“This attack to-morrow, besides the inevitable emotion it rouses in one’s thoughts, stirs in me a kind of joyous impatience, and the pride of doing my duty—­which is to fight gladly, and die victorious.  To the last breath of our lives, to the last child of our mothers, to the last stone of our dwellings, all is thine, my country!  Make no hurry.  Choose thine own time for striking.  If thou needest months, we will fight for months; if thou needest years, we will fight for years—­the children of to-day shall be the soldiers of to-morrow.

“Already, perhaps, my last hour is hastening towards me.  Accept the gift I make thee of my strength, my hopes, my joys and my sorrows, of all my being, filled with the passion of thee.  Pardon thy children their errors of past days.  Cover them with thy glory—­put them to sleep in thy flag.  Rise, victorious and renewed, upon their graves.  Let our holocaust save thee—­Patrie, Patrie!”

An utterance which for tragic sincerity and passion may well compare with the letter of an English officer I printed at the end of England’s Effort.

On they go, into the snow and the mist, the small sturdy soldiers, bound northwards for those great and victorious attacks on the Craonne plateau, and the Chemin des Dames, which were to follow so close on our own British victory on the Vimy Ridge.  They pass the two ladies in the motor car, looking at us with friendly, laughing eyes, and disappear into the storm.

Then we move on to the northern edge of the battle-field, and at Rosoy we turn south towards Meaux, passing Vareddes to our left.  The weather clears a little, and from the high ground we are able to see Meaux to the west, lying beside its great river, than which our children’s children will greet no more famous name.  The Marne winds, steely grey, through the white landscape, and we run down to it quickly.  Soon we are making our way on foot through the dripping streets of Meaux to the old bridge, which the British broke down—­one of three—­on their retreat—­so soon to end!  Then, a few minutes in the lovely cathedral—­its beauty was a great surprise to me!—­a greeting to the tomb of Bossuet—­ah! what a Discours he would have written on the Battle of the Marne!—­and a rapid journey of some twenty-five miles back to Paris.

But there is still a story left to tell—­the story of Vareddes.

“Vareddes”—­says a local historian of the battle—­“is now a very quiet place.  There is no movement in the streets and little life in the houses, where some of the injuries of war have been repaired.”  But there is no spot in the wide battle-field where there burns a more passionate hatred of a barbarous enemy.  “Push open this window, enter this house, talk with any person whatever whom you may happen to meet, and they will tell you of the torture of old men, carried off as hostages and murdered in cold blood, or of the agonies of fear deliberately inflicted on old and frail women, through a whole night.”