blow against the army of Paris and the “contemptible” British.  But two great factors in the case were overlooked.  One was the value of time, and the other was the sudden revival in the spirit of the French army now that Paris might still be saved.  They gave time—­no more than that precious twenty-four hours—­to General Joffre and his advisers to repair by one supreme and splendid effort all the grievous errors of the war’s first chapter.  While they were hesitating and changing their line of front, a new and tremendous activity was taking place on the French side, and Joffre, by a real stroke of genius which proves him to be a great general in spite of the first mistakes, for which he was perhaps not responsible, prepared a blow which was to strike his enemy shrewdly.

2

I had the great fortune of seeing something of that rush to the rescue which gave hope that perhaps, after all, the tragedy which had seemed so inevitable—­the capture of the world’s finest city—­might not be fulfilled.

This great movement was directed from the west, the south, and the east, and continued without pause by day and night.

In stations about Paris I saw regiment after regiment entraining—­men from the southern provinces speaking the patois of the south, men from the eastern departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Chalons, and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre of France in the garrisons along the Loire.

They were all in splendid spirits, strangely undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance.  “Fear nothing, my little one,” said a dirty unshaven gentleman with the laughing eyes of d’Artagnan, “we shall bite their heads off.  These brutal ‘Boches’ are going to put themselves in a veritable death-trap.  We shall have them at last.”

The railway carriages were garlanded with flowers of the fields.  The men wore posies in their kepis.  In white chalk they had scrawled legends upon the cattle-trucks in which they travelled.  “A mort Guillaume!” “Vive la Gloire!” “Les Francais ne se rendent jamais!” Many of them had fought at Longwy and along the heights of the Vosges.  The youngest of them had bristling beards.  Their blue coats with the turned-back flaps were war-worn and flaked with the dust of long marches.  Their red trousers were sloppy and stained.

But they had not forgotten how to laugh, and the gallantry of their spirits was good to see.  A friend of mine was not ashamed to say that he had tears at least as high as his throat when he stood among them and clasped some of those brown hands.  There was a thrill not to be recaptured in the emotion of those early days of war.  Afterwards the monotony of it all sat heavily upon one’s soul.

They were very proud, those French soldiers, of fighting side by side with their old foes the British, now after long centuries of strife, from Edward the Black Prince to Wellington, their brothers-in-arms upon the battlefields; and because I am English they offered me their cigarettes and made me one of them.