CHAPTER VII

Courtesy of "L'Illustration."

The War of Fire.

Modern warfare has horrors heretofore unknown, with liquid fire, poison gas, and explosive fumes. Yet after all, it is the spirit of the soldier which counts most.

Von Kluck's strategy was clear. He sent one corps to engage the jointure between the French and English lines—always a weak spot because of the division of command. He threw three army corps against the one and a half of the British, not trying to throw them back, but merely to keep them in action every minute of the time. With the line thus fighting for its existence, he sent his entire fifth army corps in a tremendous mass of motor vehicles around by Tournay and the Forest of Raimes to crumple up the British left flank. Here was the outflanking movement, again, beloved of German strategy and made possible by superior numbers.

The attack on the British by Von Kluck, then, began on the morning of Sunday, August 23, at just about the time that Horace escaped from the Uhlans while on his way to deliver the dead dispatch-rider's message. The battle, that morning, was wide-spread but not too heavy. Von Kluck did not want the British to retire, for that would make his flanking plan more difficult; he merely wanted them to hold. On the British right, however, this need for restraint was less and the pressure was made heavy enough to compel the withdrawal of the British from Binche. This was for the purpose of flanking the French Fifth Army's right.

As the infantry fell back, a cavalry division was hurled after them. The English turned suddenly and charged the German horsemen, who broke in disorder.

"When they saw us coming," wrote Trooper S. Cargill, of the British Army, "they turned and fled, at least all but one, who came rushing at us with his lance at the charge. I caught hold of his horse, which was half wild with terror, and my chum was going to run the rider through when he noticed the awful glaze in his eyes and saw that the poor chap was dead."

So Death rode on his pale horse into the British lines that day and became a constant companion in the awful week that was to come.

Shortly after noon, Horace was sent back to the Fifth Army with dispatches to the effect that the Fourth Army had made the turning movement successfully and had retired on Philippeville.

By two o'clock that afternoon, the Fifth French Army was at the point of annihilation. Von Hausen had pierced the line at Charleroi. Von Kluck had pierced the line at Thuin. General Lanrezac was partly enveloped on both flanks. Knowing that the whole strategy of the campaign was in process of swift destruction, Lanrezac did the only thing possible. He retreated so precipitately that he was compelled to leave behind his wounded and not a few of his guns.

When Horace came up with the dispatches, he found himself entangled in such a confused retreat that an hour passed before he discovered some one who could tell him to what place staff headquarters had been moved. And, when he reached there, it had moved again. Undoubtedly some kind of order existed, but to the boy's untrained eyes, all was confusion, while into, over and through this confusion, Von Hausen's cavalry was plunging.

All communication between the Fifth French Army and the British troops was cut by the presence of Von Kluck at Thuin. Horace, who, thanks to the veteran's teaching and the hunchback's perception of military values, had a fair idea of the strategy of the campaign, saw the danger that the British might be encircled and captured in a body. Accordingly, he volunteered to try to take the news of the fall of Charleroi to Sir John French. Owing to lack of telegraphic communication with the General Staff, the Fifth Army Staff had no warrant for this, but the boy was given to understand that if he took the news on his own responsibility, he might be rendering the British an important service. He decided to go.

Horace had planned to ride south within the circle of the forts of Maubeuge and thence toward Sir John French's headquarters, but he was compelled to abandon the plan. Every road to the rear was choked with wounded, with refugees, with transport, with the inextricable disarray of vehicles that follows a sudden change of army plans under the threat of a disaster. Horace, fearing that every hour might see the final smash of the weak corner between the Fourth and Fifth Armies, made all the weaker by the pounding of the mysterious Von Hausen army which had marched its way through the Ardennes forests unseen by airmen, rode on, heartsick and despairing. Finding Maubeuge unreachable, he turned his motor-cycle north with a grim determination to try and save the British and bring them back into the fighting diamond. Clear in his mind's eyes lay the situation. The British, the Fourth Army and the Fifth Army must retreat slowly in order, on the fourth army—the reserves near Paris.

He ran into the zone of shell-fire. Now, the boy hardly cared. He was beginning to find himself and the work that he really could do. What if his heart seemed to beat as loudly as the exhaust of the motor-cycle itself? He was going on! A few miles further, the shell-fire slackened. This sector was less furiously attacked. Presently he shot past a farm wagon loaded with hay.

