The Monticellonian., 1917-11-30
AMERICAN SECTOR
 IS CLOSE ID METZ
PERSHlNG'S BOYS GETTING THE PRELIMINARY TRIALS NEAR
 THE GERMAN BORDER.
HARDLY A "oUIET" REGION
Artillery Fighting Is Almost Continu- ous There-SammIes, 1t Is Hoped, Will Take Part in Actual Restora- ton of Alsace-Lorraine.
By EDWARD B, CLARK.

By EDWARD B. CLARK. Washington.-An amiable censor ship has allowed the American people to know the section of the French front In which their troops are en- gagged in the preliminary trials of war fare. "A quiet sector" Is the way in which the first dispatches described that section of the line from which the Sammies made their first foray into No Mans Land.
 This quiet sector' really Is about as noisy one as can be found from Flanders to the Vosges mountains, but the uproar for two years has been that of artillery, with few rattlings of rifles and machine guns to "staccato" the performance. Washington believes to- day that the part of the front in France where the Americans now are fighting and where dullness has reigned soon will be scene of violent battle action.
 From one high point of vantage near the sector where the American troops are camping and trenching they can look on Metz. They are close to Ger many and some unfortunate few of them already are in Germany. The belief Is strong in Washington that an extraordinary effort will be made by the Americans shortly to take a trench on their own account and to double the score against the Germans. hn ,.rt sod If.I came that the Americans were at a quiet point of the line everybody at all familiar with the battle conditions in France knew that our boys were close to the Moselle river near the city of Nancy, and not far from Pont-a-Mous- son, the city of a thousand lombard mentS.
 Scene of Continuous Bombardment.
 The Moselle river runs northward through Pont-a-Mousson and thence on fifteen miles to Metz, the capital of German Lorraine. In this general sector are the woods af ChampenouX and the "Wood of the Priest" In these two little segments of the front to which notwithstanding that the mili- ary word quiet" is applied, the fight ing has been almost continuous since August. 1914, and in many cases 1t has been hand-to-hand.
 In the Wood of the Priest (Bois le Pretre), the French and the German trenches are so close together that a good throwing arm can send light bomb from the one into the other. The wood has been peaceful on one day and an inferno the next. The Ameri- cans getting into this place are as sured of action.
 Military strategists for three years have been studying the possibilities of the case" in the valley of the Mo selle, valley in which today the dis patches more than intimate many of the American troops are now under fire. For a long time the French have had the heaviest kind of guns em- placed in this sector. An order given from a place of high command would result any minute In hurling of projectiles weighing a ton into the city of Metz.
 This city of German Lorraine. once the property of France and which is certain once more to be the property of France, is guarded by II huge for tifications which probably cannot be taken by frontal assault. The eyes of the French, however, are fixed on | Metz. They do not want to destroy it, but they want to take it, and if some of the strategists are right, one day 1t | will be taken intact unless the Ger mans destroy it themselves.
 Our Best Strategist Sheived. Why is the war department al- lowing the ablest American strate gist to remain in the semiobscur- ty of Princeton university in this day when the need of q man and plan is matter of world concern?
 Army officers of high rank must have been asking themselves this ques- tion ever since the war broke out and it is known definitely that civilians with some knowledge of military mat ters have been curious concerning the reasons for the seeming isolation of this tried student of warfare.
 Maj. Herbert Rowland Sargent, United States army, retired, is today teaching the student body at Prince ton, while, according to expressed thought on the matter in Washington, he ought to be either in the War col lege as an advisory chief or in the field as major general
 The war department does not dis close it's secrets and it may be of | course that Sargent has not been over looked in the search for men who may have within them the qualities of great planning.
 Today the acknowledged need of the allied services is grand strategy scheme of "coalesced campaigning. Sargent's ability along strategic lines is known. Therefore 1t is possible that in the seclusion of the students closet at Princeton he is acting his part in the war, but if so the country knows nothing about it, and in fact suspicion in the case seems to be that this retired major and the possibilities in his case have been neglected.