Some of our own men took me round them. Trenches finely made but, in the hurry, not so finished as those which the Italian workmen, turned on to this surprising task instead of digging the Metropolitan tunnels, have made near Paris.
The German trenches were distinguishable by their shape, more hurried, as of the attacking side. It was possible to follow the story—the trenches where the shell had burst well behind; the tell-tale breaks where the Germans had found the range; the trample and dead horses of cavalry charges.
At Penchard our —— division had suffered fearfully. Before they fired a shot the Germans had the range; and the men stood by helplessly or ran back—those who survived. But the Germans are far on the retreat now from Penchard!
At Poincy they played yet another trick, and paid for it. Beaten by our close fire from the trenches—how close I could measure—one inevery three Germans got up and ran back, leaving two or three hidden. Our men came quickly up, taking no cover. From close range they were swept away by the unexpected fire. But they came back—with the bayonet! "And, sir, the Prussians don't like cold steel. But we left them no time to say so!"
At Chaucotin the peasants were burying many hundred Germans, by the trenches, in a wastage of swords, muskets, and broken saddles and arms. And in the distance, beyond the Marne and Ourcq, the battle we could hear still going on.
In Meaux, as I looked over the bridge, the steam-barges deep in the green shadow of the river below were moving slowly towards Paris with yet more wounded. The decks were bright with the blue-red guards.
Even on this side of Meaux overturned wagons, sunken barges, and the inevitable trenches and piled trusses told of some hours of the day-long battles. Further forward, on the Ourcq, were torn and scrambled banks, where, I was told, our cavalry drove the enemy actually intothe canal. Our cavalry has done magnificently.
It was jolly in Meaux to hear good northern English, and English with a brogue, and to see the confident, bronzed faces. The men are in great heart. "I have had five weeks out of bed. It's a bit slow here"—this town was all but deserted—"but it's a lark. We've got 'em!"
Man to man, and against odds, on these fields the British and French have flung back the weight of the tide.
Beyond Chambery there was yet another sign—a collection of 150 German wounded, waiting to be brought down. At last we were following an advance, if only in a small corner of the great field.
Through all the villages along the Marne those who loitered by the silent closed houses showed holiday faces. Close outside Paris life seemed to be hardly affected. It came as a surprise, in the sunny fields, to pass by long, noisy trains of motor-lorries, bearing an infinite number of names of firms. And longer, slower trains of wagons with white and dappled grey horseswere dragging in captured German pontoons, splashed with coloured soldiers. Some of these were even sitting in rope-nooses slung from the projecting beams. About them, the files of tramping infantry or fretting cavalry.
One of these motor-wagons to-day saved us a shock, and gave us a spectacle. Taking a wrong turn, which we followed, it ran down a steep road to Esbly, and, just ahead of us, shot over the edge of an exploded bridge into the river. The driver got out by jumping in time. The village was quite deserted.
In war time there are only a few through routes left open. The rest are torn up or blocked. Every exit from a town, except one or two, is barricaded with piles of trees, stone-sacks, logs, hoardings, wire, and earth. In some cases the loose structures threaten more danger to the defenders. The through routes left are broken up at intervals by walls and pits, mazes through which one winds precariously. The barricades are held by stern soldiers. But the army of Paris has admirable manners.
Probably few civilians in this war will be ableto see the "Military Zone" of Paris. Yet it is a wonderful sight. Twice I ran through it to-day. Vast grounds, with horses exercising, ridden by grey soldiers. Huge parks of guns, guarded by blue soldiers. Immense enclosures of cattle. Lines of stacks; stores of forage of all sorts; acres of wagons; sprinkled with soldiers of many colours.
And all this passes, in one form or another, across those few miles of sunshine and fields, to the dry-looking brown trenches, the trampled roads and tattered-looking trees and stacks, and at last to the terrible remnants of the short human tragedy, that lie for a while among the furrows and then for ever beneath them.
In a few months these battlefields which I traversed to-day may be part, if a small part, of history. The muskets we helped to carry back, packed among a few refugee peasants, may be in museums of honour.
To most of the men who died there, and made the names of these fields famous, their names were unknown. But for those who see them still only as ruined, littered fields, it is the dead, whosenames will be forgotten, who alone are present in thought.
Meanwhile the troops are progressing up the Marne. Our soldiers are in fine fettle. For the moment at least there is respite from tension. As I came back, away from the faint sound of guns, through the heart of a thunderstorm, the clouds broke in glorious wet mists of golden sunshine over Paris.
Lagny, Friday.
Official reports to-day say that the Germans have fallen back nearly forty miles from their furthest point of advance at Coulommiers. Also, that the British force has crossed the Marne between La Ferté and Chateau Thierry, and that the Prussian Guard has been rolled back upon the marshes of Gond.
In so far as it goes this is correct, but the news is at least two, probably three, days old. The German right is retiring north and east, upon Rheims, Oulchy-le-Chateau and Compiègne. The British forces, upon whom has fallen the brunt of the fighting at this vital angle, one formed by the French line south-east fromSenlis and Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, and continued by the British north-east to Chateau Thierry, have succeeded in straightening the line, and thus eliminating the angle that gave us anxiety at the beginning of the battle.
It was the beginnings of the German retirement that I identified, when I approached from the north of Nanteuil three days ago. Its serious character is confirmed by what I have seen these last days from the south.
Starting from the north of Meaux to-day I recrossed the great bend of the Marne, by the help of a cattle barge that just held out for the crossing. It was doubtful what army we might find beyond.
It soon became evident that our official news was well behind the actual advance. Cannon were audible from the east-north-east. Near Torcy the battle was evidently going on.
Here and there, especially along the line of the Ourcq, were the signs of the progress of the week's battle of nations. The double lines of opposing trenches, hasty and scamped on the north (the German's). Torn-down stacks andstooks. Boughs and trees hacked down, across paths, or on the open roads. Branches lying in open mid-field, evidently carried forward as cover, and dropped for the final rush. Trees and stacks still smoking and black with fire.
A few peasants, with their carts standing by, were at the grim labour of interring the dead; charring the horses with fire before dragging them into the holes. Broken harness and accoutrements lay in little heaps, for removal. The old peasant women, with their brown, immobile faces tied round with coloured handkerchiefs, sat in the carts or helped. It is a grim task for many reasons; but the kindly rain has come to help. Bad for the men ahead of us, this rain, it will be worse for the Germans, in a hostile country, with more limited means of protection or remedy to be obtained from their base. And fever is beginning.
