In spite of the storm, our indefatigable guide carried us through all the principal points of the battle-line—­St. Soupplets—­Marcilly—­ Barcy—­Etrepilly—­Acy-en-Multien; villages from which one by one, by keen, hard fighting, the French attack, coming eastwards from Dammartin to Paris, dislodged the troops of Von Kluck; while to our right lay Trocy, and Vareddes, a village on the Ourcq, between which points ran the strongest artillery positions of the enemy.  At Barcy, we stopped a few minutes, to go and look at the ruined church, with its fallen bell, and its graveyard packed with wreaths and crosses, bound with the tricolour.  At Etrepilly, with the snow beating in our faces, and the wind howling round us, we read the inscription on the national monument raised to those fallen in the battle, and looking eastwards to the spot where Trocy lay under thick curtains of storm, we tried to imagine the magnificent charge of the Zouaves, of the 62nd Reserve Division, under Commandant Henri D’Urbal, who, with many a comrade, lies buried in the cemetery of Barcy.

Five days the battle swayed backwards and forwards across this scene, especially following the lines of the little streams flowing eastwards to the Ourcq, the Therouanne, the Gergogne, the Grivette.  “From village to village,” says Colonel Buchan, “amid the smoke of burning haystacks and farmsteads, the French bayonet attack was pressed home.”

“Terrible days of life-and-death fighting! [writes a Meaux resident, Madame Koussel-Lepine] battles of Chambry, Barcy, Puisieux, Acy-en-Multien, the 6th, 7th, and 8th of September—­fierce days to which the graves among the crops bear witness.  Four hundred volunteers sent to attack a farm, from which only seven come back!  Ambuscades, barricades in the streets, loopholes cut in the cemetery walls, trenches hastily dug and filled with dead, night fighting, often hand to hand, surprises, the sudden flash of bayonets, a rain of iron, a rain of fire, mills and houses burning like torches—­fields red with the dead and with the flaming corn fruit of the fields, and flower of the race!—­the sacrifice consummated, the cup drunk to the lees.”

Moving and eloquent words!  They gain for me a double significance as I look back from them to the little scene we saw at Barcy under the snow—­a halt of some French infantry, in front of the ruined church.  The “salut an drapeau” was going on, that simple, daily rite which, like a secular mass, is the outward and visible sign to the French soldier of his country and what he owes her.  This passion of French patriotism—­what a marvellous force, what a regenerating force it has shown itself in this war!  It springs, too, from the heart of a race which has the Latin gift of expression.  Listen to this last entry in the journal of Captain Robert Dubarle, the evening before his death in action: