"Signed!"
The one word, spoken by a young officer of the U. S. Army, a strip of paper in his hand, confirmed to his associates the greatest news the world has ever known. It was the corrected foreword of peace. The armistice had validly been signed by Germany.
In these first days of peace, the streets were full of shouting, laughing, weeping men and women gone primitive. The sane and sober population of America, engaged in sending a third of a million men a month to join the two millions on the front in France, turned into a mob. Their frenzy was that of joy. The war was over.
On the day following the confirmation of the armistice, some who had sat together in a certain room in Washington were scattered. Six thousand resignations of Army officers were handed in within twenty-four hours. The room in which the news of the war's end was thus received was one in the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff in Washington. There lie the secrets of the Army. All in that room were officers of the Army, or soon to be such. All were volunteers. I may with propriety say that for a time I had sat with those who had ear to the secret voices of the world, in the tensest atmosphere I ever knew.
It was whispers that "M. I. D." heard—the whispers of perfidious men, communicating one with the other, plotting against the peace of America, the dignity of our Government, the sacredness of our flag, the safety of American lives and property. Here sat the authorized agents of the Army, employed to hear such whispers, enlisted to catch the most skilled and unscrupulous spies the world has ever known, the agents of a treacherous and dishonorable enemy.
All those connected with the Military Intelligence Division daily felt also the touch of this great, silent, smooth-
