Excerpt from The Trail of Battery D: Three Hundred and Twenty-Fourth Heavy Field Artillery, American Expeditionary Forces Four years of terrible misery and struggling between the Allied and Central Powers of Europe had almost passed when our Nation was brought face to face with a situation which involved our neutrality; and, furthermore, demanded either concessions by Germany in regards to her cruel methods of warfare, or inevitable war between Germany and the United States. The administra tion which controlled the welfare of our Country had adopted a policy of watchful waiting. Reams of note paper had passed between the two governments. Finally, however, the United States awoke to her duty, and, in April 1917, War was formally declared against the German Empire. 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.