Von Kluck was destined to get another surprise this Sunday morning. Despite the report of his Uhlans that the British were nowhere to be seen, the astute general had placed two bodies of cavalry, about 18,000 men in all, as a precaution against a flank attack when he withdrew his men northward to meet the surprisingly strong shock of Manoury. The unsuspecting cavalry were awaiting orders to pursue either the Fifth or Sixth French armies, whichever one Von Kluck should decide to smash. They were dismounted and resting, when suddenly the western woods belched flame. The British had not fired a shot until sure of the exact range. Shrapnel poured like the blast from a furnace, men and horses fell dead in inextricable confusion. The German cavalry had no time or means to reply, and, timed to the second, the English cavalry swept down and turned the scene to a rout.

In the north, despite Von Kluck's reënforcements, Manoury's army fought with great courage, at several places forcing the Germans back. But they could not cross the Ourcq against the heavy artillery.

That same Sunday, Foch, in charge of the great line of reserves officially called the Ninth French Army,[19] did not attempt an advance, but rather, deliberately, allowed his line to sag. This was intended as a lure to lead the Germans on, in the hope that Manoury would be able to flank Von Kluck. But, on Sunday night, Manoury found that Von Kluck had brought back nearly all his army, and that he was being outflanked, in his turn.

On Monday, reënforcements came to both sides, but more heavily to Von Kluck, who was supported by heavy masses of artillery. Manoury, lacking artillery support, held his ground, and even advanced slightly, but Von Kluck moved further on his flank. On Tuesday the Sixth Army was driven back, but fighting heavily, with all its reserves in action, Von Kluck devoting only a part of his army to the frontal attack, while one whole army corps commenced to encircle the flank. On Wednesday the disaster was almost complete. Even as late as that day Von Kluck had been able to throw in more men, released two days before by the fall of Maubeuge. Nanteuil had been taken and the army was flanked. Manoury's army was almost horseshoe shaped, with Von Kluck gathering it in as a bag is clutched by its drawstring.

What would the morrow bring?

The morrow brought blank astonishment.

The morrow, Thursday, September 10, saw Nanteuil abandoned by the Germans and Von Kluck in full retreat.

What had happened?

Foch had happened!

"Find out the weak point of your enemy," Foch had said once, when talking of strategy, "and deliver your blow there."

"But suppose," he was asked, "that the enemy has no weak point."

"Then make one!"

Joffre had made the weak point and Foch had delivered the blow. It was not without knowledge of his marvelous tactical ability that the generalissimo had selected Foch for the army of reserves, for the great rebound.

In order that Foch might deliver the blow, it was necessary that Manoury should risk annihilation. Why? That, as Horace saw long afterward, was a part of the great strategical plan of the French High Command under Joffre.

The four-day engagement between Manoury and Von Kluck had drained the power of the Sixth French Army to its last gasp, but—it had taken the whole force of Von Kluck's right wing to do it. The British were advancing steadily (though so slowly that it imperiled the whole plan) on Von Kluck's left wing. Manoury and the British, then, like two leeches, were sucking Von Kluck's forces westward, at a time when the German line was driving southeastward.

The Fifth Army, under General d'Esperey (who had taken Lanrezac's place when the army was reënforced) was a powerful force, containing six full army corps, three of them fresh reserves. The Germans, believing it to be the same army they had routed at Charleroi, esteemed it lightly. But on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, it steadily drove Von Buelow back, crossing the Marne and holding the bridgeheads. In this it was helped by the British heavy artillery, an arm in which the French army was weakest. At the same time, d'Esperey's pressure enabled the British advance. There was magnificent fighting here, for Von Buelow was in strength with a full equipment of artillery.

The Ninth Army, under General Foch, had suffered heavily. Two German armies opposed it: four army corps under Von Hausen, who was flushed with victory and pursuit, and the independent command of the Prussian Guard, consisting of one entire army corps. Foch had three army corps, nearly all fresh troops, but he would not use them all. Von Hausen and the Prussian Guard attacked savagely and heavily. Foch allowed his line to sag, purposely, to thin the German line, but on Monday he was driven back, and on Tuesday, the German drive was so vicious and powerful, that Foch's right wing was forced back for ten miles.