The peasants could naturally give little information as to the regiments or happenings. Only the broad facts could be followed. Near Ocquere, the ruts of advance and retirement of the German batteries, a shattered gun marking thefiring position. East of Cocherel a mitrailleuse car, overturned, too broken up to be worth capture. But a couple of cheerful R.A. mechanics were at work on it, hopefully.
Round a much-perforated cottage, just to the north of St. Aulde, a fierce fight must have taken place. The furniture had been dragged out as cover, and on the summit of a trench, a hollow scraped in the hard soil, stood a large china crock, evidently set there by some cheerful trooper in derision of the German rifle-fire.
The sound of firing grew heavier towards Torcy, to our north-east, during the afternoon. Clearly a great battle was in progress. Impossible to approach nearer. We were already between our line in action and the French reserves who were holding the country behind, and forwarding up lines of munition wagons and supplies.
There were wounded in the cottages, the jetsam of the battle in front. But the line of the British communications was to our east, towards the Marne at Charly. We could get no news of the happenings in front. We wereconstantly challenged, constantly headed to the rear in some new direction. The men who passed us had the "battle look," the look on the face of Michael Angelo's "Dawn." I had enough to do to look after the personal factor in such an atmosphere.
And now we know what was going on there, across those little tributaries of the Clignon, at Torcy, a few blocked miles ahead. A thousand prisoners! Fifteen guns or more! The Germans fairly matched and beaten!
This has been no mere "blind," this rolling up of the German right, which we have watched with such anxiety. If their right was weakened, as I assume, to reinforce the armies in Prussia, they have paid for it. For they have lost, and lost heavily and badly; and at the corner, and against the little army which it was their desperate concern to break and overwhelm.
All I could conclude, as we forced our way back, was that the day was not against us. The movement of men was forward. The strange telepathic current that runs through villages long before reports reach them, was all of relief.It was cheerful soldiers in blue who shoved my car on to the water-logged barge on the Marne; and, after a drift downward during which we scarcely breathed, it was laughing peasants who pulled us up on the far bank.
It is something to have been at least across the Marne and near on such a day, to have had the sound of those guns in one's ears, to have watched for the first time in five weeks' campaigning the forward movement of our armies.
The next morning, as soon as the barriers would let me pass, I was out again in pursuit of the receding armies. Day by day these flights became longer, and as the first glow of victory after the Marne battles passed into the deadly quietude of the long death grapple on the Aisne, day by day the difficulties of approaching the front increased. The easy smiling soldiers became again suspicious, and the constant challenges and "arrests" more numerous.
Saturday, with the pursuit.
North through Neufchelles again, and all but on to the banks of the Aisne. I had to leave thecar, because of vanished bridges, and get forward north and west on foot. I was blocked at last in the heart of an advancing column, resting in a half burned village.
The shells were bursting on the far side of the slopes. The French forces were coming up, and were dispersing as they arrived over the fields, distributing to the scattered positions. Far from our right and ahead there came the fainter sound of the guns of the British contingents, continuing the forward movement. They have advanced far since I approached behind their successful battle at Torcy. (This Torcy, on the Clignon, should not be confused with Torcy near Lagny, south of the Marne.) Occasionally, from the remote north-west, I thought I heard the echo of the same sound coming down the wind. If this were so, could it be that much desired enveloping movement from the west?
A few prisoners passed in carts. All with the herded, hunted, pallid look of frightened and exhausted men. Think of their start for this great march a few weeks back, amid the shouting and flags, and to the sound of theperpetual vaunting, foolish processional—"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!" And now, lucky to escape the squalid wayside grave, the little raw brown mounds all over the fields. One or two, in the grey tunic, with the colourless face and the bare head of the prisoner, were hanging on to French officers' motors, acting as grooms or mechanics.
Some men of the —— Regiment, carried in the car, told me they had not slept for two nights and days, though they joked heartily enough! It was not therefore a surprise to see a number more dead asleep under a shanty. I walked past two, who lay a little apart. One stirred in his sleep on the stones. The other was dead. But death is now too common a shadow in this deadly mist of war, that drives and condenses in trench and grave-mound over the sunlit fields, to call for notice.
A little group of English artillery formed another break in the monotony of fighting. They were preparing for the reception of fifteen hundred German horses just captured. Concerned only with the care and cure of their sick charges,they had no thought for the noise, turmoil, and incident of war about them. Give the trained man his own job, and he will see the world fall about him with only an absent glance!
Further to the east I was shown the site of a curious incident. Some deep German trenches ran down a slope from the road to a wooded hollow. Here some thirty rearguard Germans had been captured. "We should have had 'em all, all the eighty, but the colonel was too kindhearted! He got one of our guns round and up there through that wood, just to sweep them trenches. And then he rode forward alone to ask 'em to surrender, some of them still firing at him! And most of them crept out there by the cross trench into the road again, and got away behind the rearguard lot. You see how? And one of the beggars we got had a gold watch; and the colonel wouldn't have us take it away from him!"
The conviction grew stronger and stronger, as I followed the lines of gradually accelerating retreat and obviously slackening defence, that cavalry, cavalry, is what we want to give thetired enemy no rest, and prevent them reforming upon the supports that are being hurried from Berlin again on to this wing. Our own cavalry has done magnificently this campaign, and saved the critical days of retreat from Mons. If only they have been sufficiently rested and reinforced!
The French cavalry does not seem to have been always fortunate. It has too often timed its brilliant charges too late, and only swept over a crest when the German guns had got the range and could mow them down. Hence their support has not always been available at the right moment. But their courage and dash have been characteristic. Under a rocky knoll in a sloping cornfield which I passed on my return the line of one of these costly charges was only too clearly marked.
South, towards Lizy, a few peasants in carts were already dribbling back to their looted villages. The Prussians were here for a week or so and fought in the streets, using the furniture as obstacles. The destruction is pitiable. The châteaux were in many cases pillaged. Theirgardens are strewn with bottles. The lawns are heaped with bolsters and palliasses. In one château, near Lizy, the orchard wall and trees were pierced and wrecked with shells in some prolonged assault, while over the opposite wall, commanding the deep little green lane alongside, a splendid mass of scarlet and orange lilies still glows triumphantly from the deserted garden.
