I asked whether the cottages had not been fired by artillery.

"Not a cannon shot fell here," he replied. "All that"--pointing to the

ruined huts--"was done by incendiaries." And then he added:

"Last Tuesday two French officers came in automobiles and brought with

them a superior German officer whom they had made prisoner. They

compelled him to become a witness of the mischief of which his

fellow-countrymen had been guilty."

A peasant woman passed, pushing a wheelbarrow containing some

half-burned household goods and followed by her two small children.

"Look," she said, "at the brutality of these Germans! My husband has

gone to war and I am alone with my two little ones. With great

difficulty we had managed to gather our crop, and they set fire to our

little farm and burned everything."

Half an hour later we were at La Ferté Gaucher, a small town on the

Grand Morin, now first made famous by the fact that it was here that the

German flight began after the severe fighting last Monday. The invaders

had arrived only on Saturday and had the disagreeable surprise of

finding that the river bridges had been broken down by the retreating

French. The German commandant informed the municipal officials that if

the sum of 60,000 francs ($12,000) was not produced he would burn the

town. Then he compelled the people to set about rebuilding the bridge,

and they worked day and night at this job under the eyes of soldiers

with revolvers and rifles ready to shoot down any shirker.

The relief of these people at the return of the Allies may be imagined.

Here, as elsewhere, some houses were burned, but otherwise the damage

did not appear to be very serious.

*The Retreat to Paris*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

NEAR AMIENS, Aug. 30.--Looking back on all I have seen during the last

few days, I find it difficult to piece together the various incidents

and impressions and to make one picture. It all seems to me now like a

jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death--a litter of

odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme

which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose,

to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements

of soldiers and people, to the death carts trailing back from unknown

places, and to the great dark fear that has enveloped all the tract of

country in Northwest France through which I have been traveling, driven

like one of its victims from place to place. Out of all this welter of

individual suffering and from all the fog of mystery which has

enshrouded them until now, when the truth may be told, certain big facts

with a clear and simple issue will emerge and give one courage.

The French Army and our English troops are now holding good positions in

a much stronger and closer line and stemming the tide of the German

hordes rolling up to Paris. Gen. Pau, the hero of this war, after his

swift return from the eastern front, where he repaired the deadly check

at Mülhausen, has dealt a smashing blow at a German Army corps which was

striking to the heart of France.

Paris is still safe for the time being, with a great army of allied

forces, French, English, and Belgians, drawn across the country as a

barrier which surely will not be broken by the enemy. Nothing that has

happened gives cause for that despair which has taken hold of people

whose fears have exaggerated the facts, frightful enough when taken

separately, but not giving any proof that resistance is impossible

against the amazing onslaught of the German legions.

I have been into the war zone and seen during the last five days men who

are now holding the lines of defense. I have been among their dead and

wounded, and have talked with soldiers marching fresh to the front. I

have seen the horrid mess which is cleared up after the battle and the

grim picture of retreat, but nothing that I have seen or heard from

either British or French leads me to believe that our army has been

smashed or the Allies demoralized.

It is impossible to estimate our own losses. Our wounded are being

brought back into Havre and Rouen, and undoubtedly there are large

numbers of them. But, putting them at the highest, it is clear to me,

from all information gained during the last five days, that there has

been no overwhelming disaster, and that in the terrible actions fought

on the four days from the 23d to the 27th, and afterward in the further

retirement from the line of Cambrai and Le Cateau, swinging southward

and eastward upon St. Quentin, our main forces, which were pressed by

enormous numbers of the enemy, succeeded in withdrawing in good order,

without having their lines broken, while inflicting a terrific

punishment upon the German right.

As I shall show in this narrative, retreats which seem fatal when seen

close at hand and when described by those who belong to broken fragments

of extended sections, are not altogether disastrous in their effect when

viewed in their right perspective, away from the immediate misery which

is their inevitable accompaniment.

German audacity of attack against the heroic courage of the French and

British forces, who fight every mile of ground during their retirement,

is leading the enemy into a position from which there will be no retreat

if their lines are broken. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of

thousands of people who know nothing of the great issues and who are

possessed by the great, blind fear which has driven them from their

towns, villages, and homes.

When the Germans swept around Lille they found, to their amazement, that

this town, surrounded by forts, had been abandoned, and they had only to

walk inside. This easy access to a town which should have been defended

to the last gasp opened the way to the west of France.

The left wing of the French, which was to the west of Mons, was

supported by the English troops, all too weak to sustain the pressure of

the tremendous odds which began to surge against them; and, realizing

this perilous state of affairs, the brain at the centre of things, the

controlling brain of Gen. Joffre and his Headquarters Staff, decreed

that the northwest corner of France was untenable and that the main army

of defense should withdraw into a stronger and closer formation.

It was then that the great panic began, increasing in speed and terror

during the end of last week. I was in the midst of it and saw

unforgettable scenes of the enormous tragedy. It was a flight of

hundreds and thousands of families from St. Omer and Roubaix, Bethune,

Douai, Valenciennes, and Arras, who were driven away from their northern

homes by the menace of approaching Uhlans. They are still being hunted

by fear from place to place, where they can find no shelter and no

permanent safety. The railways have been choked with them, and in these

long fugitive trains which pass through stations there is no food or

drink. The poor runaways, weary, filthy, and exhausted, spend long days

and nights shunted onto side lines, while troop trains pass and pass,

and are held up in towns where they can find no means of existence

because the last civilian train has left.

When the troops marched away from Boulogne and left it silent and

unguarded I saw the inhabitants, utterly dismayed, standing despondently

staring at placards posted up by order of the Governor, which announced

the evacuation of the town and called upon them to be ready for all

sacrifices in the service of their country. The customs officers left,

the civil police disarmed, while a flag with nine black spots was made

ready to be hoisted on the fort directly any Uhlans were sighted.

The people of Boulogne could not understand, no Frenchman of the north

can understand, why their ports and towns are silent after the tramp of

so many regiments who have left a great tract of country open and

undefended. In that corner of France the people listen intently for the

first clatter of hoofs and for the first cry "Les Uhlans." Rumors came

that the enemy has been seen in neighboring towns and villages. Can one

wonder that mothers and fathers rush from their houses and wander forth

in a blind, unreasoning way to swell the panic tide of fugitives,

homeless and without food, dropping here and there on the wayside in

utter weariness?

I was lucky in getting out of Boulogne on the last train bound for

Paris, though not guaranteed to reach the capital. As a matter of fact,

I was even more lucky because it did not arrive at its destination and

enabled me to alight in the war zone and proceed to more interesting

places.

I will tell at once the story of the French retirement when the Germans

advanced from Namur down the valley of the Meuse, winning the way at a

cost of human life as great as that of defeat, yet winning their way.

For France the story of that retirement is as glorious as anything in

her history. It was nearly a fortnight ago that the Germans concentrated

their heaviest forces upon Namur and began to press southward and over

the Meuse Valley. After the battle of Dinant the French Army, among whom

were the Second and Seventh Corps, was heavily outnumbered and had to

fall back gradually, in order to gain time for reinforcements to come

up.

French artillery was up on the wooded heights above the river and swept

the German regiments with a storm of fire as they advanced. On the right

bank the French infantry was intrenched, supported by field guns and

mitrailleuses, and did deadly work before leaping from trenches which

they occupied and taking up a position in new trenches further back,

which they held with great tenacity.

In justice to the Germans it must be said they were heroic in courage

and reckless of their lives, and the valley of the Meuse was choked with

their corpses. The river itself was strewn with the dead bodies of men

and horses and literally ran red with blood.

The most tremendous fighting took place for the possession of the

bridges, but the French engineers blew them up one after another as they

retired southward.

No less than thirty-three bridges were destroyed in this way before they

could be seized by the German advance guard. The fighting was extended

for a considerable distance on either side of the Meuse and many

engagements took place between French and German cavalry and regiments

working away from the main armies.

There was, for instance, a memorable encounter at Marville which is one

of the most heroic episodes of the war. Five thousand French soldiers of

all arms, with quick-firers, engaged 20,000 German infantry. In spite of

being outnumbered, the French beat back the enemy from point to point in

a fight lasting for twelve hours, inflicting tremendous punishment and

suffering very few losses.

The German officer captured expressed his unbounded admiration for the

valor of the French troops, which he described as superb. It was only

for fear of getting too far out of touch with the main forces that the

gallant 5,000 desisted from their irresistible attack and retired with a

large number of German helmets as trophies of the victorious action.

Nevertheless, in accordance with the general plan which had been decided

on by the Generals, in view of the superior numbers temporarily pressing

upon them, the Germans succeeded in forcing their way steadily down the

Meuse as far as Mezières, divided by a bridge from Charleville, on the

other side of the river. This is in the neighborhood of Sedan and in the

"trou," as it is called, which led to the great disaster of 1870, when

the French were caught in a trap and threatened with annihilation by

the Germans, who had taken possession of the surrounding heights.

There was to be no repetition of that tragedy. The French were

determined that this time the position should be reversed.