On Wednesday, then, the same day that Von Kluck was encircling Manoury, Von Hausen had all but pierced the French line at Foch's right wing. A bad gap had been formed because Langle de Cary, on the left wing of the Fourth Army, had held firm. There was almost a hole, therefore, ten miles wide, running slantwise behind Langle de Cary's left rear.

The Battle of the Marne is the most important victory of modern times. It saved France. In a measure it saved the world. As the victory hangs on a curious battle formation which developed that afternoon of Wednesday, September 9, its main features may be repeated. It is well to see how the various armies stood at midday of this decisive day.

At midday, Von Kluck was encircling Manoury, having drawn his right wing far to the north and west to do so. His left wing was in momentary danger of attack from the British, who had crossed the Marne. This wing was being driven north.

At midday, Von Buelow was being pushed northwards by the hammer blows of d'Esperey, whose army was fighting in fine fettle, aided by the British heavy artillery. This army was strong enough to lend a corps to help Foch to sustain the central German push. Von Buelow, then, also was being pushed north.

At midday, Foch's left wing, stiffened by the extra army corps, was holding the right wing of the Prussian Guard, but his right wing had been thrust ten miles out of the line by Von Hausen's drive. Von Hausen was therefore exerting every pound of force he owned to break through Foch's right wing, in other words, he was driving southeastward.

At midday, then, Von Buelow and Von Kluck, going northward and westward, were being dragged away from the Prussian Guard and Von Hausen, being dragged southward and eastward.

This thinned the German line, and it thinned it at a very dangerous point, just where the edge of the plateau of Champagne drops suddenly to the marshes of St. Gond.

Possibly Von Hausen was aware of this, but if so, it is evident that he thought that the piercing of Foch's line was only a matter of hours. In any case, Von Hausen was as certain of piercing the line next day as Von Kluck was certain of swallowing Manoury the next day.

At midday, Foch ordered the 42nd Division, one of the crack corps of the French Army, to fall back and rest. The order was thought to be a blunder and the men fumed, for, they thought, they were holding the Germans triumphantly. All through that sultry afternoon, while the skies grew blacker and blacker and the thunder rumbled in the distance, the 42nd Division waited with piled arms, hearing the sound of battle only two miles away. And all through that afternoon, Von Hausen summoned his reserves from behind the Prussian Guard, gathered every man he could get to hurl them into the gradually opening gap.

To the German Commander, the French feet were slipping, slipping, slipping on the brink of disaster and defeat.

At exactly four o'clock in the afternoon, when Foch's right wing was holding back the German fury of assault by sheer valor, the 42nd Division, rested and eager, received its long-awaited orders. It was bidden advance through the pine woods and burst upon the Prussian Guards, now forming a thin exposed flank to Van Hausen's army. At five o'clock, an order ran all along the whole line for a sudden stiffening and a French counter-offensive.

At a few minutes after five o'clock, the pine-woods suddenly became as great green fountains of living warriors. For a moment the shouts of advancing hosts silenced the terrific roar of the artillery. Unnumbered batteries of the ever-potent and death-dealing "Soixante-Quinze" came galloping. As an avalanche sweeps away saplings, so was the Prussian Guard swept away. There was scarcely a pause as the armies joined. The French went through with a thunderbolt's strength and vindictive power.

The wild thrill of victory ran along the line. The gap widened, broke and shattered. The shouting lines went through.

Into the hole the Ninth Corps leaped, smashing and shivering the eastern corps of the Guards. All semblance of battle formation was lost, and the Guards were cut to pieces. There were no reserves behind.

The German line was broken, smashed, shattered irretrievably!

The Saxon offensive, under Von Hausen, still hoping to break through before night fell, learned of the peril. Every moment spelt danger. The French were sweeping in behind them. Langle de Cary was in position to cut off their other flank. The German Drive, to which forty-five years of military preparation had been given, weakened, halted, wavered and went to pieces.

Now, into the battle Foch threw his reserves. Victory was in their hands! A million men could not have stopped Foch's army now. Into the bewildered German ranks plunged the French, each man a giant with the intoxication of victory, each man a living vengeance for the atrocities inflicted on France and Belgium. Death was on Von Hausen's heels and that too close for an ordered retreat.

