Oh, the magic of a military pass and the companionship of an officer in uniform!  It separates you from the crowd of millions on the other side of the blank wall of military secrecy and takes you into the area of the millions in uniform; it wins a nod of consent on a road from that middle-aged reservist whose bayonet has the police power of millions of bayonets in support of its authority.

At last one was to see; the measure of his impressions was to be his own eyes and not written reports.  Other passes I have had since, which gave me the run of trenches and shell-fire areas; but this pass opened the first door to the war.  That day we ran by Meaux and Chateau Thierry to Soissons and back by Senlis to Paris.  We saw a finger’s breadth of battle area; a pin-point of army front.  Only a ride along a broad, fine road out of Paris, at first; a road which our cars had all to themselves.  Then at Claye we came to the high-water mark of the German invasion in this region.  Thus close to Paris in that direction and no closer had the Germans come.

There was the field where their skirmishers had turned back.  Farther on, the branches of the avenue of trees which shaded the road had been slashed as if by a whirlwind of knives, where the French soixante-quinze field-guns had found a target.  Under that sudden bath of projectiles, with the French infantry pressing forward on their front, the German gunners could not wait to take away the cord of five-inch shells which they had piled to blaze their way to Paris.  One guessed their haste and their irritation.  They were within range of the fortifications; within two hours’ march of the suburbs; of the Mecca of forty years’ preparation.  After all that march from Belgium, with no break in the programme of success, the thunders broke and lightning flashed out of the sky as Manoury’s army rushed upon von Kluck’s flank.

“It was not the way that they wanted us to get the shells,” said a French peasant who was taking one of the shell-baskets for a souvenir.  It would make an excellent umbrella stand.

For the French it had been the turn of the tide; for that little British army which had fought its way back from Mons it was the sweet dream, which had kept men up on the retreat, come true.  Weary Germans, after a fearful two weeks of effort, became the driven.  Weary British and French turned drivers.  A hypodermic of victory renewed their energy.  Paris was at their back and the German backs in front.  They were no longer leaving their dead and wounded behind to the foe; they were sweeping past the dead and wounded of the foe.

But their happiness, that of a winning action, exalted and passionate, had not the depths of that of the refugees who had fled before the German hosts and were returning to their homes in the wake of their victorious army.  We passed farmers with children perched on top of carts laden with household goods and drawn by broad-backed farm-horses, with usually another horse or a milch cow tied behind.  The real power of France, these peasants holding fast to the acres they own, with the fire of the French nature under their thrifty conservatism.  Others on foot were villagers who had lacked horses or carts to transport their belongings.  In the packs on their backs were a few precious things which they had borne away and were now bearing back.