On Monday the town of Charleville was evacuated, most of its civilians

being sent away to join the wanderers who have had to leave their homes,

and the French troops took up a magnificent position, commanding the

town and the three bridges dividing them from Mezières. Mitrailleuses

were hidden in the abandoned houses, and as a disagreeable shock to any

German who might escape their fire was a number of the enemy's guns, no

fewer than ninety-five of them, which had been captured and disabled by

French troops in a series of battles down the river from Namur.

The German outposts reached Charleville on Tuesday. They were allowed to

ride quietly across the bridges into an apparently deserted town. Then

suddenly their line of retreat was cut off, the three bridges were blown

up by a contact mine, and the mitrailleuses hidden in the houses were

played on the German cavalry across the streets, killing them in a

frightful slaughter.

It was for a little while sheer massacre, but the Germans fought with

extraordinary tenacity, regardless of the heaped bodies of comrades and

utterly reckless of their own lives. They, too, had brought quick-firers

across the bridges, and, taking cover behind houses, trained their guns

upon the houses from which the French gunners were firing. There was no

way of escape for those heroic men, who voluntarily sacrificed

themselves, and it is probable every man died, because at such a time

the Germans were not in the habit of giving quarter.

When the main German advance came down the valley, the French artillery

on the heights raked them with a terrific fire, in which they suffered

heavy losses, the forefront of the column being mowed down. But under

this storm they proceeded with incredible coolness to their pontoon

bridges across the river, and although hundreds of men died on the

banks, they succeeded in their endeavor, while their guns searched the

hills with shells and forced French gunners to retire from their

positions.

The occupation of Charleville was a German victory, but was also a

German graveyard. After this historic episode in what has been an

unending battle the main body of French withdrew before the Germans, who

were now pouring down the valley, and retired to new ground.

It was a retirement which has had one advantage in spite of its

acknowledgment of the enemy's amazing pertinacity. It has enabled the

allied armies to draw closer together, its firm front sweeping around in

a crescent from Abbéville, around south of Amiens, and thence in an

irregular line to the eastern frontier.

On the map it is at first sight a rather unhappy thing to see that

practically the whole of France north of Amiens lies open to German

descent from Belgium. To break up the German Army piecemeal and lure it

to its own destruction it was almost necessary to manoeuvre it into

precisely the position which it now occupies. The success of Gen. Pau

shows that the allied army is taking the offensive again, and that as a

great fighting machine it is still powerful and menacing.

I must again emphasize the difficulty of grasping the significance of a

great campaign by isolated incidents, and the danger of drawing

important deductions from the misfortunes in one part of the field. I do

so because I have been tempted again and again during the past few days

to fall into similar mistakes. Perhaps in my case it was pardonable.

It is impossible for the armchair reader to realize the psychological

effect of being mixed up in the panic of a great people and the retreat

from a battlefield.

The last real fighting was taking place at a village called Bapaume all

day Friday. It was very heavy fighting here on the left centre of the

great army commanded by Gen. Pau, and leading to a victory which has

just been announced officially in France.

A few minutes before midnight Friday, when they came back along the road

to Amiens, crawling back slowly in a long, dismal trail, the ambulance

wagons laden with the dead and dying, hay carts piled high with saddles

and accoutrements, upon which lay, immobile like men already dead, the

spent and exhausted soldiers, they passed through the crowds of silent

people of Amiens, who only whispered as they stared at the procession.

In the darkness a cuirassier, with head bent upon his chest, stumbled

forward, leading his horse, too weak and tired to bear him.

Many other men were leading poor beasts this way, and infantry soldiers,

some with bandaged heads, clung to the backs of carts and wagons, and

seemed asleep as they shuffled by.

The light from roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and glazed

eyes, flashed into caverns of canvas-covered carts, where twisted men

lay huddled on straw. Not a groan came from the carts, but every one

knew it was a retreat.

The carts carrying the quick and the dead rumbled by in a long convoy,

the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither right nor left for any

greeting with friends.

There was a hugger-mugger of uniforms, of provision carts, and with

ambulances--it was a part of the wreckage and wastage of war; and to

the onlookers, with the exaggeration, unconsciously, of the importance

of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its

significance and an ominous reminder of 1870.

Really this was an inevitable part of a serious battle, not necessarily

a retreat from a great disaster.

But more pitiful even than this drift back were scenes which followed.

As I turned back into the town I saw thousands of boys who had been

called to the colors and had been brought up from the country to be sent

forward to second lines of defense.

They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were

shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced boy tried to

hide his tears as women from the crowd ran forward to embrace him. These

lads were keeping up their valor by noisy demonstrations; but, having

seen the death carts pass, I could not bear to look into the faces of

those little ones who are following their fathers to the guns.

Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens. Reports had

come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and

Abbeville. There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the

town barracks. They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange

quietude in the streets. Hardly a man in uniform was to be seen in the

places which had been filled with soldiers the day before.

Only a few people realized the actual significance of this. How could

they know that it was a part of the great plan to secure the safety of

France? How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from

possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which

would draw the Germans into the open?

The fighting on the Cambrai-Cateau line seems to have been more

desperate even that the terrible actions at Mons and Charleroi. It was

when the British troops had to swing around to a more southerly line to

guard the roads to Paris, that the enemy attacked in prodigious numbers,

and their immense superiority in machine guns did terrible work among

officers and men.

But on all sides, from the French officers, there is immense praise for

the magnificent conduct of our troops, and in spite of all alarmist

statements I am convinced from what I have heard that they have retired

intact, keeping their lines together, and preventing their divisions

from being broken and cut off.

The list of casualties must be very great, but if I can believe the

evidence of my own eyes in such towns as Rouen, where the Red Cross

hospitals are concentrated, they are not heavy enough to suggest

anything like a great and irretrievable disaster.

DIEPPE, Sept. 3.--Let me describe briefly the facts which I have learned

of in the last five days. When I escaped from Amiens, before the tunnel

was broken up, and the Germans entered into possession of the town on

Aug. 28, the front of the allied armies was in a crescent from

Abbéville, south of Amiens on the wooded heights, and thence in an

irregular line to south of Mézières. The British forces, under Sir John

French, were at the left of the centre, supporting the heavy

thrust-forward of the main German advance, while the right was commanded

by Gen. Pau.

On Sunday afternoon fighting was resumed along the whole line. The

German vanguard had by this time been supported by a fresh army corps,

which had been brought from Belgium. At least 1,000,000 men were on the

move, pressing upon the allied forces with a ferocity of attack which

has never before been equaled. Their cavalry swept across a great tract

of country, squadron by squadron, like the mounted hordes of Attila, but

armed with the dreadful weapons of modern warfare. Their artillery was

in enormous numbers, and their columns advanced under cover of it, not

like an army, but rather like a moving nation--I do not think, however,

with equal pressure at all parts of the line. It formed itself into a

battering ram with a pointed end, and this point was thrust at the heart

of the English wing.

It was impossible to resist this onslaught. If the British forces had

stood against it they would have been crushed and broken. Our gunners

were magnificent, and shelled the advancing German columns so that the

dead lay heaped up along the way which was leading down to Paris; but as

one of them told me: "It made no manner of difference; as soon as we had

smashed one lot another followed, column after column, and by sheer

weight of numbers we could do nothing to check them."

After this the British forces fell back, fighting all the time. The line

of the Allies was now in the shape of a V, the Germans thrusting their

main attack deep into the angle.

This position remained the same until Monday, or, rather, had completed

itself by that date, the retirement of the troops being maintained with

masterly skill and without any undue haste.

Meanwhile Gen. Pau was sustaining a terrific attack on the French

centre by the German left centre, which culminated on (date omitted).

The River Oise, which runs between beautiful meadows, was choked with

corpses and red with blood.

From an eyewitness of this great battle, an officer of an infantry

regiment, who escaped with a slight wound, I learned that the German

onslaught had been repelled by a series of brilliant bayonet and cavalry

charges.

"The Germans," he said, "had the elite of their army engaged against us,

including the Tenth Army Corps and the Imperial Guard, but the heroism

of our troops was sublime. Every man knew that the safety of France

depended upon him and was ready to sacrifice his life, if need be, with

joyful enthusiasm. They not only resisted the enemy's attack but took

the offensive, and, in spite of their overpowering numbers, gave them

tremendous punishment. They had to recoil before our guns, which swept

their ranks, and their columns were broken and routed.

"Hundreds of them were bayoneted, and hundreds were hurled into the

river. The whole field of battle was outlined by dead and dying men whom

they had to abandon. Certainly their losses were enormous, and I felt

that the German retreat was in full swing and that we could claim a real

victory for the time being."

Nevertheless the inevitable happened, owing to the vast reserves of the

enemy, who brought up four divisions, and Gen. Pau was compelled to give

ground.

On Tuesday German skirmishers with light artillery were coming

southward, and the sound of their field guns greeted my ears in that

town which I shall always remember with unpleasant recollections in

spite of its Old World beauty and the loveliness of the scene in which

it is set. It seemed to me that this was the right place to be in order

to get into touch with the French Army on the way to the capital. As a

matter of fact, it was the wrong place from all points of view; it was

nothing less than a deathtrap, and it was by a thousand-to-one chance

that I succeeded in escaping quite a nasty kind of fate.