The German feet were slipping, slipping on the brink of disaster and defeat.

Von Hausen fled.

The storm held off long enough to make the smash complete and then the rain fell in torrents. Woe for the heavy artillery now! Its very power which made it so dangerous, made it immobile, and the roads, rapidly turning to sticky mud, forbade its passage. There was light enough for slaughter, and the 75's, mobile and easy to handle, chased the Saxons, unlimbered, mowed down the fleeing invaders, limbered up again, chased forward, unlimbered and fired again. There were few wasted shells that night! Thousands of prisoners were taken, hundreds of guns captured, vast stores of ammunition seized.

Von Hausen had far to go. He had to get back, back, back into contact with the German line or he would be wiped out absolutely. Von Buelow had been driven far north by d'Esperey, Langle de Cary had stubbornly held the Duke of Würtemberg. Von Hausen had far to go, and the French, fevered with success, would not stop. Hour after hour through that pouring night, the dripping trees saw a slaughter grim and great. Not until nearly morning did the pursuers halt, and that night Foch established his headquarters in La Fère Champenoise, twenty-five miles in advance of his headquarters of the night before.

France was saved!

The Battles of the Marne were won!

With the conclusion of the Battle of the Marne, Horace found his occupation gone. A victorious army is not in need of volunteer dispatch-riders, even though they may be partly accredited. This the boy felt himself to be by reason of having the right to wear a French uniform under special conditions and by having been entrusted with dispatches.

None the less, Horace was convinced that he could pass the sentries, at least, and he could follow behind the advance. He would at least be seeing the war for himself, and, if he were successful in making his way to the rear of his old army, the Fourth, he might be given something to do. Anything was better than idling his time away in Paris, and Croquier, working over-time, was never home except to sleep.

On Sunday, September 13, just one week from the day when Gallieni had sent his fleet of taxicabs to reënforce Manoury at Meaux, Horace started forth once more on his motor-cycle. The sentries at the gate knew him and he passed by with a cheery word of greeting. The uniform of the dispatch-rider passed him by many sentries, but one, either more careful or more curious than the rest, stopped him.

"Dispatch-rider formerly with the Fourth Army, temporarily attached to the army defending Paris, returning to my own command," the boy answered. The facts were true enough, though the implication was a little forced. He thanked his stars that the sentry did not ask for his identification disk, which, of course, he did not possess. Inquiry might have caused him to be suspected of being a spy.

Out through the suburbs of the city, Horace rode at slow pace, enjoying the fair weather after the rain. Beyond the suburbs he passed through little villages, as yet untouched by war. Then, as he trended farther north and east, he suddenly entered a region still panting with horror and dismay.

This was Horace's first sight of a battleground that had been swept by two armies. The retreat he had witnessed from Givet, was a retreat from an advance-guard shock, and while the roads had been covered with débris and flocked with refugees, it had shown little of the signs of actual warfare. In his participation in the retreat from Mons, he had seen a fighting retreat. The ground between the Marne and the Aisne was not like either of these. It was a battle-swept desolation.

A land of terrible contrasts! Gardens filled with a riot of color, where, here and there as it chanced, the flower-beds had not been trampled down, while in the middle stared the ruined walls and eye-less orbits of a shell-rent house. The trees were scarred with shell, the roads littered with broken boughs. Here and there, in the fields on either side, shallow trenches had been scraped. Hay stacks and straw stacks had been torn down for cover.

Near and far lay stiffened figures in the German iron gray, and, in some places, whole groups of them, yet unburied. Furrows all along the roadside marked fresh graves. At one place, evidently, a corps of bicyclists had been caught by a sudden storm of shell and decimated, the twisted and broken bicycle frames having been dragged into the ditch, so as not to interfere with traffic.

At one place, Horace had a fearful fright.

Running through a wood at low speed, he came out on a small open stretch of garden. In one corner, near a shattered pile of brick, was a half-overturned but still recognizable grand piano, and crouched half behind and half on it, the sun throwing his iron-gray uniform in strong contrast to the red wood and the light glinting on his rifle-barrel, was a German soldier, a sniper.