"Well, the Germans aren't more than a mile ahead of you, thousands of them. You'll run slap into the middle of them if you go on."

"They did it, only half an hour ago. They ordered me to deliver this hay to their forage depot, beyond Thuin, and said they'd cut my throat if I didn't. And I like my throat better than my hay. But I'm going to try and make them pay for it, just the same!"

It was the work of only two minutes to lift up the motor-cycle and hide it in the hay. The boy concealed himself also, leaving only the smallest breathing-space.

The farm-wagon rolled into Thuin, the farmer showing the German order that he had received and clamoring for pay. The only response was a threat to cut off his thumbs if he failed to deliver the hay before nightfall. He drove on sulkily.

Near Marchienne, where a small road branched off to the west, the farmer stopped and helped Horace to take down the machine.

"Good luck!" he said quietly and drove on, grumbling, as he went, about the price of his hay.

It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and Horace sped forward, finding, to his discomfiture, that the little road was tending northward towards Bray. The roar of the battle, muffled at first as he drove through the coal-pit region, grew louder and louder. The woodland country ceased, and in place of fields and trees the landscape became one of shafts, chimneys and piles of débris on which grew a few stunted pines, a landscape which fitted well with the hideous ugliness of war. The motor-cycle throbbed on and presently Horace ran into the lines of an infantry regiment, not dressed in the blue jackets and red trousers of the French [16] nor in the iron-gray of the German, but in the khaki of the English.

He was taken to the ranking officer, a tall man with a quiet, impassive voice and a cold manner.

The Englishman would not even disturb himself sufficiently to look surprised at the lad's presumption.

"The matter will pass through regular channels," he replied. "I cannot allow you to proceed farther along the British lines. You will remain here, under guard."

"You will remain here, under guard," the captain repeated, without the slightest variance of inflection in his tone.

Horace grew red with anger, and boy-like and untrained in military discipline he burst out,

"Well, if you all get cut up by Germans, it won't be my fault. You've got Von Kluck on your left, Von Buelow on your right and Von Hausen behind. If you stay here, they'll make mincemeat of you."

"We will endeavor to avoid that fate," said the Englishman, stiffly, and motioned for the lad to be led away.

The Londoner, who had listened to the boy's outburst, grinned broadly as soon as they had left the place.

"Go slow," said the Tommy, "'e's a proper bit of all right, 'e is, don't you make no mistake. That's 'is way. 'E's just the same under fire, never turns a 'air. 'E was drawlin' 'is orders this mornin' like 'e was on parade. An' it was a tight corner, too."

"We fair were! I was through the Boer War, an' the 'ottest fight we 'ad in that was frost-bitten aside o' this mornin'."

"I'm not surprised," the boy retorted. "I could have told that human icicle with the eye-glass—if he'd had the sense to listen—that there are five corps facing your two. Besides, they've reserves ready to jump you any minute."

"They'll be driven on, scare or no!" declared the boy. "What did you do to scare them all?"

Horace saw that there was something behind the Tommy's evident reluctance to speak, but, little by little, he won him round.

Courtesy of "The War Illustrated."

Saved in a Hail of Shell.

British drummer who dashed into the zone of fire to save a wounded officer. When hit himself, he fell, but hooking his feet under the officer's arms, propelled himself by his elbows backwards into safety.

"Very queer," agreed Horace, thinking of Mme. Maubin's prophecy and remembering some of the tales he had heard the French gunners tell.

"Mark what I'm sayin'—if it wasn't for some o' them queer things, I wouldn't be 'ere talkin' to you."