In one such devastated village, between Meaux and May, a strange incident checked us. A dignified old peasant, wandering in the wreckage, was pouring out to me a passionate recital of wrongs. A son shot, a farm wasted, ruin before him. There passed a uniformed Government employee, with a dangerous, nervous face, who called out: "Be silent! The French have done us more harm than the Germans!" At such a time, in such a place, it was an insane outcry. Never have I heard such a torrent of execration as when the old peasant turned and sprang at him. Nothing but the vicious look and gestures of the younger man kept murder from being done. The incident was illustrative of the unbalanced mental condition to whichwar reduces the non-combatant. The younger man was himself ruined, and like a desperate, snarling fox he turned to hurt the nearest sentient thing, his more injured neighbour.
In torrents of evening rain I left the battle still continuing beyond the hill, and the two German armies being edged north-west through the forests of Villers and Compiègne, already in part behind the line of Soissons. So, back through the country north of the Canal of Ourcq. A few days ago it was in German occupation; now comfortably patrolled by Cuirassiers, in their rain cloaks; with watch-dog camps of infantrymen, cooking under straw shelters, cheerful and singing for all the torrents of rain and chilly wind. I am writing on an earth mound, on the wrong side of the Ourcq Canal. Some fifty sappers are hurriedly trying to repair the temporary bridge which we crossed this morning. It was frail then. Since then a huge lorry has gone through it. Eighty more of the great Paris omnibuses, now loaded with provisions, are waiting on the far side. It will never carry their weight, and we must get over first. We havedone our share of work on the bridge, to earn an early passage. In the next field some soldiers are digging out the airman from under a fallen biplane.
The country has turned from a sunlight green to a dull grey with the passing of the summer; and there is an autumn mist of twilight heavy over the forests where the Great Machine is threatening to dissolve into its human elements, and confess its human limitations.
The feet in the proud Prussian parade to Paris are slipping, slipping, on the road.
Sunday.
Von Kluck's and Von Buelow's armies are still in full retreat; separated from the army of the Prince of Wurtemberg, with which they made a fragile connection by means of the Guard. The Guard themselves are perilously thrown back into the marshes of St. Gond.
This is the real thing. The men are fighting more feebly; the machine has become human; the cavalry horses—no longer the fine spirited Irish stock I had myself to dodge in Belgium a few weeks back—are worn out. It is pitiable tosee the tired beasts loose and useless in the fields, or dead skeletons by the roads.
But the retreat has been fiercely contested. I followed to-day the line of the battles north from Meaux, passing by those of which I have previously written; guided by the forward movement of troops and the traces of the retreating armies.
The retreat here roughly follows the line of the Ourcq. The battle has been fought with the French in desperate rearguard actions, at Vareddes, May, Beauval, Neufchelles. But nowhere can it be said an engagement began or ended. All along the road and through the adjoining fields it is the same terrible story—the trees scarred with shell, and the road littered with broken boughs: the fields scraped with hurried trenches: the stacks torn down for cover and holes scooped in their backs: the stark dead horses of artillery and cavalry lie in scores over the field and by the roads; and here and there still figures, or a cluster of figures in the German grey, still reproach the desolating injustice of war. The cyclists took a leadingpart in the pursuit, and scores of broken, charred frames marked where the German artillery found the range and caught their advance.
At every rise in the road, especially beyond May, more serious defences had been prepared. Fortifications of earth and squared stones between trees and bank; and here and there a deep burrow into the bank, bespeaking the human weakness that sought extra cover. And behind these earthworks, in the holes they left, lie the still figures. Fresh, shallow mounds, where the peasants have buried the fallen where they fell, run along the rim of the hard road itself.
The retreat, as it moved north, became almost a flight. Munition carts lie overturned, a machine-gun or two wrecked. Beside where the batteries swept the road, great piles of undischarged shells are still heaped, abandoned in the rush.
More tragic evidences were the scattered heaps of sleeping blankets, flung aside as the men were wakened by the rapid surprise pursuit. Broadcast, bottles and barrels; the Prussians, for want of food, seem to have looted the villages for drink. It was the same in Belgium. Apitiable piano, with the works shot away, stood in a field, with a dead man and dog beside it. The instantaneous stillness of a past battlefield is its deepest impression. Every grim vestige is suggestive of violent movement and sound, but it is all snatched into silence.
As I advanced, the long lines of wagons were still pouring up with troops and munition; happier now, and confident. The cannon sounded ahead from just over the fields, where the Germans have been forced back on the Aisne. I discharged a load of troopers and guns, and waited, listening to the thunder across the hill. It is more restful work. We have them! A few prisoners drove past us, blanched with nervousness and hunger. The wounded were being carted past to the Red Cross cottages. And still the flood of French supports is coming up.
From Crecy to Villers, from Villers almost to the Aisne, I have followed them now some thirty miles and more of savage fighting, of hurried retreat.
Monday.
Northward, northward! and now to theeast; escaping one fatal trap by a most skilful movement of tired men, but beginning in humbler fashion to retread the wasted fields of the proud parade from the frontier. So swift, it is difficult to keep in touch with their retreat. Oho! this is a different business to fleeing before their lightning march across Belgium.
And they are different men to meet, the stragglers and prisoners of the harried army, to the perfect equipage of war I watched coming over the hills, triumphant, into helpless Brussels. Weary, anxious men, scarcely human, with mask-like faces.
But you would steel your heart if you could follow the tracks of their arrogant progress and vengeful retreat. If you saw the deserted, ravaged villages, heaped with the remnants of the poor man's bare necessities. If you passed through the tainted atmosphere of the countless battlefields, that makes a sick offence of a country of prosperous peace.
I came from the west into Senlis to-day, a day after its evacuation by the Germans. A detour took me through the Forest of Ermenonville; the beautiful pine and heather glades and wide lakes haunted by memories of the humanist philosopher, Rousseau. It is haunted now by other ghosts. Impossible to suggest the eerie sensation of passing in utter silence through the village and forest spaces. Not a soul to be seen. Not a sound. But jettisoned along the road the dissolute debris of a vanished army. The woods cut for hurried defences. The houses wantonly broken and looted; and myriads of bottles, from the pillaged wine that served for food.
The desolation and silence prepared me for a shock. And it came. Senlis, Senlis of history, with its exquisite tower of open stone-work and frame of romantic beauty, is a wasted ruin.
As I moved up the deserted streets, for a moment I was deceived. But every house, as I looked into it, was a shell; burnt out, skeleton-like, staring at the sky. Fire, and pillage, and ruin. And why?
The French soldiers held the last houses with effective fire. Then, for ten days the Germans held the town; and destroyed it, for amusement!The Mayor and other elderly burgesses were set in front of the hotel, in single file, and shot with a single discharge, for practice. They were not allowed to speak to their wives and children, who stood by.