It was too late to turn.

The boy jumped the cycle to high-speed, thinking thus to dodge the aim. As he skimmed by, he cast a backward look at the soldier.

He had not moved.

The gray uniform still lay crouched behind and across the piano, and the hands still rigidly held the rifle, but there were no eyes in the sockets of the dead man. They had been pecked out by the crows.

Many fields in France will be haunted by ghosts when the war is over.

The road was greasy and covered with débris, requiring slow riding. It was not wise to look too closely at the piles along the way.

Overhead the September sun shone brightly, here and there a clump of wild-flowers which had escaped destruction waved in the wind, the arching trees were green, for, over this battlefield mainly shrapnel and rifle-fire had been used and no high-explosive shell with looping trajectory had stripped the branches. On through the beech-forest to the desolation beyond and Horace, looking down, saw the road a mere tangle of beams, stones and scrap-iron. He got off, to lead his wheel, and saw, under his foot—a paving stone.

This, then, was a street!

Yes, bit by bit, he could see the outlines of a tiny village. It could not have held more than a dozen houses, but not a wall, not a fence was standing. Here the Germans must have made a stand and the ground was leveled flat for their pains. Over a horrid pile, a trellis-work of roses had fallen. It made the boy think of the gardener's reply to a recruiting sergeant, when he joined the colors:

"The only plants that France is interested in growing now are—laurels."

Few villages were as wholly devastated as this, though in many of them the houses were piles of brick and plaster, with walls standing here and there. Everywhere were graves, bearing thin wooden crosses, with the soldier's kepi or a few faded flowers hanging on them. A village of formerly a hundred houses had but one left habitable. Like most of the places in the march of the retreating army, it had been deliberately set on fire for revenge.

A sudden whistle made the boy duck his head.

A bullet?

No, a blackbird singing.

"In spite of all, he knows it is French soil again!" said Horace, half aloud, and laughed at his own thought.

On through a little town where, two nights before, a squadron of Chasseurs d'Afrique and a regiment of Zouaves in motor-cars and taxis had surprised the Germans at dead of night and where—never mind why!—the captured German officer had been quietly but expeditiously shot. On through a farm-yard, marked by a shell-hole in which some ducks were dabbling. Swift must have been the pursuit that did not linger to seize them for the cooking-pot!

On through an almost deserted country, with scarcely any people to be seen save little groups here and there. All these groups were engaged in the same occupation—digging graves. It was one of these aged villagers, who, when a German officer asked him why he troubled to dig graves instead of burning the bodies, answered fiercely.

"From every French soldier's grave, ten soldiers will grow!"

Gutted houses, torn and charred hayricks, scraps of clothing, broken motor-cars, scraps of shells, and fires where the bodies of scores of horses were being burned, marked the line of the storm of war.

Ah! There is a farmhouse standing, almost untouched. The road to it is covered with shell-splinters. There are white figures there.

Turned into a hospital, of course, with doctors, orderlies and—nurses. So soon! So near the battlefield! Later, when the war was systematized, the nurses were not found in such advanced positions, but at this crisis for France, the red cross on the sleeve was but little less eager to plunge into its work than the arm that thrust the bayonet.

Are the Germans returning? They do not know.

Will that farmhouse be shelled in the next half-hour? They cannot tell.

Nor do they greatly care. For they know that they, too, are saving France.

Horace throbbed on, his thoughts vibrating to the tune of his motor-cycle, and, as he thought of the Red Cross of the Battlefield, the master's voice rang again in his ears,

"A nation's strength is in proportion as its women are strong."

Here, too, lies the Wonder of War, more, a thousand times more, than in any invention of a larger gun, a more deadly shell, or a more abominable method for taking life.

Now the lad found himself approaching the battling armies. Chateau-Thierry, abandoned by the Germans only two days before, had already become a supply depot for the right wing of Manoury's army, for Manoury had taken advantage of Von Kluck's defeat to cross the River Aisne and was holding the whole northern side of the river, from Compiegne to Soissons. While lunching in the little town, Horace learned of the magnificent attack which had established Manoury on the northern side of the river, ready to assault the heights the next day.

