In modern war it is only masses of men that matter, moved by a common obedience at the dictation of mysterious far-off powers, and I thanked Heaven that masses of men were on the move, rapidly, in vast numbers, and in the right direction—­to support the French lines which had fallen back from Amiens a few hours before I left that town, whom I had followed in their retirement back and back, with the British always strengthening their left, but retiring with them almost to the outskirts of Paris itself.

Only this could save Paris—­the rapid strengthening of the Allied front by enormous reserves strong enough to hold back the arrow-shaped battering-ram of the enemy’s right.

All our British reserves had been rushed up to the front from Havre and Rouen.  There was only one deduction to be drawn from this great swift movement.  The French and British lines had been supported by every available battalion to save Paris from its menace of destruction, to meet the weight of the enemy’s metal by a force strong enough to resist its mass.

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One of the most dramatic incidents of the war was the transport of the army of Paris to the fighting line—­in taxi-cabs.  There were 2000 of these cabs in Paris, and on this day of September 1 they disappeared as though the earth had swallowed them, just as the earth had swallowed one of them not long before when the floods had sapped the streets.  A sudden order from General Gallieni, the Military Governor of Paris, had been issued to each driver, who immediately ignored the upraised hands of would-be passengers and the shouts of people desperate to get to one of the railway stations with household goods and a hope of escape.  At the depots the drivers knew that upon the strength of their tyres and the power of their engines depended the safety of Paris and perhaps the life of France.  It was an extraordinary incident in the history of modern war.  Five soldiers were loaded into each cab, four inside and one next to the driver, with their rifles and kit crammed in between them.  In one journey twenty thousand men were taken on the road to Meaux.  It was a triumph of mobility, and when in future the Parisian is tempted to curse those red vehicles which dash about the streets to the danger of all pedestrians who forget that death has to be dodged by never-failing vigilance, his righteous wrath will be softened, perhaps, by the remembrance that these were the chariots of General Manoury’s army before the battle of Meaux, which turned the tide of war and flung back the enemy in retreat..

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