Until Spanish influenza attained the status of a national catastrophe in autumn 1918, few Americans paid much attention to it. Few indeed paid heed to an epidemic of grippe that had passed over the United States in the spring of 1918. The disease was mild and there were too many other attention-grabbers in the first months of 1918.

In January the President made his Fourteen Points address, unveiling to the world the principles of a Wilsonian peace settlement. In March the Bolsheviks submitted to a Carthaginian peace and Russia dropped out of the war. Germany shunted division after division from east to west until it attained superiority in the number of its combat troops facing the French and English. As of March 6 American troops held only 4-½ miles of the battlefront in France. “A terrible blow is imminent,” said French Premier Georges Clemenceau to an American newspaperman. “Tell your Americans to come quickly.”

The Western Front, known to the British poet and soldier, Robert Graves, as “the Sausage Machine, because it was fed with live men, churned out corpses, and remained firmly screwed in place,” came unscrewed on March 21. In the first three weeks of Germany's offensive, its troops overran 1,250 square miles of France. On March 23 les boches began lobbing shells 75 miles into Paris with their Big Bertha howitzer. For 140 days the French Army was unable to force the withdrawal of Big Bertha and end the shelling of the capital of France.

The German offensive, with a few pauses for regrouping and change of direction, continued for over four months.