I might have suspected that something was wrong with the place by the

strange look on the face of a friendly French peasant, whom I met. He

had described to me in a very vivid way the disposition of the French

troops on the neighboring hills. Down the road came suddenly parties of

peasants with fear in their eyes. Some of them were in farm carts and

put their horses to a stumbling gallop.

Women with blanched faces, carrying children in their arms, trudged

along the dusty highway, and it was clear that these people were afraid

of something behind them. There were not many of them, and when they had

passed the countryside was strangely and uncannily quiet. There was only

the sound of singing birds above fields which were flooded with the

golden light of the setting sun.

Then I came into the town. An intense silence brooded there among the

narrow little streets below the old Norman church--a white jewel on the

rising ground beyond. Almost every house was shuttered with blind eyes;

but here and there I looked through an open window into deserted rooms.

No human face returned my gaze. It was an abandoned town, emptied of all

its people, who had fled with fear in their eyes, like those peasants

along the roadway.

But presently I saw a human form; it was the figure of a French dragoon

with his carbine slung behind his back. He was stopping by the side of a

number of gunpowder bags. A little further away were little groups of

soldiers at work by two bridges, one over a stream and one over a road.

They were working very calmly, and I could see what they were doing;

they were mining bridges to blow them up at a given signal.

As I went further I saw that the streets were strewn with broken bottles

and littered with wire entanglements, very artfully and carefully made.

It was a queer experience. It was obvious that there was very grim

business being done, and that the soldiers were waiting for something

to happen. At the railway station I quickly learned the truth; the

Germans were only a few miles away, in great force. At any moment they

might come down, smashing everything in their way and killing every

human being along that road.

The station master, a brave old type, and one or two porters had

determined to stay on to the last. "We are here," he said, as though the

Germans would have to reckon with him; but he was emphatic in his

request for me to leave at once if another train could be got away,

which was very uncertain. As a matter of fact, after a bad quarter of an

hour I was put on the last train to escape from this threatened town,

and left it with the sound of German guns in my ears, followed by a dull

explosion when the bridge behind me was blown up.

My train, in which there were only four other men, skirted the German

army, and by a twist in the line almost ran into the enemy's country,

but we rushed through the night, and the engine driver laughed and put

his oily hand up to salute when I stepped out to the platform of an

unknown station. "The Germans won't get us, after all," he said. It was

a little risky, all the same.

The station was crowded with French soldiers, and they were soon telling

me their experience of the hard fighting in which they had been engaged.

They were dirty, unshaven, dusty from head to foot, scorched by the

August sun, in tattered uniforms and broken boots; but they were

beautiful men for all their dirt, and the laughing courage, quiet

confidence, and unbragging simplicity with which they assured me that

the Germans would soon be caught in a death trap and sent to their

destruction filled me with admiration which I cannot express in words.

All the odds were against them; they had fought the hardest of all

actions--the retirement from the fighting line--but they had absolute

faith in the ultimate success of their allied arms.

I managed to get to Paris. It was in the middle of the night, but

extraordinary scenes were taking place. It had become known during the

day that Paris was no longer the seat of the Government, which has

moved to Bordeaux. The Parisians had had notice of four days in which to

destroy their houses within the zone of fortifications, and, to add to

the cold fear occasioned by this news, aeroplanes had dropped bombs upon

the Gare de l'Est that afternoon.

There was a rush last night to get away from the capital, and the

railway stations were great camps of fugitives, in which the richest and

poorest citizens were mingled with their women and children. But the

tragedy deepened when it was heard that most of the lines to the east

had been cut, and that the only line remaining open to Dieppe would

probably be destroyed during the next few hours. A great wail of grief

arose from the crowds, and the misery of these people was pitiful.

Among them were groups of soldiers of many regiments. Many of them were

wounded and lay on stretchers on the floor among crying babies and

weary-eyed women. They had been beaten and were done for until the end

of the war. But, alone among the panic-stricken crowd--panic-stricken,

yet not noisy or hysterical, but very quiet and restrained for the most

part--the soldiers were cheerful, and even gay.

Among them were some British troops, and I had a talk with them. They

had been fighting for ten days without cessation, and their story is

typical of the way in which all our troops held themselves.

"We had been fighting night and day," said a Sergeant. "For the whole of

that time the only rest from fighting was when we were marching and

retiring." He spoke of the German Army as an avalanche of armed men.

"You can't mow that down," he said. "We kill them and kill them, and

still they come on. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh

troops. Directly we check them in one attack a fresh attack is

developed. It is impossible to oppose such a mass of men with any

success."

This splendid fellow, who was severely wounded, was still so much master

of himself, so supreme in his common sense, that he was able to get the

right perspective about the general situation.

"It is not right to say we have met with disaster," he said. "We have to

expect that nowadays. Besides, what if a battalion was cut up? That did

not mean defeat. While one regiment suffered, another got off lightly";

and by the words of that Sergeant the public may learn to see the truth

of what has happened. I can add my own evidence to his. All along the

lines I have spoken to officers and men, and the actual truth is that

the British Army is still unbroken, having retired in perfect order to

good positions--the most marvelous feat ever accomplished in modern

warfare.

From Paris I went by the last train again which has got through to

Dieppe. Lately I seem to have become an expert in catching the last

train. It was only a branch line which struggles in an erratic way

through the west of France, and the going was long and painful, because

at every wayside station the carriages were besieged by people trying to

escape. They were very patient and very brave. Even when they found that

it was impossible to get one more human being on or one more package

into the already crowded train they turned away in quiet grief, and when

women wept over their babies it was silently and without abandonment to

despair. The women of France are brave, God knows. I have seen their

courage during the past ten days--gallantry surpassing that of the men,

because of their own children in their arms without shelter, food, or

safety in this terrible flight from the advancing enemy.

Enormous herds of cattle were being driven into Paris. For miles the

roads were thronged with them; and down other roads away from Paris

families were trekking to far fields with their household goods piled

into bullock carts, pony carts, and wheelbarrows.

Two batteries of artillery were stationed by the line, and a regiment of

infantry was hiding in the hollows of the grassy slopes. Their outposts

were scanning the horizon, and it was obvious that the Germans were

expected at this point in order to cut the last way of escape from the

capital.

One of the enemy's aeroplanes flew above our heads, circled around, and

then disappeared. It dropped no bombs and was satisfied with its

reconnoissance. The whistle of the train shrieked out, and there was a

cheer from the French gunners as we went on our way to safety, leaving

them behind at the post of peril.

ST. PIERRE DU VAUVRAY, Sept. 6.--England received a hint yesterday as to

a change in the German campaign, but only those who have been, as I

have, into the very heart of this monstrous horror of war, seeing the

flight of hundreds of thousands of people before an overwhelming enemy

and following the lines of the allied armies in their steady retirement

before an apparently irresistible advance, may realize even dimly the

meaning of the amazing transformation that has happened during the last

few days.

For when I wrote my last dispatch from Arques-la-Bataille, after my

adventures along the French and English lines, it seemed as inevitable

as the rising of next day's sun that the Germans should enter Paris on

the very day when I wrote my dispatch. Still not a single shot has come

crashing upon the French fortifications.

At least a million men--that is no exaggeration of a light pen, but the

sober and actual truth--were advancing steadily upon the capital last

Tuesday. They were close to Beauvais when I escaped from what was then a

death-trap. They were fighting our British troops at Creil when I came

to that town. Upon the following days they were holding our men in the

Forest of Compiègne. They had been as near to Paris as Senlis, almost

within gunshot of the outer forts.

"Nothing seems to stop them," said many soldiers with whom I spoke. "We

kill them and kill them, but they come on."

The situation seemed to me almost ready for the supreme tragedy--the

capture or destruction of Paris. The northwest of France lay very open

to the enemy, abandoned as far south as Abbéville and Amiens, too

lightly held by a mixed army corps of French and Algerian troops with

their headquarters at Aumale.

Here was an easy way to Paris.

Always obsessed with the idea that the Germans must come from the east,

the almost fatal error of this war, the French had girdled Paris with

almost impenetrable forts on the east side, from those of Ecouen and

Montmorency, by the far-flung forts of Chelles and Champigny, to those

of Susy and Villeneuve, on the outer lines of the triple cordon; but on

the west side, between Pontoise and Versailles, the defenses of Paris

were weak. I say "were," because during the last three days thousands of

men have been digging trenches and throwing up ramparts. Only the

snakelike Seine, twining into Pegoud loop, forms a natural defense to

the western approach to the city, none too secure against men who have

crossed many rivers in their desperate assaults.

This, then, was the Germans' chance; it was for this that they had

fought their way westward and southward through incessant battlefields

from Mons and Charleroi to St. Quentin and Amiens and down to Creil and

Compiègne, flinging away human life as though it were but rubbish for

deathpits. The prize of Paris, Paris the great and beautiful, seemed to

be within their grasp.

It was their intention to smash their way into it by this western entry

and then to skin it alive. Holding this city at ransom, it was their

idea to force France to her knees under threat of making a vast and

desolate ruin of all those palaces and churches and noble buildings in

which the soul of French history is enshrined.

They might have done it but for one thing which has upset all the

cold-blooded calculations of their staff, that thing which perhaps I may

be pardoned for calling the miracle. They might have done it, I think,

last Wednesday and Thursday, even perhaps as late as last Friday.

I am not saying these things from rumor and hearsay, I am writing from

the evidence of my own eyes after traveling several hundreds of miles in

France during the last four days along the main strategical lines, grim

sentinels guarding the last barriers to that approaching death which is

sweeping on its way through France to the rich harvest of Paris, which

it was eager to destroy.

There was only one thing to do to escape from the menace of this death.

By all the ways open, by any way, the population of Paris emptied itself

like rushing rivers of humanity along all the lines which promised

anything like safety.

Only those stayed behind to whom life means very little away from Paris

and who if death came desired to die in the city of their life.

Again I write from what I saw and to tell the honest truth from what I

suffered, for the fatigue of this hunting for facts behind the screen of

war is exhausting to all but one's moral strength, and even to that.

I found myself in the midst of a new and extraordinary activity of the

French and English Armies. Regiments were being rushed up to the centre

of the allied forces toward Creil, Montdidier, and Noyon. That was

before last Tuesday, when the English troops [Transcriber: original

'toops'] were fighting hard at Creil.

This great movement continued for several days, putting to a severe test

the French railway system, which is so wonderfully organized that it

achieved this mighty transportation of troops with clockwork regularity.

Working to a time table dictated by some great brain which in

Headquarters Staff of the French Army, calculated with perfect precision

the conditions of a network of lines on which troop trains might be run

to a given point. It was an immense victory of organization, and a

movement which heartened one observer at least to believe that the

German deathblow would again be averted.

I saw regiment after regiment entraining. Men from the Southern

Provinces, speaking the patois of the South; men from the Eastern

Departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war,

at Chalons and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre

of France, in garrisons along the Loire. They were all in splendid

spirits and utterly undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance.

"It is nothing, my little one," said a dirty, unshaved gentleman with

the laughing eyes of a D'Artagnan; "we shall bite their heads off. These

brutal bosches are going to put themselves in a guetapens, a veritable

deathtrap. We shall have them at last."

Many of them had fought at Longwy and along the heights of the Vosges.

The youngest of them had bristling beards, their blue coats with

turned-back flaps were war worn and flanked with the dust of long

marches; their red trousers were sloppy and stained, but they had not

forgotten how to laugh, and the gallantry of their spirits was a joy to

see.

They are very proud, these French soldiers, of fighting side by side

with their old foes. The English now, after long centuries of strife,

from Edward, the Black Prince, to Wellington, are their brothers-in-arms

upon the battlefields, and because I am English they offered me their

cigarettes and made me one of them. But I realized even then that the

individual is of no account in this inhuman business of war.

It is only masses of men that matter, moved by 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, and whom I had followed in their

retirement, back and back, with the English 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 main army.

Undoubtedly the French Headquarters Staff was working heroically and

with fine intelligence to save the situation at the very gates of Paris.

The country was being swept absolutely clean of troops in all parts of

France, where they had been waiting as reserves.

It was astounding to me to see, after those three days of rushing troop

trains and of crowded stations not large enough to contain the

regiments, how on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday last an air of profound

solitude and peace had taken possession of all these routes.

In my long journey through and about France and circling round Paris I

found myself wondering sometimes whether all this war had not been a

dreadful illusion without reality, and a transformation had taken place,

startling in its change, from military turmoil to rural peace.

Dijon was emptied of its troops. The road to Chalons was deserted by all

but fugitives. The great armed camp at Chalons itself had been cleared

out except for a small garrison. The troops at Tours had gone northward

to the French centre. All our English 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 English 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 mighty mass.

It was still possible that the Germans might be smashed on their left

wing, hurled back to the west between Paris and the sea, and cut off

from their line of communications. It was undoubtedly this impending

peril which scared the enemy's Headquarters Staff and upset all its

calculations. They had not anticipated the rapidity of the supporting

movement of the allied armies, and at the very gates of Paris they saw

themselves balked of their prize, the greatest prize of the war, by the

necessity of changing front.

To do them justice, they realized instantly the new order of things,

and with quick and marvelous decision did not hesitate to alter the

direction of their main force. Instead of proceeding to the west of

Paris they swung round steadily to the southeast in order to keep their

armies away from the enveloping movement of the French and English and

drive their famous wedge-like formation southward for the purpose of

dividing the allied forces of the west from the French Army of the East.

The miraculous had happened, and Paris, for a little time at least, is

unmolested.

That brings me back to the fighting at Creil and Compiègne, which

preceded from last Tuesday until two days later.

The guns were at work at midnight on Tuesday when I passed the English

Headquarters. This battle had only one purpose so far as the Germans

were concerned. It was to keep our British soldiers busy, as well as to

hold the front of the French allies on our right, while their débordant

movements took place behind this fighting screen.

Once again, as throughout the war, they showed their immense superiority

in mitrailleuses, which gives them marvelous mobility and a very deadly

advantage. They masked these quick-firers with great skill until they

had drawn on the English and French infantry and then spilled lead into

their ranks. Once again, also the French were too impetuous, as they

have always been, and as they still are, in spite of Gen. Joffre's

severe rebuke.

Careless of quick-firers, which experience should have taught them were

masked behind the enemy's advance posts, they charged with the bayonet,

and suffered needlessly heavy losses. One can only admire the gallantry

of men who dare to charge on foot against the enemy's mounted men and

who actually put a squadron of them to flight, but one must say again:

"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

There have been many incidents of heroism in these last days of

fighting. It is, for instance, immensely characteristic of the French

spirit that an infantry battalion, having put to flight a detachment of

German outposts in the forest of Compiègne, calmly sat down to have a

picnic in the woods until, as they sat over their hot soup, laughing at

their exploit, they were attacked by a new force and cut to pieces.

But let me describe the new significance of the main German advance.

Their right army has struck down to the southeast of Paris, through

Château Thiery to La Ferté-sur-Jouarre and beyond. Their centre army is

coming hard down from Troyes, in the Department of the Aube, and the

army of the left has forced the French to evacuate Rheims and fall back

in a southwesterly direction.

It would not be right of me to indicate the present position of the

British troops or describe the great scenes at their base, which is now

removed to a position which enables our forces to hold the eastern

approach to Paris. It is a wonderful sight to pass the commissariat

camp, where, among other munitions of war, is a park of British

aeroplanes, which are of vital importance to our work of reconnoissance.

Looking, therefore, at the extraordinary transformation throughout the

field of war in France, one thing stands out clear-cut and distinct.

Having been thwarted in their purpose to walk through the western way to

Paris by the enormous forces massed on their flanks, the Germans have

adopted an entirely new plan of campaign and have thrust their armies

deep down into the centre of France in order to divide the western

armies of the Allies from the army on the eastern frontier. It is a

menacing manoeuvre, and it cannot be hidden that the army of Lorraine is

in danger of being cut off by the enemy's armies of the left.

At the same time the German right is swinging round in a southwesterly

direction in order to attack the allied forces on the east and south.

Paris is thus left out of account for the time being, but it depends

upon the issues of the next few days whether the threatened peril will

be averted from it by the immense army now protecting it. I believe the

spirit of our own troops and their French comrades is so splendid that

with their new strength they will be equal to that formidable attack.

Nothing certainly is being left to chance. For miles all around Paris

trenches are being dug in the roads, and little sectional trenches on

the broad roads of France, first one on this side of the way, and then

one on the other side, so that a motor car traveling along the road has

to drive in a series of sharp curves to avoid pitfalls.

There was feverish activity on the west side of the Paris fortifications

when I passed between St. Germain and St. Denis.

Earthworks are being constantly thrown up between the forts, and the

triple curves of the Seine are being intrenched so that thousands of men

may take cover there and form a terrific defense against any attack.

Gen. Galliéni, the Military Governor of Paris, is a man of energy and

iron resolution, and no doubt under his command Paris, if it has to

undergo a siege, (which God avert!) will defend itself well, now that it

has had these precious days of respite.

After wandering along the westerly and southerly roads I started for

Paris when thousands and scores of thousands were flying from it. At

that time I believed, as all France believed, that in a few hours German

shells would be crashing across the fortifications of the city and that

Paris the beautiful would be Paris the infernal. It needed a good deal

of resolution on my part to go deliberately to a city from which the

population was fleeing, and I confess quite honestly that I had a nasty

sensation in the neighborhood of my waistcoat buttons at the thought.

Along the road from Tours to Paris there were sixty unbroken miles of

people--on my honor, I do not exaggerate, but write the absolute truth.

They were all people who had despaired of breaking through the dense

masses of their fellow-citizens camped around the railway stations, and

had decided to take to the roads as the only way of escape.

The vehicles were taxicabs, for which the rich paid fabulous prices;

motor cars which had escaped military requisition, farmers' carts laden

with several families and piles of household goods, shop carts drawn by

horses already tired to the point of death because of the weight of the

people who crowded behind pony traps and governess carts.

Many persons, well dressed and belonging obviously to well-to-do

bourgeoisie, were wheeling barrows like costers, but instead of

trundling cabbages were pushing forward sleeping babies and little

children, who seemed on the first stage to find new amusement and

excitement in the journey from home; but for the most part they trudged

along bravely, carrying their babies and holding the hands of their

little ones.

They were of all classes, rank and fortune being annihilated by the

common tragedy. Elegant women whose beauty is known in Paris salons,

whose frivolity, perhaps, in the past was the main purpose of their

life, were now on a level with the peasant mothers of the French suburbs

and with the midinettes of Montmartre, and their courage did not fail

them so quickly.

I looked into many proud, brave faces of these delicate women, walking

in high-heeled shoes, all too frail for the hard-dusty roadways. They

belonged to the same race and breed as those ladies who defied death

with fine disdain upon the scaffold of the guillotine in the great

Revolution.

They were leaving Paris now, not because of any fears for themselves--I

believe they were fearless--but because they had decided to save the

little sons and daughters of soldier fathers.

This great army in retreat was made up of every type familiar in Paris.

Here were women of the gay world, poor creatures whose painted faces had

been washed with tears, and whose tight skirts and white stockings were

never made for a long march down the highways of France.

Here also were thousands of those poor old ladies who live on a few

francs a week in the top attics of the Paris streets, which Balzac knew;

they had fled from their poor sanctuaries and some of them were still

carrying cats and canaries, as dear to them as their own lives.

There was one young woman who walked with a pet monkey on her shoulder

while she carried a bird in a golden cage. Old men, who remembered 1870,

gave their arms to old ladies to whom they had made love when the

Prussians were at the gates of Paris then.

It was pitiful to see these old people now hobbling along together.

Pitiful, but beautiful also, because of their lasting love.

Young boy students, with ties as black as their hats and rat-tail hair,

marched in small companies of comrades, singing brave songs, as though

they had no fear in their hearts, and very little food, I think, in

their stomachs.

Shopgirls and concierges, city clerks, old aristocrats, young boys and

girls, who supported grandfathers and grandmothers and carried new-born

babies and gave pick-a-back rides to little brothers and sisters, came

along the way of retreat.

Each human being in the vast torrent of life will have an unforgettable

story of adventure to tell if life remains. As a novelist I should have

been glad to get their narratives along this road for a great story of

suffering and strange adventure, but there was no time for that and no

excuse.

When I met many of them they were almost beyond the power of words. The

hot sun of this September had beaten down upon them--scorching them as

in the glow of molten metal. Their tongues clave to their mouths with

thirst.

Some of them had that wild look in their eyes which is the first sign of

the delirium of thirst and fatigue.

Nothing to eat or drink could be found on the way from Paris. The little

roadside cafés had been cleared out by the preceding hordes.

Unless these people carried their own food and drink they could have

none except of the charity of their comrades in misfortune, and that

charity has exceeded all other acts of heroism in this war. Women gave

their last biscuit, their last little drop of wine, to poor mothers

whose children were famishing with thirst and hunger; peasant women fed

other women's babies when their own were satisfied.

It was a tragic road. At every mile of it there were people who had

fainted on the roadside and poor old men and women who could go no

further, but sat on the banks below the hedges, weeping silently or

bidding younger ones go forward and leave them to their fate. Young

women who had stepped out so jauntily at first were footsore and lame,

so they limped along with lines of pain about their lips and eyes.

Many of the taxicabs, bought at great prices, and many of the motor cars

had broken down as I passed, and had been abandoned by their owners, who

had decided to walk. Farmers' carts had bolted into ditches and lost

their wheels. Wheelbarrows, too heavy to be trundled, had been tilted

up, with all their household goods spilt into the roadway, and the

children had been carried further, until at last darkness came, and

their only shelter was a haystack in a field under the harvest moon.

For days also I have been wedged up with fugitives in railway trains

more dreadful than the open roads, stifling in their heat and

heart-racking in their cargoes of misery. Poor women have wept

hysterically clasping my hand, a stranger's hand, for comfort in their

wretchedness and weakness. Yet on the whole they have shown amazing

courage, and, after their tears, have laughed at their own breakdown,

and, always children of France, have been superb, so that again and

again I have wondered at the gallantry with which they endured this

horror. Young boys have revealed the heroic strain in them and have

played the part of men in helping their mothers. And yet, when I came at

last into Paris against all this tide of retreat, it seemed a needless

fear that had driven these people away.

Then I passed long lines of beautiful little villas on the Seine side,

utterly abandoned among their trees and flowers. A solitary fisherman

held his line above the water as though all the world were at peace, and

in a field close to the fortifications which I expected to see bursting

with shells, an old peasant bent above the furrows and planted cabbages.

Then, at last, I walked through the streets of Paris and found them

strangely quiet and tranquil.

The people I met looked perfectly calm. There were a few children

playing in the gardens of Champs Elysées and under the Arc de Triomph

symbolical of the glory of France.

I looked back upon the beauty of Paris all golden in the light of the

setting sun, with its glinting spires and white gleaming palaces and

rays of light flashing in front of the golden trophies of its monuments.

Paris was still unbroken. No shell had come shattering into this city of

splendor, and I thanked Heaven that for a little while the peril had

passed.

*A Zouave's Story*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

CREIL, Sept. 10.--I could write this narrative as a historian, with

details gathered from many different witnesses at various parts of the

lines, in a cold and aloof way, but I prefer to tell it in the words of

a young officer of the Zouaves who was in the thickest of fighting until

when I met him and gave him wine and biscuits. He was put out of action

by a piece of shell which smashed his left arm. He told me the story of

the battle as he sat back, hiding his pain by a little careless smile of

contempt, and splashed with blood which made a mess of his uniform.

"For four days previous to Monday, Sept. 7," he said, "we were engaged

in clearing out the German bosches from all the villages on the left

bank of the Ourcq, which they had occupied in order to protect the flank

of their right wing. Unfortunately for us the English heavy artillery,

which would have smashed the beggars to bits, had not yet come up to

help us, although we expected them with some anxiety, as big business

events began as soon as we drove the outposts back to their main lines.

"However, we were equal to the preliminary task, and, heartened by the

news of an ammunition convoy which had been turned into a pretty

fireworks display by 'Soixante-dix' Pau, my Zouaves, (as you see, I

belong to the First Division, which has a reputation to keep up, n'est

ce pas?) were in splendid form. Of course, they all laughed at me. They

wanted to get near those German guns and nearer still to the gunners.

That was before they knew the exact meaning of shellfire well.

"They did good things, those Zouaves of mine, but it wasn't pleasant

work. We fought from village to village, very close fighting, so that

sometimes we could look into our enemy's eyes. The Moroccans were with

us. The native troops are unlike my boys, who are Frenchmen, and they

were like demons with their bayonet work.

"Several of the villages were set on fire by the Germans before they

retired from them, and soon great columns of smoke with pillars of

flames and clouds of flying sparks rose up into the blue sky and made a

picture of hell there, for really it was hell on earth. Our gunners were

shelling Germans from pillar to post, as it were, and strewing the

ground with their dead. It was across and among these dead bodies that

we infantry had to charge.

"They lay about in heaps. It made me sick, even in the excitement of it

all. The enemy's quick-firers were marvelous. I am bound to say we did

not get it all our own way. They always manoeuvre them in the same

style, and a very clever style it is. First of all, they mask them with

infantry; then, when the French charge, they reveal them and put us to

the test under the most withering fire. It is almost impossible to stand

against it, and in this case we had to retire after each rush for about

250 meters. Then, quick as lightning, the Germans got their

mitrailleuses across the ground which we had yielded to them and waited

for us to come on again, when they repeated the same operation.

"I can tell you it was pretty trying to the nerves. My Zouaves were very

steady in spite of fairly heavy losses. It is quite untrue to say that

the Germans have a greater number of mitrailleuses than the French. I

believe that the proportion is exactly the same to each division, but

they handle them more cleverly, and their fire is much more effective

than ours.

"In a village named Penchard there was some very sharp fighting, and

some of our artillery was posted thereabout. Presently a German

aeroplane came overhead, circling round in reconnoissance; but it was

out for more than that. Suddenly it began to drop bombs and, whether by

design or otherwise, they exploded in the middle of a field hospital.

One of my friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a

bullet from one of these bombs, but I don't know what other casualties

there were. The inevitable happened shortly after the disappearance of

the aeroplane. German shells searched the position and found it with

unpleasant accuracy. It is always the same. The German aeroplanes are

really wonderful in the way they search out the positions of our guns.

We always know that within half an hour of observation by aeroplane

shells will begin to fall above gunners, unless they have altered their

position. It was so in this fighting round Meaux yesterday.

"For four days this hunting among the villages on the left bank of the

Ourcq went on all the time, and we were not very happy with ourselves.

The truth was we had no water and were four days thirsty. It was really

terrible, for the heat was terrific during the day, and some of us were

almost mad with thirst. Our tongues were blistered and swollen, our eyes

had a silly kind of look in them, and at night we had horrid dreams. It

was, I assure you, intolerable agony.

