, which, after furious fighting, was surrounded and isolated. The flame-throwers were placed at both ends of the tunnel, and that episode was ended. Some of the caves were large enough to hold a battalion. These were handled by the mopping-up troops, who threw hand-grenades.

The prisoners began to file back almost immediately. One grinning Pittsburgher, wounded in the arm, marched in the rear of a prison squad. "That's handin' it to them Huns, blankety-blank 'em," he said cheerfully.

The village caught fire from the bombardment and the firing of the tunnel, and for hours after its capture the soldiers had to fight flames.

The first of the American "shock troops" went from the village on to the German second-line trenches, and under a hail of bullets from German machine-guns dug themselves in and faced the trenches the other way.

All that day they held their prize unmolested. They had all the high ground beyond Cantigny, and an approach was, to put it mildly, precarious. But by five of the afternoon the German counter-attacks had begun. One wave after another stormed half-way up the hill, then tumbled down again, broken under the American artillery. Four counter-attacks were made against Cantigny, but all of them failed. The new positions were consolidated, under heavy fire and gas attack, and there they stayed.

This gallant battle called forth intemperate commendation from the headquarters of the Allies. The French despatch to Washington told officially of the high opinion the French held of it, and there were many congratulatory telegrams from London. The press of London and Paris glowed with praises. The London _Evening News_ wrote:

"Bravo, the young Americans! Nothing in to-day's battle narrative from the front is more exhilarating than the account of their fight at Cantigny. It was clean-cut from beginning to end, like one of their countrymen's short stories, and the short story of Cantigny is going to expand into a full-length novel, which will write the doom of the Kaiser and Kaiserism. We expected it. We have seen those young Americans in London, and merely to glance at them was to know that they are conquerors and brothers in that great Anglo-Saxon-Latin compact which will bring down the Prussian idol.... They do not swagger, and they have no war illusions. They have done their first job with swift precision, characteristic of the United States, and Cantigny will one day be repeated a thousand-fold."

_The Times_ wrote:

"Our allies know the significance of that as well as we do. So, too, do the German generals and the German statesmen. It means that the last great factor between autocracy and freedom is coming into effective play on the battle-field.... There could be no reflection more heartening for the Allies or more dismaying to their adversaries."

"Their adversaries," meanwhile, were doing what they could to keep their dismay to themselves. In the German announcement of the loss of Cantigny there was mention only of "the enemy." The German people were not to know for a while that the "ridiculous little American Army" had got to work.