"I saw it? We all saw it. First there was a sort o' yellow mist, sort o' risin' out o' the ground before the Huns as they came to the top of the 'ill, came on like a solid wall, they did—springin' out o' the earth, just solid; no end o' them. I just gave up. It's no use our fightin' the 'ole German race in one day, thinks I. It's all up with us. The next minute, up comes a funny cloud o' light, an' when it clears off—this is gospel truth, I'm tellin'—there's a tall man, with yellow 'air, in gold armor, on a white 'orse, 'oldin' 'is sword up an' 'is mouth open. Then, before you could say 'knife,' the 'Uns 'ad turned an' we was after them, fightin' like ninety."[17]

"That's queer," said Horace, "I've heard a lot of yarns just like that with the French Army. Only yesterday I was talking with a French cavalryman. He was one of the squad of men sent out by his colonel to find out who were the cavalry acting as rearguard to the retreat. He saw the cavalry, himself. But when he got there, nothing could be seen. Yet that invisible cavalry was keeping the Germans back, just the same."[18]

"We took a prisoner, this mornin'," corroborated the Tommy, "'oo said 'e 'ad seen 'is bullets strike the air an' drop as if there 'ad been a wall there. We 'ad the Fiend on our side, 'e said."

"And I saw a Boche," the boy replied, "one of the Death's Head Hussars, who claimed that we hypnotized their horses by magic so that they couldn't run."

The talk passed on to other battle omens and Horace told the story of the "captive Kaiser." He was recounting Mme. Maubin's prophecy when an order came requiring him to go before the English captain.

"A telegraphic dispatch has been received," said the officer, "confirming your information. You are at liberty."

Horace waited, expecting some apology for the detention, but none was forthcoming. Evidently the English officer felt that he had acted exactly according to military regulations.

There was nothing more to be said and Horace returned to the Tommy. Before he could regain possession of his motor-cycle, however, he was compelled to waste two hours more in the red tape of official procedure, and this, too, while the battle was actually raging a mile away.

This dispatch received from General Joffre was, indeed, sufficiently grave. Received at exactly five o'clock that Sunday evening, it disclosed that, against the 75,000 men of the British force, Von Kluck was hurling 220,000 men. Of these, 150,000 were engaged in a frontal attack, 50,000 men were flanking him to the left and 20,000 cavalry were on his left rear. In addition to that, 100,000 men under Von Buelow threatened his right and Von Hausen's cavalry were closing in on his right rear. A fighting retreat, with a succession of rearguard actions to cover the retiring battalions, was the only tactic possible.

Much has been said in blame of the French staff for the "unaccountable delay" in notifying the British. There was delay, but it was neither unaccountable nor so great as it seemed. It was not until that very Sunday morning that Von Hausen pushed forward in advance of Von Buelow and forced the retreat of the Fifth Army. Even with perfect coördination—a thing rarely possible in a disordered retreat—the French General Staff would not know the situation until midway of the morning, and, even then, could not know the size and scope of Von Hausen's army. Then, too, the wires had been cut. There was, undoubtedly, a delay of five or six hours in notifying the British, but not more.

That Sunday night was spent in clearing the roads to the rear of all heavy transport. Sir John French knew that absolute mobility was the only condition of a fighting retreat. He knew, now, his desperate situation, and he knew, too, the crucial nature of his position. The fate of France now hung on the stiffness of his retiring line. For this, however, he had the most marvelous troops in the world for such a purpose, the British regulars. His original position being slightly to the northward of the Fifth French Army, he was more than a day behind in commencing the retreat. He was fighting an army three times as large as his own. He was being attacked on the flank as well as in the rear, yet he was the sole barrier that France possessed against the piercing of its strategic diamond at "third base."

All night the German artillery continued a steady shelling, with intermittent bursts of rifle-fire, as though threatening an advance. The British outposts, firing largely from loopholes in the walls of factories, gave the Germans no hint that the line was preparing to retire.

At four o'clock the entire British force stood to arms and the retreat began. Horace's aversion, the cold and correct captain, led his men in a desperate attack from Harmignies on Binche, and the lad was compelled to admire the officer's inflexible courage and splendid handling of his men. It was true, as the Tommy had said, that the officer was as imperturbable under fire as at his headquarters and he was utterly regardless of personal danger.

Gallant as was the leader, the determination of the troops was no whit less wonderful. There was less dash than among the French, but the dogged strength and power were superb. No matter how thin the line, the Germans could not break through. One battalion stayed at the covering point until only five men remained. It was on this day that a lieutenant, taking up a position in a building which had but one door, and that facing the enemy, when told by his non-commissioned officer that there was no way out, replied:

There was no place for Horace with the British, and at sunrise he was on his motor-cycle on his way back to his friends in the Fourth French Army, for he saw that the driving force of the battle was not at any one point, but along the whole line, and he felt he could be of more use where he was already known. The retreat, as he passed through it, was vastly more orderly and methodical than the retreat of the French after Givet and Dinant, but, at the same time, its slow and methodical methods resulted in a heavy loss of life.