Proud of the fact, the General and his aide-de-camp have signed their names large in the hotel book—may they be kept, for execration!
The hostess of the hotel was forced to open every room, with a pistol held at her throat. The two old maid-servants who had stayed to look after the "great house"—now a smoking shell—were abused and injured. One wanders half an idiot in the village, still weeping.
Eighteen hundred bottles of champagne—they would have no other wine—were looted from the cellars. Double them, and you will not be able to account for the ankle-deep litter of glass in the streets. Hardly a house of importance is left with roof or floor. And how do you think it was done? Straw was piled. The tapers were stolen from the shrines and cathedral, and the soldiers amused themselves by throwing the lighted candles in at the windowsof the houses. No wonder the small, crêpe-covered population is all in the streets. Here and there I saw a woman scraping in the burnt ashes, to clear a kitchen hearth, or look for some remnants. The station is a bleak ruin. Only the Cathedral tower, exquisite and light, protests against the sunlit sky.
But they were finely caught. The Zouaves, Chasseurs d'Afrique, who are pouring up through this country, arrived in trains of taxi-cabs between four and five a.m. The officer—no matter how he was occupied—fled out in his shirt; could not find his regiment; and was shot. The rest decamped—those who escaped. The prisoners I saw being sent back.
Not a crust is left in the neighbouring villages. At Mont l'Evigne the few surviving men snarled at the mention of bread.
You will hear with the less revolt of the horror I passed earlier in the day—some two hundred and forty Prussians, dead in one farm together, black and unburied, for want of peasants to bury them. They were killed by shell-fumes possibly, but had been bayoneted for double security.
It would be easy to amplify the details—the utter destruction of the houses, the stories of the insolence of the invading horde. The inhabitants, poor folk! are taking it with the quiet, deep indignation of a civilised people. Wagons of the wounded, of the American ambulance, passed in long train through the town, back from the front.
It was a relief to escape again into the broad green drives of the forest of Compiègne; to see only the abandoned German lorries, the scattered brown graves in the fields, where the horde were hunted back. In the forest we passed through miles of fierce brown Turcos, marching and resting. Their gorgeous colours and turbans, and fierce faces, a strange contrast to the deep shadowy avenues of the green forest. It was a greater satisfaction to follow the pursuit; to be the first from the outside world to greet the oppressed villagers and townsfolk; to hear in Compiègne the welcome "des Anglais!"; to listen to the women disputing whether "the Crown Prince" had really been there, and if it was he who escaped in half a uniform, and shot theFrench Dragoon officer (who is lying in the hospital), when his pursuing cavalry arrived almost in time to save the bridge.
We followed them back, by the Oise, to the Aisne. The ambulances of our wounded kept on passing us. The fresh troops poured up in pursuit. But "one can breathe again now" was the word of the day, in village and town. We were barely an hour or two behind that hurried retreat. And there was no fighting. They had not stopped, or combined, to fight again—yet.
Paris, Tuesday.
As an instance of the working of the Machine the retreat of the German western army, with tired troops, has been almost as remarkable a feat as the great advance.
The hammer-blow at Paris was attempted, and checked as it fell. The second concentration of strength was launched on the west centre of the Allies' line. It only just failed, after a five days' struggle of almost superhuman magnitude. And now with lightning-like celerity the failure has been recognised, the strings of the armiesdrawn tight, and the retreat accomplished with remarkable precision and pace.
At first the pursuit had to be conducted with forces almost as exhausted—men who had carried through the tremendous task of fighting a retreating battle for ten days, of converting it into victory and advance, and of then flinging themselves into the very different attitude of mind, and of manœuvre, demanded by rapid pursuit of a still unrouted enemy.
I have been out again to-day in the attempt to catch up with the march of return. The broken bridges, the abandoned wagons and munition, the stragglers, all speak of the precipitance of the northern-eastern wheel. The captured guns and mitrailleuses were being run back into Paris. The peasants and spectators' carts were loaded up with German trophies—undischarged shells, in their wicker cases. The ambulance wagons still passed, fetching in the wounded of both sides from the cottages, and even a few of to-day's fighting. But the provision for ambulance has proved altogether insufficient for the casualties.
The Germans have retreated upon a line of concentration where the armies of Von Kluck, Von Buelow and Wurtemberg can unite and present a new front, formidable enough to secure them the necessary rest for re-formation.
They never contemplated a halt south of the Aisne. It is beyond the river, on the Soisson-Rheims and Soissons-Compiègne curves, that their precautionary trenches were prepared.
Nothing gives a more definite idea of their own recognition of temporary defeat than the sight of their nearer trenches—abandoned without ever being used. The small wrinkle of earth and sods, with the spoon-shaped scoop for a single man behind, that they have taken to making for the retreat. Not so often as before the more elaborate continuous trench for a mass of men. They have learned a little of "open" fighting.
But they have hastened past them unused.
The Turcos and Zouaves are pouring up this line in great heart and hope. But the march is fatiguing, the roads heavier after rain.
In the villages and towns, Haramont, Coeuvres,and others, the folk cluster round, stoic as ever, but easily smiling, hardly yet realising their release after the fortnight or more of terrifying oppression. In many cases they have been well used. The requisitions and regulations have been only those inevitable, from an invading army in hostile territory.
One curious but unimportant little coincidence in a day in which there is no great action to report: A week ago, I mentioned a curious scene in Beauvais, when through the silent, desolate town suddenly echoed the continuous blare of a horn, and a motor with two Prussian officers flashed through. Ten minutes later another car passed us on the outskirts of the town. This contained two other Germans, but this time prisoners under guard being carried back to Rouen. The cars did not meet! The first car had an odd coloured wheel. Near Longport to-day I saw it again, wrecked by the roadside, the odd wheel high in the air.
As I looked out from the trees on the edge of the high plateau, the flat green valley of the Aisne looked untenanted, peaceful. For the present ourcavalry have been naturally not in much better condition than the Germans. We have been unable to surround or outmarch to an extent that could convert repulse into serious defeat. They are far enough away, at any rate, to reassure Paris. "Plus à Paris—plus à Paris!" It is almost a tragic picture now—that of William II. watching on the hill by Nancy, in his white cloak and silver helmet; the man who has been swayed by every psychic wave, romantic, religious, military, until he has brought an Empire tottering to the brink of ruin. Lohengrin above Babylon: the self-chosen emissary of an imagined providence looking out on the mirage of his promised land.