His eastward journey took him to the south of the British Army. The memory of the "human icicle" still lingered, and though Horace knew that he would not find all the English officers of the same stripe, yet he kept away, passing south of Epernay. He learned, however, that though Manoury had crossed, Sir John French had not, and the German heavy artillery forbade any attempt to force the Conde bridge. The British were, in fact, at the most impregnable point of that impregnable barrier, the ridge above the Aisne.

Still the boy pushed on, his course now being south of the Fifth Army, under d'Esperey. This army had also crossed the Aisne, but had not been able to establish a firm footing on the other side, and its position was precarious. The long afternoon had shown sights as desolate and in some cases more horrible than those he had seen in the morning and he was glad to find a little village where he might sleep, wearied and heartsick with the sights of the day.

"The only thing more sad than a great victory," Wellington said once, "is a great defeat."

Though Horace was some little distance from the front, the cannonading that night was heavier and more sonorous than any he had heard before. There was a good reason. General Von Zwehl, one of the grimmest warriors in all the German Army, had brought the great siege-guns up the heights overlooking the Aisne, after four nights and three days of continuous marching. The thirteen traction-engines couldn't move the guns, for there had been wet weather, and General Von Zwehl had tailed the infantry on with long ropes. Like the slaves of Egypt who hauled blocks of stone for the pyramids, the German soldiers slaved under blows, curses, and threats of death. During the last twenty-four hours of this march, the 18,000 troops and the guns covered 41 miles. Human nature rebelled and red mutiny showed its head for a second, but Von Zwehl had a nature as hard as the steel of his guns. Every murmurer was shot dead in his tracks. The guns crawled on.

All night long, searchlight bombs were thrown. All night long, angry streams of flame flickered like serpents' tongues on the sky and the jagged gash of explosions lit up the black smoke of burning buildings or the white puff-clouds of hungry shrapnel.

Von Zwehl knew what was going forward. He knew that it was the night set for the crossing of the Aisne. He knew that no matter what might be the fury of flame and bursting chemicals that poured down on the banks of that river, engineers would be laboring to construct bridges and bodies of troops would be trying to cross. The searchlights, like eyes white with hate, peered here and there, the discovery of a crossing party being a prelude to a tornado of lead which opened the gate of death, a gate which swings, alas! too easily on its hinges in war time.

On Monday Horace passed south of Rheims, not dreaming, as no one in the world dreamed, that it was to be shelled two days later, and that its shelling would be deliberate. That there might and there would be cruelty, butchery, massacre, that, of course, he knew, but that absolute and reckless vandalism should also be ordered, neither his nor any civilized mind would have expected. No one, save a Teuton, ever dreamed that deliberate destruction of one of the world's marvels would be sanctioned, permitted, even deliberately determined, and that for petty revenge, spite and foiled rage. The German point of view was put by Major-General Von Ditfurth:

"It is of no consequence," he wrote, "if all the monuments ever created, all the pictures ever painted, and all the buildings ever erected by the great architects of the world were destroyed, if, by their destruction, we promote Germany's victory over her enemies. The commonest, ugliest stone placed to mark the burial place of a German grenadier, is a more glorious and perfect monument than all the cathedrals in Europe put together."

If it be asked why Rheims was bombarded, the answer must be given in the terms of the Battle of the Aisne, the essential details of which, however, are simple.

The main factor in the Aisne battlefield is contained in this sentence:

"Strategists have said that from the Ural Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean there is no natural line so strong as the line occupied by the Germans."

When to this natural strength was added the skill of Field Marshal von Heeringen, sent to assume the duties of a generalissimo over Von Kluck and Von Buelow (Von Hausen being disgraced and relegated to the rear), the iron craft of General Von Zwehl, the extraordinary concentration of artillery and the vast ammunition supplies, it can be seen why the Allies were never able that winter to take the heights overlooking the Aisne. For, from Rethel to Compiegne, are bluffs 450 feet high overlooking the river with natural spurs jutting out from point to point to enfilade the stream. Every place of crossing is defended by a natural spur, and every spur mounted a terrific array of artillery. Every road on the north bank was in German hands, every road on the south bank was an easy and direct mark for artillery.