The German jaws bit and tore at the English troops. They hurled brigades of men against companies and engulfed them. But they could not break the line.

The German artillery, advancing, deluged the lines with bullet and shell; the British artillery, retreating, necessarily limbered up much of the time for the retreat, could not reply adequately. One hundred shells to one were hurled at what had been called by the Kaiser "Britain's contemptible little army." But they could not break the line.

Clouds of cavalry swept upon the flank, picking off the English by ones and twos, by dozens and by hundreds. They sacrificed themselves valiantly in an attempt to force their way through that khaki-clad resistance. But they could not break the line.

Morning, noon and night, dusk, midnight and dawn, Von Kluck drove the attack, leaving scant time for food, less time for rest and practically no time for sleep, seeking to wear down human resistance by sheer exhaustion and fatigue. But he could not break the line.

Horace found the same terrific pressure on the Fourth Army, forced back by Von Hausen and the Duke of Würtemberg. He had feared to find a rout, remembering the breaking condition in which he had left the army, but he found it reformed, reënforced, strong as ever and filled with a grim determination to save Paris at all costs. The men of his old battery greeted him with a shout.

Horace told all that he knew, or rather, all that he thought he ought to tell, describing the desperate though resistant condition of the British expeditionary force.

"But they're retreating, too," said a gun-layer, gloomily, "always retreating. Are we going to give those dogs of Boches all of France?"

Retreat amid the wounded, retreat in hopeless rear-guard actions with dead on every side, retreat on roads crowded with homeless and hopeless refugees fleeing anywhere away from the advancing horror of war, retreat without food, retreat without sleep, retreat in rain, in mud, in blazing heat, in choking thirst, retreat under the reproachful eyes of deserted women, retreat under the stinging shame of defeat, retreat until the heart was as weary as the feet and death would be a boon.

Retreat over a front of 200 miles, with every road, every street, every lane, every by-path surging with misery, crowded with panic.

To see and hear of nothing but ruin and ravage! To be unable to help! To be afraid to advance! To march until the soul cries for peace and the body aches for rest, though neither can be satisfied!

Horrible is the battle, but more horrible by far is the dispiriting agony of the retreat. For twelve long days France saw the flower of her manhood vanquished and thrown back. She saw her armies despondent and dejected. She saw her territory given over to spoliation and destruction.

Yet she saw, too, her generals and officers, with grim-set lips and watchful eyes, who knew the mighty strength that lay behind the apparent weakness, in whose minds lurked menace and thrust in the word "Retreat!"

She saw, too, the line traced by a broad thumb across a big scale map as her Commander-in-Chief outlined the Valley of the Marne.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Vance Thompson, writing from the front, Sept. 13, 1914, said of this: "Some day the story of what was done in Alsace will be written, and the stories of Visé and Aerschot and Onsmael and Louvain will seem pale and negligible; but not now—five generations to come will whisper them in the Vosges."

[16] The horizon-blue uniforms of the French Army were not ready until the year 1915.

[17] Red Cross report. Private of the Lancashire Fusilier Regiment after the battle of Vitry le François.

[18] Official report. Lieut. Col. of Hussars, after battle of Le Cateau.

CHAPTER VII

In these words, the hunchback summarized the news of the defeat of the Germans at Le Grand Couronne de Nancy (Hill-Crest of Nancy), the defeat which duped the German High Command and nullified their plans for the supreme effort on Paris.

It was evening, the evening of September 4. Horace and his fellow fugitive, safely arrived in Paris, were sitting at the window of a tiny room, looking at the night sky, across which the cones of searchlights wandered.

The tightening of the French lines, the reëstablishment of regular communications and military discipline had combined to relegate both Croquier and Horace from the front, though they had begged to be allowed to stay. They had been in Paris for over a week, now, the hunchback having offered his tremendous strength for heavy work in a munitions factory.