CHAPTER XI
On the Oise and the Somme
The armies were now fast locked along the Aisne. The varying fortunes of the first week made them impossible of approach. It was of interest to discover what was taking place on the German right and rear, where the position was still obscure, and the line of battle still indefinite and, therefore, easier of access.
Amiens, Thursday.
They are in touch again, and the German right is being enveloped.
It called for a long stroke from Paris to pass the wheeling left wing, for it was needful to avoid disturbing the intervening armies.
The journey through the Paris defences, those heedfully guarded lines that few civilians have hitherto penetrated on the north, was full ofinterest. By Neuilly and Pontoise we passed the careful fortifications,chevaux de friseof old railway lines crossed and pointed, sandbag forts, and the rest, all innocently couched under hedges of trees.
Every quarter-mile a challenge by different varieties of uniform. The peasants busy working at the trenches. For though Paris is regaining its own appearance, and the Parisian is even daring to begin to poke fun at his absent Government, there is no relaxation of watchfulness. "Until France is clear, and beyond, Paris is on guard!" Gallieni guarantees it.
I am getting accustomed to meeting odd company on the road. Three days ago it was General Gallieni and his staff, escorting two civilian Ministers round the battlefield, reacquainting themselves with the new developments. Two days ago it was the Bishop of Meaux, in his lawn sleeves and violet biretta and robes, in a motor-car. To-day it came as an assortment of —— officers, and a captured German pontoon train in wagons. At a railwaycrossing I was held up by a train full of German prisoners.
I turned east, skirting Creil and Pont, visiting the green glade and small brown graves that were said to mark the heroic charge of the Lancers, that first check to the oncoming tide upon Paris. Then back west to Meru, and north to Beauvais. Now and again the scarred walls of the end-houses of villages told where the Allies had fought on the great retreat.
At La Deluge—suitable name—an outlying farm was half burnt and in ruins. Here a small body of Germans had been wiped out by a French detachment in a six hours' siege. But an impassive farmer was leading his horses out of the ruins to resume work in the long-deserted fields.
Beauvais—and what a change! No longer the deserted city of a few widows running for shelter to the cathedral. Full of life, full of troops. We lunched cheerfully, at a freshly-opened hotel, on sheep's feet and pigs' trotters, with a jolly corps of French aviators.
The country is filled by our new army from thewest. Mitrailleuse cars met me every mile. Amiens is occupied by it. A few English and Scottish soldiers, punctilious to a point, delight the seminary students by saluting them as parsons in the streets.
The Germans left Amiens between Friday and Saturday, having requisitioned 100,000 cigars and drunk "only mineral waters," of which they have left their reckonings scrawled large on the tables.
It was one of the centres at which French reservists had to present themselves. Seeing the large number of men in the streets, the Germans issued an order that 1,500 men were to present themselves at six o'clock on the morning of evacuation, together with all the remaining motor-cars. In the dark morning they were marched off to dig entrenchments further east; and so far none has returned.
The Germans cleared the public hospitals, not the private ones, of all the German and French wounded. The French they treated well, but the "Turcos" they forced out of bed at the point of the sword.
Amiens has suffered little, except in pocket.
A yellow-haired hostess had us arrested here, as "Germans." One chuckled to see her returning to make vapid conversation after the betrayal—the Delilah! And one returned to her afterwards for another glass of coffee; for a courteous arrest is the assurance that we are again in the heart of a competent army.
All along the road I was warned that odd bodies of Germans were still about in the woods. As I swung east, for Peronne, I had the proof. South-west of Bray a shot or two on a wooded hill made us stop. It was too far away to be intended for us. A band of peasants, with a few dragoons, were methodically beating a wood for some stray Germans, firing and shouting, like beaters, as they moved through.
Presently four German infantrymen emerged at our end, with their hands raised, without arms. Footsore, frightened. We were made use of to run them back to Doullens, where they were transferred to an armoured car. It was a depressing drive. The beaten man is an insult to humanity, of whatever race he may be.
Some distance from Peronne the sound of firing sounded closer. I left the moving base, and part ran, part walked, about five miles forward and south-eastward. At last coming over a field, I lighted upon a small moving column of Turcos.
The officer, a large brown-eyed southerner, saw me first. He had no one to detach to go back with me, and was not unfriendly. It is a toss up whether troops of this type will embrace or shoot. Perhaps as a warning against temerity I was hurried forward to what appeared to be an odd end of a firing line. From the direction of the sound of the guns it appeared to be well on the right of a German position. Our extended line seemed to be overlapping them on the north.
With a number of my guard I crawled up and into a scanty trench, occupied by a line of some thirty Turcos. The next men gave our reinforcement a glance, but no more. On the actual line they have more important things to think about. The continual zip of bullets sang overhead. There was the wicked "bubble" of a machine gun not far to the right. The manbeside me talked continuously to himself. Two of the men further south presently slid forward against the breast-work, and leaned there motionless. In response, I suppose, to an order, my neighbours, who had been firing rhythmically, disappeared over the bank of the slight trench forward. I waited where I was, fortunately unheeded as I sat under the bank. The firing receded. I saw the backs of my friends disappearing into a wood in front. After a while, the Red Cross stretchers came along and picked up the two men near.
It was already late in the day. They came up, some dozen stretcher-bearers, under the direction of a young French surgeon, who was serving as a trooper, in uniform. I was engaged at the moment in some amateur bandaging, with the aid of a pocket Alpine surgical-case that has seen service in the Swiss mountains and in Belgium. They accepted me as an extra helper with little difficulty. Detained still, but allowed to help. Men at the front are concerned only with realities and their immediate work. An extra hand is an extra hand.
Along our trenches in the field there was little to do. The dead were left for later burial by the peasants. The seriously wounded were carried back, about a third of a mile, to where two Red Cross motors waited on a cross road. Another contingent was working from some fields on our left. A full ambulance ran past us as we came out on one trip to the road. It was all done very quietly and efficiently. The only raised voices were those of two men with whom the fever of bad wounds was taking the form of the furious raving of anger.
In most cases the Turcos were stoical and silent. One or two of the more lightly wounded had only to be helped back, after the first aid had been given on the field. One of them, as he limped along with his arm round my shoulder, hissed a whispered account of the exact form of death he designed for the next German he fought. It was chiefly gesture; and the dark brown face, close to my own, with the startling white gleam of the eye, gave it an almost theatrical ferocity.