"I have said we were four days without drink, and that was because we

used our last water for our horses. A gentleman has to do that, you will

agree, and a French soldier is not a barbarian. Even then the horses had

to go without a drop of water for two days, and I'm not ashamed to say I

wept salt tears to see the sufferings of those poor, innocent creatures

who did not understand the meaning of all this bloody business and who

wondered at our cruelty.

"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, and at

every faint puff of wind sparks floated about them like falling stars.

"But other fires were burning. Under the cover of darkness the Germans

had piled the dead into great heaps and had covered them with straw and

paraffin; then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres.

"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. One of my own

comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his

unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest

waiting for him to die. That is war.

"The German shells were terrifying. I confess to you that there were

times when my nerves were absolutely gone. I crouched down with my men

(we were in open formation) and ducked my head at the sound of the

bursting shell, and I trembled in every limb as though I had a fit of

ague.

"It is true that in reality the German shells are not very effective.

Only about one in four explodes nicely, but it is a bad thing when, as

happened to me, the shells plopped around in a diameter of fifty meters.

One hears the zip-zip of bullets, the boom of the great guns, the

ste-tang of our French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of

noise and stench, the screams at times of dying horses and men joined

with the fury of gunfire and rising shrill above it, no man may boast of

his courage. There were moments when I was a coward with all of them.

"But one gets used to it, as to all things. My ague did not last long.

Soon I was shouting and cheering. Again we cleared the enemy out of the

village of Bregy, and that was where I fell, wounded in the arm pretty

badly by a bit of shell. When I came to myself a brother officer told me

things were going on well and that we had rolled back the German right.

That was better than bandages to me. I felt very well again, in spite of

my weakness.

"It is the beginning of the end, and the Germans are on the run. They

are exhausted and demoralized. Their pride has been broken; they are

short of ammunition; they know their plans have failed.

"Now that we have them on the move nothing will save them. This war is

going to be finished quicker than people thought. I believe that in a

few days the enemy will be broken and that we shall have nothing more to

do than kill them as they fight back in retreat."

That is the story, without any retouching of my pen, of a young

Lieutenant of Zouaves whom I met after the battle of Meaux, with blood

still splashed upon his uniform.

It is a human story, giving the experience of only one individual in the

great battle, but it gives also in outline a narrative of that great

military operation which has done irreparable damage to the German right

wing in its plan of campaign and thrust it back across the Ourcq in a

great retiring movement which has also begun upon the German centre and

left.

*When War Burst on Arras*

[A Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES and The London Daily

Chronicle.]

A TOWN IN FRANCE, Oct. 7.--Arras has been the pivot of a fierce battle

which, commencing Thursday, was still in progress when I was forced to

leave the citadel three days later.

In that period I was fortunate enough to penetrate into the firing line,

and the experience is one that will never be dimmed in my memory. Like

the movements of so many pawns on a mammoth chessboard was the feinting

with scattered outposts to test the strength of the enemy.

I saw the action open with skirmishes at Vitry-en-Artois, and next

morning one of the hardest battles which make a link in the chain flung

right across France of the gigantic battle of rivers was being

prosecuted before my eyes.

The days that ensued were full of feverish and hectic motion. Arras

rattled and throbbed with the flow of an army and all the tragedy which

war brings in its train. There were moments when its cobbled streets

were threaded by streams of wounded from the country beyond. Guns boomed

incessantly, a fitting requiem to the sad little processions which

occasionally revealed that some poor fellow had sacrificed his life for

the flag which accompanied him to his grave.

I reached Arras on Sept. 29. The Germans had occupied it a fortnight

earlier. Now it was placid, sleepy, and deserted, and bore no outward

signs of having suffered from their occupation. I learned, however, that

although they had refrained from demolishing buildings, there had been

scenes of debauchery, and private houses had been ransacked.

It was declared that the only German paying for anything during the

whole of the fortnight's occupation was a member of the Hohenzollern

family, an important officer who had made the Hôtel d'Univers his

headquarters.

I decided to pass on to Vitry-en-Artois, twelve miles distant and six

kilometers from Douai, where I had heard the Allies were in force. Here

I obtained a room in a hotel.

Within a short while I saw armed cars. There came many warriors in many

cars, cars fitted with mitrailleuses, cars advancing backward, cars with

two soldiers in the back of each with their rifles rested on the back

cushions and their fingers on the triggers, and with the muzzles of

mitrailleuses pointing over their heads. Several cavalry scouts, too,

are in the streets.

Once I ventured my head a little outside of the door and was curtly

warned to eliminate myself or possibly I would get shot. I eliminated

myself for the moment.

Now with dramatic suddenness death touches Vitry with her chill fingers.

In the distance, right away beyond the bridge behind a bend in the road,

there is a clatter of hoofs. It stops. Again it goes on and stops for

about a couple of minutes, and then quite distinctly can be heard the

sound of a body of horsemen proceeding at a walk.

The cavalry scouts have vanished into big barns on either side of the

road, and around the corner of the bridge comes a small body of German

cavalry. They have passed the spot where the French scouts are hidden

and I have retreated to my bedroom window, from where I can count twelve

of the Death's Head riders.

They are riding to their fate. Right slap up in front of the cars they

come. A rifle shot rings out from where the French scouts are hidden,

then another, and that is the signal for the inferno to be loosed.

C-r-r-r-r-r-ack, and the mitrailleuse spits out a regular hail of death,

vicious, whiplike, never-ceasing cracks. Two horses are down and three

men lie prone in the road.

The Germans have not fired a shot, all their energies being concentrated

in wildly turning their horses to get back again round the bend.

It is too late. Another two are toppled over by the scouts in the barns,

and then cars are after them, still spitting out an unending hail of

lead.

It seems impossible that even a fly could live in such a stream of

bullets, yet out of the dozen three get round the bend, and, galloping

madly, make for the only spot where they can leave the road and get

across country. Even the automobile and auto-mitrailleuse men cannot

follow them there.

These fellows seem perfectly satisfied with a bag of nine, obtained

without a scratch. All are dead, one of them with over twenty wounds in

him. Two horses are stone dead, and three others have to be put out of

their misery. The other four are contentedly standing at the roadside

munching grass, one with a hind leg lifted a few inches off the ground.

The bodies of the dead Germans are laid side by side in a field to await

burial. The uniforms are stripped of everything that can be removed,

buttons and shoulder straps. The men in the cars take the water bottles,

swords, and revolvers as mementos.

I imperfectly understood the real meaning of this scrap. I had thought

it was an encounter between stray forces. A talk with the driver of an

armed car, however, enlarged my perspective. It was a meeting of the

outposts of two great opposing armies, one of which was at Douai, the

other at Cambrai. The feelers of both forces were being extended to

discover the various positions, preparatory to a big battle, which was

expected on the morrow (Oct. 1) along the line of

Cambrai-Douai-Valenciennes.

It was understood that the Germans had massed in force at Cambrai and

strong wings were thrown out on both sides, the outposts of one wing, as

we have already seen, coming into touch with the French at Vitry.

From the reports of the auto-mitrailleuse men, who cover great

distances in a day, similar skirmishing had been taking place at Etain,

(where some farmhouses were burned,) Eterpigny, Croisilles, Boisleux,

and Boyelles, these places ranging from ten to twenty kilometers from

Arras.

There was a general exodus from Vitry and I secured standing room in a

wagon of the last train leaving for Arras. It was loaded with fugitives.

Arras had changed completely on my return. Its calmness was gone. The

station was empty of civilians, there were no trains running and the

station entrance was in charge of a strong picket of soldiers, while the

road outside echoed to the tread of infantry.

I stood still in amazement, while my papers were being closely examined,

and watched regiment after regiment of foot with their transport trains

complete marching out on the road to Douai. This was part of the

preparation for the big battle which I was told was going to begin

tomorrow.

In the town itself the transformation was still more amazing--soldiers

in every street, cavalry, infantry, dragoons, lancers, and engineers in

ones and twos, and parties of twenty or thirty picturesque Moroccans. I

never saw such a medley of colors and expressions, and the whole town

was full of them--material for one army corps at least.

I installed myself in quarters at the Hôtel de l'Univers, with the

intention of getting away the first thing in the morning if possible.

But it was not possible. I was informed that Arras was now under

military control, and no permits were being issued whatsoever. The

Lieutenant who told me this smiled as I shrugged my shoulders.

"You will bear witness, Monsieur, that I tried my best to get out," said

I.

"Certainly; but why go away?" he asked with a smile. "Arras est tres

belle ville, Monsieur. You have a good hotel, a good bed, and good food.

Why should you go out?"

And so I stayed at Arras.

That was Sept. 30. The next day I could hear guns. They started at about

8 o'clock in the morning, the French guns being in position about five

kilometers outside of Arras to the south, southeast, and east, sixteen

batteries of France's artillery or 75-millimeter calibre.

All day long the guns thundered and roared, and all day long I sat

outside the café of the Hôtel des Voyageurs in the Place de la Gare. The

station building was right in front of me. I longed for a position which

would enable me to see over the tall buildings on to the battlefield

beyond. Even the roof of the station would have suited. There was a

little crowd of officials already there with their field glasses, and

they could discern what was going on, for I noticed several pointing

here and there whenever a particularly loud explosion was heard.