The "captive Kaiser" never left Croquier's sight. He took it to the factory in the morning and carried it back at night. He slept with the steel chain of the cage fastened to his wrist. In the quarter where they lived, the hunchback had already become a familiar figure, and boys tramped up the stairs in the evening with rats and mice for the eagle's dinner. Under the agile pens of newspaper paragraphists, the story of the "captive Kaiser" had brought merriment and superstitious hope to hearts heavy with listening for the tramp of the ever-nearing German feet.

Paris was silent but courageous. Fear brooded heavily over the city, but the terrible tales of individual suffering never robbed the French capital of a simple heroism and a fine devotion that were worthy of its best traditions. The removal of the government to Bordeaux, two days before, had shown the people how narrow was the margin of safety by which Paris rested untaken. They accepted the dictum of their military leaders that it was a measure to allow greater freedom in handling the armies for the great action about to begin.

"Has the spring tightened at last?" asked Horace, remembering the veteran's prophecy that the strategic diamond would be pressed back to the reserves, and that then the counter-attack would come.

"Tightened to its last spiral," answered Croquier. "It must rebound now, or smash. And the Germans have got a blow right between the eyes, at Nancy!"

Horace pressed him for details. The boy was eating his heart out from inaction. He had sent a cablegram to his father, according to his promise to Aunt Abigail, but he did not go to see the American minister, feeling sure that he would be sent back to America. He did not want to go. While he had taken his fill of battle, not for worlds would he have left Paris without seeing, as he phrased it, "the end of the war."

Under Croquier's guidance, the boy had followed every official bulletin and news dispatch with avid and intense excitement. His field experience and the veteran's lessons on strategy, when with the guns back of Givet, had given him an insight which enabled him to piece the scraps of information together. He was thus able to grasp the real significance of the victory at Nancy.

The defense of Le Grand Couronne was of tenfold more importance than it seemed at the time, for it formed the starting-point of the greatest battle of modern times, known as "The Battles of the Marne," the series of victories which saved France. Croquier, who knew that part of the country thoroughly, was able to give Horace an exact picture of that first great success on the hills south of Verdun.

"They've done well, the Germans," the hunchback began, "but if they're going to try to keep up this drive of theirs, they'll soon find themselves in a pickle for the lack of that chief need of a modern army—a short, strong Line of Communication. You remember how the forts of Liége tied up everything, even after the city was taken?"

"Already, the Germans are beginning to get into difficulties. Maubeuge is holding out, controlling the railway there, so all their supplies are coming by Belgium. It's a long way, and wastes a lot of men to hold it. There is, though, a good railway line from Metz, which is six times as short as the line they're using. But to take that, they've got to take Toul, and to take Toul, they've got to take Nancy, and to take Nancy, they've got to take Le Grand Couronne."

Courtesy of "The War of the Nations."

Attack on a Stranded Tank.

The Germans bombed it, fired through loopholes, tried to break its mechanism, but failed. Finally the tank grunted and moved away.

"It isn't, it's the weakest point," the hunchback answered. "As you know, the French-German frontier is the most strongly fortified line in the world. The forts are in four groups, Belfort and Epinal to the south, Toul and Verdun to the north. Belfort and Epinal are in difficult, mountainous country, further away from Paris and less valuable for railway purposes. It would be bad strategy, too, to break through at the southern fort and leave the northern forts unreduced, for it would cut the attacking army in two and give the northern forts a chance to snip the Line of Communication. Verdun is enormously strong. That leaves nothing but an assault on the sector of Toul.

"Now," continued the hunchback, "you've got to understand the Alsace-Lorraine campaign. On August 10, while the forts of Liége were still holding out and Leman was peppering Von Emmich, we invaded Germany. We had nothing but victories for nine days. It was too easy. On August 20 one of our air scouts came back with the news that there was a huge German army gathering at Metz. On August 21, five army corps were hurled on our flank. We were surprised, partly surrounded and crumpled up. The Boches got thousands of prisoners and scores of guns and Field Marshal Von Heeringen drove us clear back out of Germany. On August 25, the Crown Prince of Bavaria drove us back from before Nancy, and the German Crown Prince finally burst into France through Longwy. That was the beginning and the end of our Vosges campaign."

As the hunchback pointed out, however, while this campaign was of little military value, it had a vast political and strategic value. It mistakenly convinced the German High Command that France had concentrated the larger part of her armies on the frontier in the hope of retaking Alsace-Lorraine. This made more difficult, but also rendered more important, a victory at Toul.