In the dark it was decided to make a further search. My car, which a soldier was dispatchedto recover, was accepted to help in the task. It was a dark night, rather cold, but clear and starry. It was cheering to recognise the great planet which in Belgium we used to call the "Brussels star," because night after night Brussels used to stand in the streets watching it, never failing to recognise it as an approaching "Zeppelin." If you watch a star or lamp at night for long, it always seems to be in motion, backwards or forwards, up or down.
We crossed to where the Germans had retreated. The men carried acetylene lamps; two had electric flash-lamps, and another carried one of my car lights. It was a strange search, stumbling along the little pits of moist, cold earth in the dark. The lamps were masked, and flashed only occasionally, and downwards; and all talk was under the breath. It was uncertain that the Germans might not be somewhere near.
We stumbled upon five or six bodies, but the enemy had clearly had time to remove their wounded with them. Two, however, left for dead, had been revived by the cold of the night,and were groaning. We found them by the sound. They were back some way from the trench, in the wet grass. One had been hit behind the shoulder, presumably while he was retreating.
The dark chill of the night, with the little quick flashes of searching lights, and the mutter of occasional orders in the silence, lent additional impressiveness to the steady, business-like courage of the ambulance men. It is a work that requires very practised nerves under modern fighting conditions. None of the excitement of fighting for them, or the stimulus of "hitting back"; yet they get hit themselves often enough. These long days of furious bombardment, raking long lines of hidden positions, trench and village, must inevitably, and without intention, find shells dropping upon man, house or wagon, whose Red Cross is unseen or indistinguishable.
The greater credit to the men whose dangerous work and even occasional death can earn them no glory of individual exploit. Like the fishermen mine-trawlers in the North Sea, they arethe nameless heroes of humanity on the edges of the shadow of inhuman war.
The firing began again before dawn, far to the south. When I left them, to convey two of the wounded Germans and an ambulance assistant back to the village, the surgeon and his party were getting hurriedly into two of the wagons, to follow up again behind the fighting line.
Boulogne, Friday.
Last night I crossed to England, returning early to-day in one of the worst storms conceivable on a Channel crossing. Boulogne and the north are beginning to simmer with a new movement.
The southern position is still stationary. The forcing of the Germans out of their strong defensive trenches is a question of time and of endurance. The French and British have the advantage of superior facilities for moving men or getting up reinforcements by rail.
It is still difficult to say whether the German right, as it lies, is fighting a stubborn rearguard action on the retreat, or if it is intended to holdits present lines. If the latter, it is in danger from the Allies' overlapping left, and from their movement on the north-west.
Our own troops would seem to be carrying again the burden of some of the fiercest fighting, about Soissons.
The region north of the German lines, which I traversed to and fro to-day, is a region of vague skirmishing, somewhat similar to that existing in northern Flanders. The Germans and French are alternately occupying the towns and villages near the frontier with small patrols or armoured cars. The Germans, on the whole, are contracting their web.
Lille is free for the moment, and either army uses it. The Cambrai neighbourhood is of course still German, on the line of their communications. The French are spreading up to the border again, in a gentle wave. The country is absolutely peaceful. The people go about their work in the fields with little regard for the wandering parties of war that go past on the roads.
It is a different sight from the deserted fields,the panic-stricken peasantry, the hurrying troops, that filled this border when I came up last. That was in the week of concentration, after mobilisation, when I reached Valenciennes from Paris with a party of Belgian officers. They went to Maubeuge, I back to Calais. There have been flooding armies back and through that opening into Belgium since that week.
A few British stragglers still come in. A party of seventy with two officers, all in uniform, got through two days ago. Another courageous contingent of artillery came through with horses and men in fine condition. But the majority have been dressed by the peasants in the oddest of peasant remnants. They look hearty and bronzed, and the better for the holiday in the fields. In many of the woods further south German stragglers now take their place. The relations between these small unarmed bodies when they meet, both in strange territory, neither sure which should take the other prisoner, are pregnant with curious situations. Three Irishmen, whom the peasants hailed me to bring down from a copse wherethey lay hid during the day, told a tremendous story of stalking a German officer and knocking him off his bicycle. With a nice appreciation of their common position as outlaws, they then let him go.
For the moment we can but wait the issue of the long struggle on the Aisne. Of the greatest value would be the success of the French in penetrating the line on the east, against the German centre or left.
Another success on our left, valuable as it would be, would only force back von Kluck and von Buelow, accelerating their retreat, upon a new position on the frontier, without necessarily seriously defeating the combined armies. A success on our right would imperil their whole line, and cut off their retreating right wing in the Argonne. Under modern conditions, however, it is almost impossible for strategy to achieve the surprises which produce big defeats. The most we can look for, to end these long triturating battles, is the possibility of using more easy communications so as to be able to outnumber the enemy somewhere on the line, and so force a retreat by sheer weight.
This evening I ran all down the coast almost to Dieppe, and made the interesting discovery that all the coast towns, which only a few days before had been declared "open," and ordered to surrender all arms to their civic authorities, are again in military occupation. To follow the new development, I made, in the late evening, for Amiens, in violent wind and cold rain.
Amiens, Saturday.
For the present the news remains the same—the continuation of a battle for positions, savagely contested; the Germans fighting for time, time for the full use of their reinforcements and for the escape of their left wing in the Argonne region. The Allies are fighting to break the line on the east and to hold it, or turn it, on the west. Time, too, with its possible happenings in this quarter, is also in their favour.
We only hear of what is happening along the south front of the German army. About its south-west aspect there is a great silence.
The Amiens and northern German troops have fallen back upon a strong series of positions, which make an acute angle with those of their south front along the Aisne. Following the line of the Oise north, from the junction with the Aisne, they hold the line of highlands on either bank north to Noyon, thence west of the river to St. Quentin; they cover the railway lines by Chauny, La Fere, etc., with Laon, as centre. Thence north to Cambrai.
It will be seen that their communications are exposed to attack from the west. The distances are too great for continuous protection in force. I have been able to-day myself to reach the railway line in two places, between Bapaume and Peronne, without interruption.
The country is more or less covered by cavalry and motor detachments, whose action is necessarily local. These are in turn hunted, marked down, or reported by the French and English motor-cars fitted with machine-guns. The game is exciting, and is succeeding in its object of condensing the German dispersed bodies. But there are signs of a more serious pressure fromthe Germans beginning, that may eventually remove the centre of interest from the battle going on farther south.
The long-continued battle on the Aisne is in the nature of artillery duels, fencing for positions, followed by infantry attacks and counter-attacks on either side. So far we have had the advantage on the west, but at great cost. The counter-attacks by the Germans on our troops in the course of the nights have been repulsed with loss.