As Horace found out that day, when his course took him south of Foch's triumphant army, the Battle of the Aisne was governed by the old rule of war which declares that the army which chooses the battleground has an advantage of almost two to one. The French had chosen the Valley of the Marne, the Germans chose the ridges commanding the Aisne.

Yet there was a great deal more than that involved. It would be gravely unjust to German strategy to suppose that they had not considered the possible results of a failure in their plan of attack. The German General Staff was fully prepared with its defensive line in case Paris did not fall. The sapping and mining corps, the engineer corps, did not join in the advance on the Marne. For a week they had been working with indomitable energy on the Aisne to prepare what proved to be an invulnerable natural fortress, strong as the Rock of Gibraltar.

Months before the war began, Germany had not only laid out a basis of battle on a favorable terrain, but she had also laid out in detail the manner in which a defensive position was to be taken up, should this prove necessary. She knew that if she failed at Paris, the loss of life would have been fearful. The German system of fighting in massed formations ensured that. It would, therefore, be all the more necessary that the defense should be made with machinery. If the heights were to be taken, let flesh and blood do it. The Germans had been slaughtered in attacking Liége. Let the Allies be slaughtered in attacking the Aisne. Every foot of land had been mapped and studied, the heaviest artillery in the world was available, and the ammunition supply system was in full operation. Let them come!

Germany had prepared a marvelous attack which was within an ace of success and was prevented from the accomplishment of its final and full aim only by three things, each, in its way, a glory to one of the Allied Nations: the valor of the defense of the Belgians at Liége; the dogged courage of the British in the fighting retreat from Mons; and the superb dash of the French when they shattered the German line at the Marne. All three were needed to save France.

The battle of the Aisne consisted simply of the efforts of the English and French to gain those forbidding and strongly protected heights. Von Kluck, given all the men and artillery he needed, drove back Manoury in the space of a few hours. The British crossed by a superb frontal attack, which ranks as one of the bravest deeds in modern warfare, and were wiped out. D'Esperey crossed the Aisne east of Bourg, only to find that the Craonne plateau was unassailable. By Friday, September 18, Joffre was compelled to realize that the bluffs above the Aisne had been turned into an impregnable open-air fortress, not to be stormed by flesh and blood.

For Germany one thing was lacking, a strong Line of Communication. The main railroad to Coblentz, with a branch to Metz, passed through Rheims. If Germany were to have the vast supplies she needed, she must take Rheims or content herself with the weeks of delay which the Belgian route required. Rheims was imperative.

But Foch held Rheims!

The keenest strategist of them all, with no natural defenses save two small hills at Pouillion and Verzenay, the great French general had made his line of defense so strong that it had become practically unassailable. Especially it bristled with battery upon battery of "Soixante-Quinze" guns. For four successive nights, waves of men, such as those which were hurled at Liége, drove against Foch, striving by weight of numbers to break through.

It was in vain. The disposition of Foch's troops was deadly. The positions had been chosen by the best strategist in Europe, who had anticipated this very attack, knowing the importance of Rheims to the Germans. There was not a foot of ground that was not covered as with a web by the shrapnel and melinite shells. Only twice did those terrific attacks break through the "Soixante-Quinze" zone into machine-gun fire range and there they fell in heaps.

By the night of September 19, Field Marshal von Heeringen was compelled to realize that Foch's position could not be taken save by the use of heavy artillery. This could not be brought into position without exposing itself to destructive fire before he would have a chance to fire a shot. Battle was impossible. Savage revenge remained.

On Sunday morning, the German artillerists redoubled their fire on the Cathedral—to France her most sacred building, where all her kings had been crowned and to which Joan of Arc led the Dauphin, and to the art-lovers of the world, a work of transcendent beauty.

The cathedral was not being used as an observation station, as the Germans alleged. It was being used as a hospital for the German wounded and two large Red Cross flags were flying from it. A shell struck the scaffolding which had been erected for restoring the left tower. The scaffolding flamed, and the fire spread to the old arched roof of oak below the roof of stone. The molten lead from the gutters fell on the straw within, where the wounded Germans were lying. The interior became a mass of flames, threatening to burn the wounded men alive.