Le Grand Couronne is a series of little hills, not more than 600 feet high at any point, lying north and a little east of Nancy. It was no use to take the city unless the heights were captured. If, however, the Germans took Le Grand Couronne, the French must evacuate Nancy and the invaders could then bring their heavy siege guns into place to demolish Toul.

"A Boche skull is thick," Croquier went on, "and even the slaughter of Liége didn't teach them the waste of life in sending masses of troops against artillery. They hadn't any idea, either, of the powers of our 'Soixante-Quinze.' For a week they did nothing but pile up hills of the iron-gray dead on the slopes leading up from the River Seille. They'll never take it now."

There Croquier was right. On that evening of September 4, where the two were sitting, chatting, in the little attic room, Von Heeringen knew that further attack was hopeless. Two days later, however, the Kaiser was seen in person on the hills overlooking the battle, in white uniform and silver helmet, waiting for his triumphal entry into Nancy—which never happened.

It was this decisive and unexpected defeat which convinced the Germans that the French were in great strength at this point and which caused them to send their heaviest reënforcements on the eastern end of the attacking line, instead of reënforcing Von Kluck and Von Buelow who were nearest to Paris.

"It's the same old combination which smashed us at Charleroi, then," said Horace, "which threatens Paris."

"Yes," the hunchback agreed, "and, what's more, it's the same old clash between German and French strategy. The diamond, now, has been squashed nearly flat, but you can see the formation, still."

"It isn't, though," Croquier answered. "I'll show you. Paris, instead of being 'home base' is now 'third base' and the Verdun to Belfort line is 'first base.' Then the Fourth and Fifth French armies are the operative corner or 'third base,' while the great armies of reserve, under General Foch, swinging into line on the south, are 'home base.' The military point of Paris, as 'third base' is the new Sixth Army as organized under General Manoury."

"Well, then," said Horace, "if the battlefield works out according to French ideas, we ought to win by the rebound given by Foch's army."

"A few days will show," said the hunchback. "I only wish that I could help in the actual fighting. But, I suppose, I'm just as useful making shells as firing them."

"One minute," said Horace, as they were about to separate for the night, "where are the British?"

"The Expeditionary Force is tucked away between Paris and the Fifth Army, with more than two thirds of its men lost. However, reënforcements are pouring over from England."

Early next morning, before Horace was awake, Croquier left the house to pick up the first news of the day. When he returned to the frugal breakfast the lad had prepared, however, he had very little information.

"All that I can find out," he said, "is that the Sixth Army, under Manoury, is wheeling up to Von Kluck's west flank."

"It is," the hunchback agreed, "but it's only supposed to be a covering army, so far as I can make out. It can fall back on the defenses of Paris."

"Impossible," he said. "Von Kluck would have to stretch his line out on a circle ninety miles long—for that's the circumference of the advance trenches beyond the outer fortifications of the city—and to do that would make his line so thin that it could be broken like the paper in a circus-rider's hoop.

"I think," he continued, "mark you, I don't know, that Manoury's army is intended to do the same thing that Le Grand Couronne did—to make the Germans think our line is strongest at the two ends, when, in reality, it is strongest in the middle."

"It looks like it," Croquier admitted, "but that sort of thing is hard to find out until weeks, sometimes months, afterward. A generalissimo never lets his plans be known. To-night's news may give some clew. Now, I'm off."

As soon as Croquier had started for the factory, Horace set out to put into effect a resolution to which he had come during a wakeful night.

It was still a little early, so Horace strolled out into the streets. He was living in the northern quarter of the city, and the markets were choked with the vast stores of supplies being hurried in for use in the event of a siege. Enormous herds of cattle were being driven into Paris to graze on the waste spaces kept free of buildings, not to interfere with the fire of the inner forts.

A steady stream of people had their faces turned to the southwest, women and children escaping from the threat of war, trekking for distant points of safety, with their goods piled into the bullock carts of the peasant, the pony carriages of the rich, or even in wheelbarrows. In almost every group there were tiny children and babies. It was for their sakes that the flight was made.

None were to be seen save those who labored mightily with the supplies being brought in a steady stream into the city.

Out on the fortifications, digging trenches, putting up barbed wire entanglements or dynamiting houses in the suburbs which would interfere with the line of fire.