In the long business of wearing down we have the advantage, both in convenience of supply-service and in freshness and number of troops. But for a decisive issue, in view of the strength of the German position, we may have to hope for the entry of some new factor upon the scene.
The strong winds have dried up the roads to a large extent, and the movement of men and guns is again becoming easier.
In the region in which I have been able to approach the fighting, our counter-moves were proceeding vigorously and with plenty of confidence.
Amiens is in the overstrung, spy-mania condition of a town but just free of a hostile army, and again occupied by a friendly but mysterious military. As I ran in to-night in the dark, narrowly escaping driving into the river at the shattered bridge of Picquigny, I met the atmosphere like a thick fog. Sentinel challenges at every corner, suspicious civilian crowds thronging round if ever we checked. Two correspondents have been arrested as spies, and cannot be traced. To get myself and the car out without detention, I start to-morrow at the first light.
Creil, Sunday.
This has been a day of rather exceptional interest and incident. A number of hours have been spent in following up a line, and a direction, of which it has now become indiscreet to write in detail, but of whose possible importance to the issue of the battle of the Aisne and Oise those who have followed my account will be already aware.
That Von Kluck, if it is still Von Kluck on the German right, is alive to its importance,there is evidence in the strong reinforcements constantly thrust out towards the line Paris-Amiens, to anticipate the French movements, and in the vigour of the offensive which is pushing out to the west of Noyon. The conflicts between the patrols and our flying mitrailleuse-cars have made a distraction in the north to the unvarying character of reports from the long and terrible ding-dong battle on the Aisne and Oise.
Even the French papers are saying it to-day. "Keep your eyes also on the west. Don't be discouraged by the absence of material progress in that long-drawn conflict between the entrenched armies!"
That is all one may say after a number of hours spent in tense progress in sight and hearing of friendly and hostile forces. (Note.—I was following the development of the French encircling movement, by Clermont and Lassigny, round the German right wing.)
You are tired probably of reading about races with Uhlans. But they retain their freshness of excitement for the participants. I must add yet one more, and that happened only thismorning. We were passing from Moreuil to Montdidier. Outside Braches the wreck of a motor car, the two hind wheels smashed by some sort of projectile, led to questions. It had been destroyed, seemingly for practice shooting, by a body of Uhlans who crossed the line last night. The three occupants had fled to the village.
The patrol was said to have gone on westward. Uhlans are very local in this wide, rolling country. Fifteen hours had intervened. They might be miles away. We ran on, with only a wary eye for the edges of the woods. The road, swinging up and down over the rolling, wooded slopes, ran up and over a crest, contouring round a grassy down-summit on a terrace which faced towards the west. The railway line and river lay below to our right. A long, straight road, bordered by tufty-topped trees, ran up along a sky-line to join our terrace-road from the west.
We were swinging slightly down-hill to the road-junction about a quarter of a mile ahead, when, quite a third to half a mile down the cross-road on the right, horsemen became visible, appearing and disappearing between the trees.They might be a friendly patrol; but we put on full speed. It was soon settled. Some half-dozen broke into a gallop, or rather a canter, up-hill to intercept us. We had the advantage of slope, pace and distance to the crossing. The tilt of the hill and the road-bank also shielded us. I was only concerned about the moment of crossing at the junction, where we should be straight in view.
Some of the Lancers, some twenty in all, had halted and seemed preparing to fire. Luck favoured us. The half-dozen scattered men galloping up the road got in the way of the rest, and covered our crossing. We raced past, a good three or four hundred yards ahead at the junction. The road-bank and clumps of bushes again sheltered us, and a distant shot or two came nowhere near. It was rather joyous to turn and watch in glimpses over the bank the clearly irritated grey troopers pulling up their puffed horses.
We were still at full speed, in a sort of after-math of excitement, some three or four kilometres further on and across the next rise, whena placid green copse beside the road ahead suddenly grew alive, and a little swarm of men with bayonets moved quietly out to block the road. But the red and blue of the French army is visible afar. They greeted us from fifty yards off. "What have you seen?" We gave them the news. It appeared they were out on the trail of just twenty-five such marauders. Two came on with us to Montdidier to report. The rest marched off on a line that might cut ahead of our band. This is the railway line to the north, and for the last few days it has constantly been the scene of such little conflicts, on the one part the attempt to occupy the line, on the other to protect it.
In return for the news I was allowed to move up, under escort, and partly "requisitioned" for troops, nearer to the great battle than I hoped. First to Clermont, then by cross roads to Estrées; thence to near Giraumont, south-west of Ribecourt, which lies at an angle of the Oise north-west of the Forest of Laigue. From here, following a small cyclist contingent pushing their cycles, I got on foot through the woods on atrack, until I could look down on the Oise. I did not see a battle. But, since it has been generally assumed that the Germans are east of the Oise, at least to as far north as Noyon, it was surprising to hear a very heavy cannonade proceeding from due north, showing clearly that the Germans were engaged well west of Noyon, towards Lassigny.
Where I was, however, the sight was all the more picturesque for the absence of the suggestion of destruction. The day had been squally, alternating silver streaks of sunlight and violent, windy rain. A silver shield of sunlight lay along the Oise to the north. The French were pushing up the western slopes of the river. At two points the troops, bright chequers of colour, were crossing on pontoon bridges. On the far bank they were trickling up in narrow streaks of colour again, into the green forest that swayed black with the wind. They were extending and supporting the French advance on this wing, which is pushing very gradually north, from as far west as Clermont, through the forest and fields towards the Noyon line.
The only signal of a battle progressing was the constant reverberation of guns that seemed to come alike from all quarters of the sky. I could identify only the peculiar uniform of the Senegalese and the light blue of the cavalry, as they moved past through breaks in the trees. Then the rain came down again, fiercely, and the scene lost colour in a grey drift of cloud and wind. Once so far up, and clear of the obstruction of bases, it was well to see all one could. Returning down the line of the Oise, and keeping in the woods, I got to the extreme west corner of the Forest of Laigue, where the Aisne joins the Oise. Most of the bridges have been blown up, and it is well not to approach those that exist, as things are.
Choosing a sharp corner, and retaining only what was essential for warmth, part wading, part swimming, I got across the Oise—it was decidedly cold—and followed at first the north bank of the Aisne.
The trees gave necessary shelter. It was a long and exciting walk, or rather stalk, east and then north through the forest, behind the Frenchlines. All the traversable ways had to be avoided. The word "forest" gives a false idea of the open glades and blank stretches of country that give little cover. The firing seemed very near in front; but it also seemed to be on either hand, confusingly.
