Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead returning lightly dance.
Edward Thomas, Roads
Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917–1918
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This is a fantastic book, particularly valuable for grasping how Allied military planners viewed prospects for continuing the war into 1919 and possibly into 1920. Details concerning the prospective expansion of the AEF to 80 or 100 divisions by mid-1919 are especially enlightening. Of course, one would have to get hundreds of thousands of men, plus all of their associated equipment and supplies across the Atlantic, but the Allies were short of shipping by millions of tons. As chairman of the Shipping Board Edwin Hurley observed, sustaining 80 divisions in France would not have been possible until after mid-1919. This passage is from my upcoming manuscript: "Hurley opined that even if enough ships had been available, dockside unloading rates would have had to have nearly tripled. Given French port infrastructure limitations, 'idle ships would have accumulated at the rate of tens of thousands of tons a month.' Pétain may have believed that 1919 would 'be the battle of aviation and tanks,' but it also would have been one of shipping. It was one that the Americans lost, ex ante. As Hurley admitted, 'The one-hundred-division program would have swamped us hopelessly!' " Prospects for a major Allied offensive by July 1919 were simply not good. McRae explains why.
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