Swift to the rescue sprang the gray-haired Archbishop Landreux. The aged prelate, together with a young priest, rushed into the flaming fane. Within, the straw was ablaze, overhead the timbers were crackling, glistening drops of molten metal menaced them every few yards and shells were dropping steadily. The frail archbishop lent his feeble strength to those who were able to stagger, and Abbé Chinot bodily picked up the wounded and carried them out.

A revulsion of mob fury seized the people. They saw their Cathedral in flames, they saw the shells deliberately aimed for it, they saw their inoffensive dead in the bombarded streets and they saw a just vengeance in allowing the German wounded to burn alive in the pyre of their own making. The mob, hoarse with rage and growing wilder every minute, raised its rifles to fire at the wounded men who had been carried out.

The gray-haired archbishop, a Prince of Men as well as a Prince of the Church, stepped quietly between them.

"Very well, my children," he said, "but you will fire on me first."

The demon-shriek of the shells continued, the drumming of gunfire continued, but in the crowd there was silence. Then, with that sudden response to greatness which lies hid in the hearts of all men, the crowd leaped forward as one man to save the wounded men for whom, a moment before, they had been clamoring to see burned alive.

And, through the whole scene, the statue of Joan of Arc looked on at the brave act of a prelate she would have delighted to honor and the recognition of courage by the people she herself gave her own life to save.

CHAPTER VIII

DIGGING IN

A winter compounded of rain and fire had settled down heavily over the Aisne Valley and the plain of Champagne, from Rheims to Verdun. The chalky soil oozed gray and—red.

Deadlocked, their grip at each other's throats, German and Frenchman watched each other across a narrow, noisome waste, now and forever to become the symbol of all that is most horrible, most deadly, most pitiable:

No Man's Land!

Tens of thousands of men waited for the word of command which should bid them expose themselves to the unsated appetite of hungry slaughter, tens of thousands of men waited inactive while death and mutilation chose them, one by one.

A gray soil, a gray sky, and a gray doom.

The only thing that moved was the shuddering skin of the earth as the bullets flayed it in streaks or the shells dug deep holes like the festering sores of a foul disease. Not a blade of grass, not a weed, not a shrub remained; where leafy woods once had been, now only a few scarred and slivered stumps pointed accusing fingers upward. It was Chaos come again.

Where were the shouting hosts charged with valor, such as those who had driven forward at La Fère Champenoise, when Foch's army saved France?

Gone!

Where were the gallant fights to save the guns, when men met in open combat under the open sky?

Gone!

Where were the cavalry charges when squadrons with saber or with lance clashed in a deadly but glorious shock?

Gone!

Where were the armies that had fought hand to hand in the streets of Charleroi; that had snatched at and escaped from death alternately in the great retreat; that had hurled themselves at each other with equal fury in the attack or the defense of Paris; that had charged up the slopes of Le Grand Couronne and the bluffs of the Aisne with equal gallantry, and, dying, still had shaken their fists in the face of Slaughter?

Gone, all gone!

Aye, gone indeed, but where?

Dug in!

Horace, off duty for a few hours from his post as military telephonist, for which he had fitted himself to qualify when his work as a motor cyclist was done, looked at the smitten world. He tried to compare the war before him with the war to which for one brief, wild month he had been so close. There was no comparison.

To nothing that the world has ever seen could the War of the Trenches be compared.

It was a cold, invisible inferno, which, every morning and evening, spewed up its ghastly tale of dead and wounded; which, every evening and morning, yielded up its line of staggering, weary, war-dulled figures, glad to exchange the peril of death for the miserable existence which was all that was possible behind the trenches in the plain of Champagne that first fearful winter.

The war of men was over, only a war of murderous moles remained.

In a rickety hovel behind the lines, which, as Horace's companion in the telephone work declared, was "weather-proof only when there wasn't any weather to put it to the proof," the boy had puzzled over this new warfare. At last, one day, the opportunity serving, he hunted up his friend the veteran—now a sergeant-major—and learned the causes and the methods of the ditch-born strife.