Excerpt from Final Report of Gen. 1919: John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief American Expeditionary Forces The British were crowding the Channel ports and the French were exploiting the manufacturing center of Paris, so that the railroads of northern France were already much overtaxed. Even though the Channel ports might be used to a limited extent for shipments through England, the railroads leading eastward would have to cross British and French zones of operation, thus making the introduction of a line of communications based on ports and railways in that re gion quite impracticable. If the American Army was to have an independent and flexible system it could not use the lines behind the british-belgium front nor those in rear of the French front covering Paris. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.