Two men in civilian clothes sat down beside me and gave me "good day,"

evidently curious as to my nationality. I invited them to join me in

coffee and cognac, and during the ensuing conversation we all became

very friendly, and I was given to understand that one of them was the

volunteer driver of an auto-mitrailleuse who had just come off duty.

I remarked that it would be very interesting to get a sight of what was

going on behind the station.

"Is it very near--the battle?"

"About five kilometers, Monsieur. The German guns are ten kilometers

distant. One of the German shells exploded behind the station this

morning. Would Monsieur like to walk out a little way?"

"But surely the pickets will not let me pass beyond the barrier," said

I.

My good friend of the auto-mitrailleuse smiled, rose, and buttoned up

his coat. "Come with me," he invited.

At the barrier we were stopped, but luck had not deserted me, for in the

Sergeant in charge of the pickets I recognized another café acquaintance

of the previous night. We shook hands, exchanged cigarettes, and

proceeded up and down numerous streets, bearing always southward in the

direction of the firing, until the open country was reached.

My companion suddenly caught hold of my arm and we both jumped up the

bank at the side of the road to let a long string of artillery drivers

trot past on their way back for more ammunition. Another cloud of dust,

and coming up behind us was a fresh lot of shells on the way out to the

firing line.

Right up in the sky ahead suddenly appeared a ball of yellow greeny

smoke, which grew bigger and bigger, and then "boom" came the sound of a

gun about three seconds afterward. A shell had burst in the air about

300 yards away. Another and another came--all about the same place. They

appeared to come from the direction of Bapaume.

"Bad, very bad," commented my companion. And so it appeared to me, for

the Germans were dropping their shells from the southeast, at least one

kilometer over range. We were standing beside a strawstack and looking

due south, watching the just discernible line of French guns, when we

heard the ominous whistling screech of an approaching shell. Down on our

faces behind the stack, down we went like lightning, and over to the

left, not 200 yards away, rose a huge column of black smoke and earth,

and just afterward a very loud boom. A big German gun had come into

action, slightly nearer this time.

Just behind a wood I could plainly see the smoke of the gun itself

rising above the trees. Two more shells from the big gun exploded within

twenty yards of each other, and then, with disconcerting suddenness, a

French battery came into action within a hundred yards of our strawstack

cover. They had evidently been there for some time, awaiting

eventualities, for we had no suspicion of their proximity, and they were

completely hidden.

My ears are still tingling and buzzing from the sound of those guns. One

after another the guns of this battery bombarded the newly taken up

position of the German big guns, which replied with one shell every

three minutes.

Presently we had the satisfaction of hearing a violent explosion in the

wood, and a column of smoke and flame rose up to a great height.

Soixante-quinze had again scored, for the German guns had been put out

of action. From out the French position came infantry, at this point

thousands of little dots over the landscape, presenting a front of, I

should think, about two miles, rapidly advancing in skirmishing order.

Every now and then the sharp crackle of rifle fire could distinctly be

heard.

The French had advanced over a mile, and the Germans had hastily

evacuated the wood. Other French batteries now came into action, and the

German fire over the whole arc was becoming decidedly fainter and less

frequent. This might, of course, be due to changing their positions on

the German front.

Wounded began to arrive, which showed that for the present at any rate,

it was safe to go out to the trenches to collect them.

Very few of them seemed badly hit, and the wounded French artillerymen

seemed to be elated in spite of their wounds. Had not their beloved

Soixante-quinze again scored? The time was 6 o'clock of a beautiful

evening and the firing, though fairly continuous, was dropping off. The

Germans had changed their positions and it was getting a little too hazy

to make observation, although a French aeroplane was seen descending in

wide circles over the German position, evidently quite regardless of the

numerous small balls of smoke, which made their appearance in the sky in

dangerous proximity to the daring pilot.

It is very interesting to watch these aeroplane shells bursting in the

air. First of all one sees a vivid little streak of bluish white light

in the sky, and then instantaneously a smoke ball, which appears to be

about the size of a football, is seen in the sky, always fairly close to

the machine. Then there is the sound of an explosion like a giant

cracker.

Occasionally several guns will fire at about the same time, and it is

weird to watch the various balls of smoke, apparently coming into being

from nowhere, all around the machine. Sometimes one of these shells,

which are filled with a species of shrapnel, bursts rather unpleasantly

near the aeroplane, and then one sees the machine turn quickly and rise

a little higher.

Two or three holes have been neatly drilled through the planes. Perhaps

one has appeared in the body of the machine, rather too near the pilot

for safety; but it is a big gamble, anyhow, and besides the pilot has

been instructed to find out where the various positions are, and he

means to do it.

So he simply rises a little higher and calmly continues his big circles

over the German position.

I take off my hat to these brave men, the aeroplane pilots. They are

willing to chance their luck. What matters it if their machine gets hit,

if the planes are riddled with holes? It will still fly, even if the

engine gets a fatal wound and stops.

The pilot, if he is high enough, can still glide to safety in his own

lines. But (and it is a big "but") should a shrapnel ball find its

billet in the pilot--well, one has only to die once, and it is a quick

and sure death to fall with one's machine.

[Illustration]

*The Battles in Belgium*

[An Associated Press Dispatch.]

LONDON, Oct. 26, 4:40 A.M.--The correspondent of The Daily News, who has

been in an armored train to the banks of the Yser, gives a good

description of the battle in the North. He says:

"The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life. Air

engines, sea engines, and land engines deathsweep this desolate country,

vertically, horizontally, and transversely. Through it the frail little

human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and

blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled,

ordered here and there, sleeping where they can, never washing, and

dying unnoticed. A friend may find himself firing on a friendly force,

and few are to blame.

"Thursday the Germans were driven back over the Yser; Friday they

secured a footing again, and Saturday they were again hurled back. Now a

bridge blown up by one side is repaired by the other; it is again blown

up by the first, or left as a death trap till the enemy is actually

crossing.

"Actions by armored trains, some of them the most reckless adventures,

are attempted daily. Each day accumulates an unwritten record of

individual daring feats, accepted as part of the daily work. Day by day

our men push out on these dangerous explorations, attacked by shell

fire, in danger of cross-fire, dynamite, and ambuscades, bringing a

priceless support to the threatened lines. As the armored train

approaches the river under shell fire the car cracks with the constant

thunder of guns aboard. It is amazing to see the angle at which the guns

can be swung.

"And overhead the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of

exploding shells to get one small fact of information. We used to regard

the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece

of impudent defiance to our infantry fire. Now we know its means early

trouble for the infantry.

"Besides us, as we crawl up snuffing the lines like dogs on a scent,

grim trainloads of wounded wait soundlessly in the sidings. Further up

the line ambulances are coming slowly back. The bullets of machine guns

begin to rattle on our armored coats. Shells we learned to disregard,

but the machine gun is the master in this war.

"Now we near the river at a flat country farm. The territory is scarred

with trenches, and it is impossible to say at first who is in them, so

incidental and separate are the fortunes of this riverside battle. The

Germans are on our bank enfilading the lines of the Allies' trenches. We

creep up and the Germans come into sight out of the trenches, rush to

the bank, and are scattered and mashed. The Allies follow with a fierce

bayonet charge.

"The Germans do not wait. They rush to the bridges and are swept away by

the deadliest destroyer of all, the machine gun. The bridge is blown up,

but who can say by whom. Quickly the train runs back.

"'A brisk day,' remarks the correspondent. 'Not so bad,' replies the

officer. So the days pass."

The Telegraph's correspondent in Belgium, who, accompanied by a son of

the Belgian War Minister, M. de Broqueville, made a tour of the

battleground in the Dixmude district last Wednesday, says:

"No pen could do justice to the grandeur and horror of the scene. As far

as the eye could reach nothing could be seen but burning villages and

bursting shells. I realized for the first time how completely the motor

car had revolutionized warfare and how every other factor was now

dominated by the absence or presence of this unique means of transport.

"Every road to the front was simply packed with cars. They seemed an

ever-rolling, endless stream, going and returning to the front, while in

many villages hundreds of private cars were parked under the control of

the medical officer, waiting in readiness to carry the wounded.

"Arrived at the firing line, a terrible scene presented itself. The

shell fire from the German batteries was so terrific that Belgian

soldiers and French marines were continually being blown out of their

dugouts and sent scattering to cover. Elsewhere, also, little groups of

peasants were forced to flee because their cellars began to fall in.

These unfortunates had to make their way as best they could on foot to

the rear. They were frightened to death by the bursting shells, and the

sight of crying children among them was most pathetic.

"Dixmude was the objective of the German attack, and shells were

bursting all over it, crashing among the roofs and blowing whole streets

to pieces. From a distance of three miles we could hear them crashing

down, but the town itself was invisible, except for the flames and the

smoke and clouds rising above it. The Belgians had only a few field

batteries, so that the enemy's howitzers simply dominated the field, and

the infantry trenches around the town had to rely upon their own unaided

efforts.

"Our progress along the road was suddenly stopped by one of the most

horrible sights I have ever seen. A heavy howitzer shell had fallen and

burst right in the midst of a Belgian battery, making its way to the

front, causing terrible destruction. The mangled horses and men among

the débris presented a shocking spectacle.

