Not until the spring offensive of the next year were the Americans able to come in large numbers. Then suddenly a single month brought as many as the nine preceding months. We had our half million, our million, our two millions.
The faith of the French in us revived with Cantigny and Château-Thierry. I am ahead of my chronology. But the men who first fell under the American flag were those who marched through the streets of Paris, on July Fourth, 1917. On parade they gave us hope. Fighting they gave us certitude of victory.
Problems of war time housekeeping in France did not go back to 1914. The learned political economists who demonstrated to their own satisfaction that a general European war would not last a year were dead wrong. Millions were mobilized. Nations were at each other's throats. The Germans were able to retaliate against the naval blockade by submarine warfare that threatened to decrease seriously our own communications with the outside world. But somehow we managed to go through year after year without feeling the pinch of decreased productivity. And somehow we accepted the inflation of currency and continued to subscribe cheerfully to successive war loans with money that came from God knows where. One hears now much about how we suffered in 1915 and 1916. Morally speaking, I suppose we did suffer and that we were aware of the strain as time went on. But from a material point of view the war did not make itself felt much until 1917. It was only in the spring of that year that a cartoonist was inspired to draw a necklace of anthracite, tipped off with an egg for a pendant, over the caption, "Her Jewels." Coal cards, sugar cards, and bread cards were to us the signs of Germany's weakness.
Successive Cabinets realized well enough the prudence of anticipatory restrictions. In the autumn of 1916 the newspapers put forth a _ballon d'essai_. Every day they published a homily on the virtue of practicing economy. It had no effect on my servants, this constant warning of a shortage to come. No restaurants obeyed the voluntary rationing measures. The Government did not dare to introduce obligatory rationing. Public opinion rebels against restrictions of individual liberty. We had to feel the pinch before rationing measures were tolerated.