Here the two youths won fresh laurels, and both were well on the way to
be recognized "aces" by the time Pershing's army succeeded in fighting
its way through the nests of machine-gun traps that infested the great
Argonne Forest.

It was in the autumn of the victory year, 1918, and the German armies
were being pushed back all along the line from Switzerland to the sea.
Under the skillful direction of Marshal Foch, the Allies had been dealing
telling and rapid blows, now here, now there.

To-day it was the British that struck; the day afterward the French
advanced their front; and next came the turn of the Americans under
Pershing. Everywhere the discouraged and almost desperate Huns were being
forced in retreat, continually drawing closer to the border.

Already the sanguine young soldiers from overseas were talking of
spending the winter on the Rhine. Some even went so far as to predict
that their next Christmas dinner would be eaten in Berlin. It was no
idle boast, for they believed it might be so, because victory was in
the very air.

So great was the distress of the Hun forces that it was believed Marshal
Foch had laid a vast trap and was using the fresh and enthusiastic
Yankees to drive a dividing wedge between Ludendorff's two armies, when a
colossal surrender must inevitably follow.

The whole world now knows that this complete break-up of the Teutons
was avoided solely by their demand for an armistice, with an agreement
on terms that were virtually a surrender--absolute in connection with