Even Havre was to be abandoned as the British base.  It was only a little while since enormous stores had been dumped here for the provisioning and equipment of our Expeditionary Force.  Now I saw a great packing up.  “K.” had issued an amazing order which made certain young gentlemen of the A.S.C. whistle between their teeth and say rather quietly:  “Ye gods! things must be looking a bit blue up there.”  The new base was to be much further south, at St. Nazaire, to which the last tin of bully beef or Maconochie was to be consigned, without delay.  Yes, things were looking very “blue,” just then.

3

One may afford now to write about mistakes, even the mistakes of our French Allies, who have redeemed them all by a national heroism beyond the highest words of praise, and by a fine struggle for efficiency and organization which were lamentably lacking in the early days of the war.  Knowing now the frightful blunders committed at the outset, and the hair’s-breadth escape from tremendous tragedy, the miracle of the sudden awakening which enabled France to shake off her lethargy and her vanity, and to make a tiger’s pounce upon an enemy which had almost brought her to her knees is one of the splendid things in the world’s history which wipe out all rankling criticism.

Yet then, before the transformation, the days were full of torture for those who knew something of the truth.  By what fatal microbe of folly had the French generals been tempted towards that adventure in Alsace?  Sentiment, overwhelming common sense, had sent the finest troops in France to the frontiers of the “lost provinces,” so that Paris might have its day of ecstasy round the statue of Quand-Meme.  While the Germans were smashing their way through Belgium, checked only a little while at Liege and giving a clear warning of the road by which they would come to France, the French active army was massed in the east from Luxembourg to Nancy and wasting the strength which should have been used to bar the northern roads, in pressing forward to Mulhouse and Altkirch.  It gave Georges Scott the subject of a beautiful allegory in L’Illustration—­that French soldier clasping the Alsatian girl rescued from the German grip.  It gave Parisian journalists, gagged about all other aspects of the war zone, a chance of heroic writing, filled with the emotion of old heartaches now changed to joy.  Only the indiscretion of a deputy hinted for a moment at a bad reverse at Mulhouse, when a regiment recruited from the South, broke and fled under the fire of German guns because they were unsupported by their own artillery.  “Two generals have been cashiered.”  “Some of the officers have been shot.”  Tragic rumours leaked into Paris, spoiling the dream of an irresistible advance.