Roosevelt was prevented from fighting in France, indeed, but he
was gratified to learn from good authority that his efforts in
the spring of 1917 to secure a commission and lead troops over
seas were the immediate cause of the sending of any American
troops. President Wilson, it was reported had no intention, when
we went to war, of risking American lives over there, and the
leisurely plans which he made for creating and training an army
seemed to confirm this report. But Roosevelt's insistence and the
great mass of volunteers who begged to be allowed to join his
divisions, if they were organized, awakened the President to the
fact that the American people expected our country to give valid
military support to the Allies, at death-grapple with the Hun.
The visit in May, 1917, of a French Mission with Marshal Joffre
at its head, and of an English Mission under Mr. Arthur Balfour,
and their plain revelation of the dire distress of the French and
British armies, forced Mr. Wilson to promise immediate help; for
Joffre and Balfour made him under stand that unless help came
soon, it would come too late.
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