IN DEADLY EARNEST

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1917, Page 5

IN DEADLY EARNEST

HOW THE AMERICANS IN FRANCE ARE MAKING READY. The Paris correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Company, who describes the stirring scenes in France, where the Americans are making preparations for entering the conflict, writes:— If you speak to any of them on the road you will perceive at once what is in their minds. They have come over to finish the war. T'licy say it, and they mean it. Without exaggeration, their enthusiasm may be described as terrible. They are in deadly earnest, and behind their earnestness is ail energy that is almost startling even to one who has an intimate knowledge of the American temperament. They are preparing themselves by training of the most strenuous kind. Their earnestness and their energy are evident in all t'liey do. The general in command, whom I would like to name, but may not, said to me: "We have French instructors for certain things and British instructors for certain things. We are taking something from each of them, aud that something we shall adapt to our own temperaments, forming methods tjiat for our usage will seem to us most effective."

The American officers and men are eminently open-minded. They are not | like tho British in this, who in mo3tS things are slow to accept any change. The American use the British helmet and the French gas mask. They do not care whether a device comes from China, [Japan, or Uruguay. They are engaged "in making an American war machine, and it will be in the end eminently American, because no detail of its formation and ■operation, however small, will be neglected. Some of the details may prove in the great test to be of prime importance. When that machine is ready the Boehe will certainly feel that "something ■is coming."

The American troops are not yet ready (with the exception of some of the Engineering Corps who are already at the front). They Will not be ready for some time to come, and they will not be sent against the enemy until the proper time arrives. It is important that they should no be sent there prematurely. These are the words of an authorised official spokesman of the American High Command.