There may have been a man in Paris that Saturday morning who was engaged in his own affairs instead of those of his country. There may have been—but Horace did not see one.

It was not too early now, the boy thought, to carry out his plan. He returned to the house, wheeled out his motor-cycle which he had cleaned and oiled and put in perfect shape during his days of inaction, and whizzed up to the headquarters of General Gallieni, Military Commandant of Paris, and in supreme control now that the government had moved to Bordeaux.

"Volunteering as a dispatch-rider, sir!" said the boy to the first staff officer before whom he was brought. He showed the paper "on special service" which had been given him at the time he had donned the dead man's uniform, which he was still wearing.

"Good," said the officer, "we can use you." He went into an inner room and returned a moment later. "Take this!" he said, and gave Horace directions and orders.

The boy shot off through the streets of Paris, thronged with refugees. Signs of the French high-spiritedness were not lacking. On one store window was written:

Another, a watchmaker's, referring to the difference in time between France and Germany, had a sign which read:

The streets leading to the railway stations were thronged, but, as he reached the outskirts of the houses, the streets were empty. The Sorbonne glowered upon streets of empty shops. The workmen were on the battlefield, the schools were closed, many of them turned into hospitals.

Out through the gate to the green belt which cried aloud in strident tones the transition from peace to war.

The aged ragpicker worked with pick and shovel beside the wealthy exquisite, as irreproachably dressed in the ditch as in his luxurious home, necessarily so, for he had no old clothes to wear. The literary scholar had risen from his books to tear his hands in stretching barbed wire with the keeper of a dive for his companion. The consumptive carpenter had brought his tools, the still vigorous blacksmith, too old for military service, had loaded anvil, forge-frame and coal on a wagon and was sharpening pickaxe heads.

Frenchwomen of noble birth worked in extemporized kitchens beside the peasant mothers of the outer suburbs and the midinettes of Montmartre to feed this new-sprung army of workers.

One thing Horace saw, and saw that clearly—Germany might take Paris, but as long as one Frenchman or one Frenchwoman was left alive, the Germans would not take France. The boy dimly felt that France was not a territory, it was a soul.

A dirty, unshaved, mud-bespattered figure digging near by, spoke to him with a cultured voice and a gay laugh.

"It is nothing, my little one," he said to Horace, "what if they come? We shall bite their heads off. Those boches are going to put themselves in a guetapens, a veritable death-trap. We shall have them at last!"

It was the same gallant French spirit which had been demonstrated a few days before by Colonel Doury. When ordered to resist to the last gasp, he said to the dragoon who brought the order,

It was the same gallant French spirit found in a soldier who, when reënforcements reached him and asked whether a certain regiment was not supposed to hold the village, answered,

"It holds the village!" and pointed to his lone machine-gun. He was the only survivor.

It was the same gallant French spirit seen in the little drummer, who, when his hand and drum were shot away, sang "Rat-tat-a-tat!" at the top of his throat to the advancing troops until his throat was still for ever.

Horace had seen the wonder of war in the field. Here he saw it in the defense of Paris and felt anew the depth of the hunchback's saying that victory lies in the spirit of men, not in its machinery. He remembered the master's saying that the strength of a country is in proportion as its women are strong.

In the defense of Paris, the boy felt that he had his place. However irregular might be his position as a dispatch-rider, especially at the front where military discipline prevailed, he was invaluable in the voluntary work of aiding to strengthen Gallieni's defenses. Moreover, he learned indirectly some of the tactics planned for that very afternoon.

Le Grand Couronne had shown that the Germans could not break through at Nancy. The German line, therefore, could not drive bodily forward to the southwest, as apparently had been intended. It became necessary for the invading armies to concentrate further to the east.

Von Kluck's army had been facing southwest, to attack Paris. On receiving news of the repulse at Le Grand Couronne, he was compelled to pivot his line on the Marne, so that it faced southeast. This maneuver, reported by the French air-men, revealed that the German plan had changed. They dared not try to take Paris.

Nothing remained but to endeavor to engulf the French armies. The Germans deemed this impossible in the east, because of the supposed heavy concentration of French troops there, because of the strength of Verdun and because of the defeat at Nancy. The flanking movement, therefore, must be made in the west. This could only be done by driving a wedge down between Paris and the Fifth French Army, heavily reënforced and now under the command of General d'Esperey. This gap was held by the British, against whom the Germans had a special hate.

