not been strong and supple—­in all respects equal to its work—­the sudden attack of the 6th Army, on the extreme left of the battle-line, and the victory of General Foch in the centre, might not have availed.  In other words, had Von Kluck found the weak spot he believed in and struck for, all would have been different.  But the weak spot existed only in the German imagination.  The British troops whom Von Kluck supposed to be exhausted and demoralised, were in truth nothing of the sort.  Rested and in excellent condition, they turned rejoicing upon the enemy, and, in concert with the French 6th Army, decided the German withdrawal.  Every one of the six Armies aligned across France, from Paris to the Grand Couronne, had its own glorious task in the defeat of the German plans.  But we were then so small a proportion of the whole, with our hundred and twenty thousand men, and we have become since so accustomed to count in millions, that perhaps our part in the “miracle of the Marne” is sometimes in danger of becoming a little blurred in the popular English—­and American—­conception of the battle.  Is not the truth rather that we had a twofold share in it?  It was Von Kluck’s miscalculation as to the English strength that tempted him to his eastward march; it was the quality of the British force and leadership, when Sir John French’s opportunity came, that made the mistake a fatal one.

How different the aspect of the Ourcq plateau at the opening of the battle in 1914, from the snowy desolation under which we saw it!  Perfect summer weather—­the harvest stacks in the fields—­a blazing sun by day, and a clear moon by night.  For the first encounters of the five days’ fighting, till the rain came down, Nature could not have set a fairer scene.  And on the two anniversaries which have since passed, summer has again decked the battle-field.  Thousands have gone out to it from Paris, from Meaux, and the whole country-side.  The innumerable graves, single or grouped, among the harvest fields and the pastures, have been covered with flowers, and bright, mile after mile, with the twinkling tricolour, as far as the eye could see.  At Barcy and Etrepilly, the centres of the fight, priests have blessed the graves, and prayed for the dead.

There has been neither labour nor money indeed as yet wherewith to rebuild the ruined villages and farms, beyond the most necessary repairs.  They stand for the most part as the battle left them.  And the fields are still alive with innumerable red flags—­distinct from the tricolour of the graves—­which mark where the plough must avoid an unexploded shell.  In a journal of September 1914, a citizen of Senlis describes passing in a motor through the scene of the fight, immediately after the departure of the Germans, when the scavenging and burying parties were still busy.