The talk passed on to the German attack on the French front in Champagne on July 15th, that perfectly-planned defence in which, to quote General Gouraud’s own stirring words to his soldiers:  “You broke the strength and the hopes of the enemy.  That day Victory changed her camp.  She has been faithful to us ever since.”  It makes one of the most picturesque stories of the war.  The German offensive which broke out, as we know, along the whole of their new Marne front on July 15th, had been exactly anticipated for days before it began by General Gouraud and his Staff.  The Fourth French Army, which Gouraud commanded, was lying to the north-east of Rheims, and the German attack on the Monts de Champagne, already the scene in 1916 and 1917 of so much desperate fighting, was meant to carry the German line down to the Marne that same day.  Gouraud was amply informed by his intelligence staff, and his air service, of the enemy preparations, and had made all his own.  The only question was as to the exact day and hour of the attack.  Then by a stroke of good fortune, at eight o’clock on the very evening preceding the attack, twenty-seven prisoners were brought in—­of whom some are said to have been Alsatian—­and closely questioned by the Staff.  “They told us,” said Gouraud, “that the artillery attack would begin at ten minutes past midnight, and the infantry attack between three and four o’clock that very night.  I thereupon gave the order for our bombardment to begin at 11.30 p.m. in order to catch the assembling German troops.  I had 200 batteries secretes ready—­of which the enemy had no idea—­which had given beforehand no sign of their existence.  Then we sat with our watches in our hands.  Was it true—­or not true? 12.5—­12.6—­12.8—­12.9.—­Probably it was a mare’s nest. 12.10—­Crac!—­the bombardment had begun.  We sprang to our telephones!” And presently, as the captured German officers began to come in, their French captors were listening to their bewildered astonishment “at the number of our batteries they had never discovered, which were on none of their maps, and only revealed themselves at the very moment of their own attack.”

Meanwhile, the first French position was not intended to be held.  The advance posts were told to delay and break up the enemy as much as possible, but the famous Monts were to be abandoned and the real resistance was to be offered on a position intermediate between the first and second position, and so densely held that no infiltration of the enemy was to be possible.  Everything happened, for once, really “according to plan.”  The advance posts, whose order was “to sacrifice themselves,” and each member of which knew perfectly well the duty laid upon him, held out—­some of them—­all day, and eventually fought their way back to the French lines.  But on the prepared line of resistance the German attack was hopelessly broken, and men and reserves coming on fast from behind, ignorant of what had happened to the attacking troops, were mown down by the French artillery.  “By midday,” says the typed compte-rendu of operations, which, signed by General Gouraud’s own left hand, lies before me—­“the enemy appeared entirely blocked in all directions—­and the battle-position fixed by the General Commanding the Army was intact.”