A final long and enforced wait at last made it apparent that the sound was, if anything, coming nearer in this quarter. The Germans might be pushing a counter-attack southward. In any case, further progress would have been hazardous.
The retreat was like the advance. Glimpses of moving men through the trees; long waits; distant knots of ambulance men waiting, or moving southward. Always the confusing echo of firing, sometimes silent for intervals, sometimes clear and close as the south-west wind lulled. So back and over the Oise, with a big leafy branch to cover my drift across the river.
It was, frankly, a relief to rejoin my moving base, doing ambulance duty at Estrées, and to be on the clear road again. As I left the river, several barges of wounded were moving slowlysouthward. The little columns of Red Cross motors held the roads. This has been a terribly costly battle. We have held our own magnificently, but it has been against superior numbers, backed by accurate shell-fire from strongly-entrenched positions.
Unless the line can be pierced on the east, the great hope, thus limiting the Germans to the few lines of communications to the northern "troué," and unless their western lines can be seriously threatened from the north-west or in Belgium, we may look for a long, wearing winter campaign, a "stalemate" in the present positions. But a good deal has still to happen before we need make up our minds for that.
Creil, Monday.
I have been now once again making south, to resume contact with the battle along the Aisne. You have heard the account of the melancholy condition of the country north of and around Meaux, and of the ruins of Senlis.
Creil is in little better state. This was one point at which the tremendous German marchupon Paris was first checked, to swing, with lost momentum, south and east, and then recoil.
The roads to the north and east bear the usual signs of past warfare. Wayside entrenchments, significantly enough often facing north-west, as if the Germans, when they checked, had half prepared to meet attack from that quarter. Hastily obliterated milestones and sign-posts. Villages with a house here and there destroyed. At Cauffry, for instance, the big Mairie is burnt out, nothing else touched.
Entering Creil from the north, at first only every house in four or five seems to have been injured. Further down towards the river, every second house; and then whole rows of empty shells, shattered by bombardment, burnt out with fire. Others still standing, with every window broken and the doors smashed in; pillaged and scooped out, as if by the enormous paw of some predatory beast. In the cold autumn wind and driving rain the inhabitants are sheltering in the empty frameworks, doorless, windowless, often roofless. The town is full of the usual tales of suffering. The boy scout, whopiloted me, grew passionate over the long tale of a lady calledla belle Andaluse. It embodied all the atrocities; with the single exception of the now dubitable anecdote of the "little boy who was shot because he pointed his toy gun at a soldier." For any one who has read the story of Napoleon's campaign in this district, in 1814, and of the Cossack atrocities perpetrated among these villagers, it has a grim meaning to hear, in 1914, their descendants in the same villages recounting, unknowingly, much the same catalogue of outrages. Civilisation will seem to bray at him, like a donkey running round in a well-wheel.
In the grey chilly evening the river dividing the town is a melancholy sight. The two twisted ends of the great girder bridge, blown up by the French on their retreat, droop into the broad river. Below this, still survives the remains of the German pontoon bridge, by which they crossed. A big ferry further down makes the only connection with the region north-west of the Oise for a number of miles.
None of the heroics of war in these depressingafter-views and moody, hopeless faces. A column of French sailors swung through just now; fine fellows, bronzed, and singing in time to their springing step. It was more reckless, more tuneful than the toneless, barbaric little chant of the Cuirassiers as they rode past me at Sombreffe in August. But that did not jar with the sunlight and woods and the noise of armies going into battle. Here the song seemed garish and discordant, in the grey, miserable awakening of a town to its own ruin.
And, if this of Creil, what shall we have left to say of Rheims, or to think of its cathedral and churches, reported to-night to have succumbed at last to the week's bombardment? To German Culture—let Louvain be the memorial; to the Imperial Piety—the ruins of Rheims.
CHAPTER XII
On the Aisne
Paris was pleasantly tranquil. Folk were returning. The Boulevards had almost their traditional crowds. At the same time the long lock upon the Aisne, and the absence of news, had recalled something of the atmosphere of anxiety and doubt. Rumour was rife. In the usual attempt to check it, as well as to cover certain military moves, the circle of the defence was being drawn tighter. All permits were being cancelled. When I left Paris again, to try and regain the lines on the Aisne, it was with the knowledge that it would be necessary to take increased risks, with less chance of getting communicable news. If the position were to resolve itself, it would be on the north coast; as the result of a different development of the battle.
North of Paris, Monday night.
The army of the west that I have followed with personal interest through all its developments during the last weeks is now officially acknowledged as being in contact with the Germans.
Of the excitement of watching its growth and passage through the north of France, at Rouen, Beauvais, and Amiens, I shall be able to speak more fully when the official details as to its composition are allowed to be made public. "Keep your eye on the west" is all we have been able to say as reassurance during the two long anxious weeks of assault upon the profound German trenches on the Aisne.
And now, certainly not too soon, when the Germans have extended themselves once again in desperate efforts to break through on the south at Soissons and Rheims, comes the threatening pressure of the new army upon their lines of communication to the north. Have their reinforcements, brought from Belgiumand the Argonne, come up to check it in time?
Nor is this all. We have all deduced from the German activity lately the movement westward and northward of the French troops on our left wing, up past Clermont and Lassigny. This has of itself been gradually overlapping the German right. Now it forms a single enveloping arc with the forces pressing in upon St. Quentin.
It was only when the magnificent fighting on the Aisne made it clearer day by day that the Germans were fairly held in the south that such a movement of troops became justifiable. We could reconstruct now where these troops were drawn from, and the moves of the splendid game that the Allies have played. But that must wait until the game is played out.
Meanwhile that fearful sacrifice of life upon the Aisne two weeks ago, fighting unparalleled in history for severity, has gained its object. Time has been won for the one move that serves to hook the Germans out of their immenseentrenchments. We start the third week of the battle with easier breath.
There have been many rumours that the Germans were really further south on the line of the Aisne than public information acknowledged. There were sections of the line about which nothing was known, and not only that mysterious west.
It is possible we may hear later that there were anxious days last week, when Rheims was not the southern boundary of the Germans, nor yet Soissons; and that some of the ground now slowly won at great cost has but been regained.
It was to clear this up that I spent to-day travelling behind the whole line from Rheims to south of Compiègne; approaching it at the vital points, so as to define the German position. Although there had been German cars imperilling the road, it proved to be only some of their reckless skirmishers. We got through, without a rumour of them, to the heights south of Rheims.