Von Kluck and Von Buelow had not reached their advanced positions easily. They had been severely mauled in two defeats, at Le Cateau and at Guise. In a war of less magnitude, these would have appeared as great Allied victories, but Joffre preferred to lose the advantage of following up these victories for the greater advantage of falling back strategically in good order. Moreover, the forts of Maubeuge still held. It was not until the grim old warrior Von Zwehl, with superhuman energy, brought up the great siege-guns, that Maubeuge fell. It was then too late for the guns to be of any service in the Battle of the Marne.

That Saturday afternoon, learning from air scouts that Von Kluck had massed his forces to the south, in order to attack the British on the morrow and pierce the gap, Manoury determined to force the issue. He launched his small and war-wearied army against the reserve which Von Kluck had left behind to guard the crossing of the Ourcq. The western end of the Battles of the Marne had begun.

Two important results developed immediately. One was Manoury's discomfiting discovery that the German heavy artillery gave the invaders a tremendous advantage when great mobility was not needed, as, for example, in defense of the crossings of a stream. The other was Von Kluck's discomfiting discovery that Manoury's army, attacking his reserves, was far stronger in fighting power than he thought. Each of these surprises counterbalanced the other.

This same Saturday afternoon, moreover, at the time that Manoury attacked, Von Kluck, from the other wing of his army, had sent a scouting party of cavalry to find out the location of the British Army. It was an excellent opportunity to cut them up, but the British Field Marshal had drawn his troops into cover of the forests and he let the scouts go by. A courier, detached from time to time, took to Von Kluck the welcome news that the British were nowhere to be seen and that the hoped-for gap existed. The British chuckled with glee. Von Kluck, surer every moment of flanking the Fifth French Army, hurried his men southward.

Suddenly, however, that Saturday evening, Von Kluck received word of the Manoury attack and realized that his reserves were threatened and his own flank was in danger. His men had marched all day. A large section of his army had to march back all night to reënforce the reserves attacked by Manoury.

Horace, through his experience on the battle front, had learned that a motor-cyclist's greatest usefulness is at dawn or a little before. This is due to that fact that, when an army is on the move, telegraph cable is laid from division to brigade headquarters and from brigade to battalion headquarters, as soon as these positions are determined for the night. This is done from cable wagons and the Signal Corps men are so deft that the cable can be laid as fast as horses can canter. At about three o'clock in the morning, if headquarters are going to move, this cable is picked up, ready for use the coming night. Enemy assaults, however, are likely to begin at dawn and these may cause a change in the dispositions already decided on. It is then that the motor-cyclist dispatch-rider is especially valuable.

At three o'clock this morning of Sunday, September 6, Horace got up, put on the dead man's uniform, trundled out his motor-cycle and whizzed to General Gallieni's headquarters.

The place was buzzing with activity and Horace realized that grave news must have come in on the military telegraph wires. He was hailed at once.

"These are the names of taxicab companies and garages who haven't answered their 'phones; probably shut up at night. Find some one, any one, every one! Rout them out and tell them to rush every cab and car they've got to those section points."

Through the still, night-enshrouded streets of Paris, the boy sped. It was a dangerous ride. Round every corner and shooting along every street, taxis and motors were speeding, driven by half-awake chauffeurs. All night long, troops had reached Paris by train. They were needed at Meaux, forty miles from Paris, where Manoury was attacking. If they marched, they could hardly reach the battle that day and would be too wearied to fight. But forty miles, to a fleet of motor-cars, was different.

By five o'clock that Sunday morning, four thousand taxis, motor-busses and motor-cars were speeding from Paris to Meaux. Men rode on the front, on the back and hung on to the springs. Twelve and fourteen men piled into and on a taxicab. The motor-busses carried sixty and seventy, men hanging on by the straps of their rifles, jammed into window frames. They looked like insects on a plant. Inside they were packed like herrings in a cask. But they roared with delight at taking a taxi to the front. By noon, Manoury's army had been reënforced by 70,000 troops. The army was, however, lamentably weak in artillery, for field guns cannot be loaded into taxicabs!