"Eventually, we got into Dixmude itself, and every time a shell came

crashing among the roofs we thought our end had come. The Hôtel de Ville

(town hall) was a sad sight. The roof was completely riddled by shell,

while inside was a scene of chaos. It was piled with loaves of bread,

bicycles, and dead soldiers.

"The battle redoubled in fury, and by 7 o'clock in the evening Dixmude

was a furnace, presenting a scene of terrible grandeur. The horizon was

red with burning homes.

"Our return journey was a melancholy one, owing to the constant trains

of wounded that were passing."

The Daily Mail's Rotterdam correspondent, telegraphing Sunday evening,

says:

"Slowly but surely the Germans are being beaten back on the western

wing, and old men and young lads are being hurried to the front. The

enemy were in strong force at Dixmude, where the Allies were repulsed

once, only to attack again with renewed vigor.

"Roulers resembles a shambles. It was taken and retaken four times, and

battered to ruins in the process. The German guns made the place

untenable for the Allies.

"An Oosburg message says the firing at Ostend is very heavy, and that

the British are shelling the suburbs, which are held by the Germans.

Last night and this morning large bodies of Germans left Bruges for

Ostend. It is believed the Ostend piers have been blown up."

"The position on the coast is stationary this morning," says a Daily

Mail dispatch from Flushing, Netherlands, under date of Sunday. "There

is less firing and it is more to the southward. No alteration of the

situation is reported from Ostend.

"The German losses are frightful. Three meadows near Ostend are heaped

with dead. The wounded are now installed in private houses in Bruges,

where large wooden sheds are being rushed up to receive additional

injured. Thirty-seven farm wagons containing wounded, dying, and dead

passed in one hour near Middelkerke.

"The Germans have been working at new intrenchments between Coq sur Mer

and Wenduyne to protect their road to Bruges."

Gen. von Tripp and nearly all his staff, who were killed in a church

tower at Leffinghe by the fire from the British warships, have been

buried in Ostend.

[Illustration: Flanders and Northern France--How the Battle Line Has

Changed (Up to Jan. 1, 1915) Since the War Began.]

*Seeking Wounded on Battle Front*

By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.

FURNES, Belgium, Oct. 21.--The staff of the English hospital, to which a

mobile column has been attached for field work, has arrived here with a

convoy of ambulances and motor cars. This little party of doctors,

nurses, stretcher-bearers, and chauffeurs, under the direction of Dr.

Bevis and Dr. Munro, has done splendid work in Belgium, and many of them

were in the siege of Antwerp.

Miss Macnaughton, the novelist, was one of those who went through this

great test of courage, and Lady Dorothie Feilding, one of Lord Denbigh's

daughters, won everybody's love by her gallantry and plucky devotion to

duty in many perilous hours. She takes all risks with laughing courage.

She has been under fire in many hot skirmishes, and has helped bring

away the wounded from the fighting around Ghent when her own life might

have paid the forfeit for defiance to bursting shells.

This morning a flying column of the hospital was preparing to set out in

search of wounded men on the firing line under direction of Lieut. de

Broqueville, son of the Belgian War Minister. The Lieutenant, very cool

and debonair, was arranging the order of the day with Dr. Munro. Lady

Dorothie Feilding and the two other women in field kit stood by their

cars, waiting for the password. There were four stretcher-bearers,

including Mr. Gleeson, an American, who has worked with this party

around Ghent and Antwerp, proving himself to be a man of calm and quiet

courage at a critical moment, always ready to take great risks in order

to bring in a wounded man.

It was decided to take three ambulances and two motor cars. Lieut. de

Broqueville anticipated a heavy day's work. He invited me to accompany

the column in a car which I shared with Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett of The

London Daily Telegraph, who also volunteered for the expedition.

We set out before noon, winding our way through the streets of Furnes.

We were asked to get into Dixmude, where there were many wounded. It is

about ten miles away from Furnes. As we went along the road, nearer to

the sound of the great guns which for the last hour or two had been

firing incessantly, we passed many women and children. They were on

their way to some place further from the firing. Poor old grandmothers

in black bonnets and skirts trudged along the lines of poplars with

younger women, who clasped their babies tightly in one hand, while with

the other they carried heavy bundles of household goods.

Along the road came German prisoners, marching rapidly between mounted

guards. Many of them were wounded, and all of them had a wild, famished,

terror-stricken look.

At a turn in the road the battle lay before us, and we were in the zone

of fire. Away across the fields was a line of villages with the town of

Dixmude a little to the right of us, perhaps a mile and a quarter away.

From each little town smoke was rising in separate columns which met at

the top in a great black pall. At every moment this blackness was

brightened by puffs of electric blue, extraordinarily vivid, as shells

burst in the air. From the mass of houses in each town came jets of

flame, following explosions which sounded with terrific thudding shocks.

On a line of about nine miles there was an incessant cannonade. The

farthest villages were already on fire.

Quite close to us, only about half a mile across the fields to the left,

there were Belgian batteries at work and rifle fire from many trenches.

We were between two fires, and Belgian and German shells came screeching

over our heads. The German shells were dropping quite close to us,

plowing up the fields with great pits. We could hear them burst and

scatter and could see them burrow.

[Illustration: ADMIRAL SIR JOHN JELLICOE

Commanding the British Fleets

(_Photo from Rogers._)]

[Illustration: GEN. VICTOR DANKL

The Austrian Commander in the Russian Campaign

(_Photo from Bain News Service._)]

In front of us on the road lay a dreadful barrier, which brought us to a

halt. A German shell had fallen right on top of an ammunition convoy.

Four horses had been blown to pieces and their carcasses lay strewn

across the road. The ammunition wagon had been broken into fragments and

smashed and burned to cinders by the explosion of its own shells. A

Belgian soldier lay dead, cut in half by a great fragment of steel.

Further along the road were two other dead horses in pools of blood. It

was a horrible and sickening sight, from which one turned away

shuddering with cold sweat, but we had to pass it after some of this

dead flesh had been dragged away.

Further down the road we had left two of the cars in charge of Lady

Dorothie Feilding and her two nurses. They were to wait there until we

brought back some of the wounded. Two ambulances came on with our light

car, commanded by Lieut. Broqueville and Dr. Munro. Mr. Gleeson asked me

to help him as stretcher-bearer. Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett was to work with

one of the other stretcher-bearers.

I was in one of the ambulances, and Mr. Gleeson sat behind me in the

narrow space between the stretchers. Over his shoulder he talked in a

quiet voice of the job that lay before us. I was glad of that quiet

voice, so placid in its courage. We went forward at what seemed to me a

crawl, though I think it was a fair pace, shells bursting around us now

on all sides, while shrapnel bullets sprayed the earth about us. It

appeared to me an odd thing that we were still alive. Then we came into

Dixmude.

When I saw it for the first and last time it was a place of death and

horror. The streets through which we passed were utterly deserted and

wrecked from end to end, as though by an earthquake. Incessant

explosions of shell fire crashed down upon the walls which still stood.

Great gashes opened in the walls, which then toppled and fell. A roof

came tumbling down with an appalling clatter. Like a house of cards

blown by a puff of wind, a little shop suddenly collapsed into a mass of

ruins. Here and there, further into the town, we saw living figures.

They ran swiftly for a moment and then disappeared into dark caverns

under toppling porticos. They were Belgian soldiers.

We were now in a side street leading into the Town Hall square. It

seemed impossible to pass, owing to the wreckage strewn across the road.

"Try to take it," said Dr. Munro, who was sitting beside the chauffeur.

We took it, bumping over heaps of débris, and then swept around into the

square. It was a spacious place, with the Town Hall at one side of

it--or what was left of the Town Hall; there was only the splendid shell

of it left, sufficient for us to see the skeleton of a noble building

which had once been the pride of Flemish craftsmen. Even as we turned

toward it parts of it were falling upon the ruins already on the ground.

I saw a great pillar lean forward and then topple down. A mass of

masonry crashed from the portico. Some stiff, dark forms lay among the

fallen stones; they were dead soldiers. I hardly glanced at them, for we

were in search of the living.

Our cars were brought to a halt outside the building, and we all climbed

down. I lighted a cigarette, and I noticed two of the other men fumble

for matches for the same purpose. We wanted something to steady our

nerves. There was never a moment when shell fire was not bursting in

that square. Shrapnel bullets whipped the stones. The Germans were

making a target of the Town Hall and dropping their shells with dreadful

exactitude on either side of it.

I glanced toward the flaming furnace to the right of the building. There

was a wonderful glow at the heart of it, yet it did not give me any

warmth. At that moment Dr. Munro and Lieut. de Broqueville mounted the

steps of the Town Hall, followed by Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett and myself. Mr.

Gleeson was already taking down a stretcher; he had a little smile

about his lips.

A French officer and two men stood under the broken archway of the

entrance, between the fallen pillars and masonry. A yard away from them

lay a dead soldier, a handsome young man with clear-cut features turned

upward to the gaping roof. A stream of blood was coagulating around his

head, but did not touch the beauty of his face. Another dead man lay

huddled up quite close, and his face was hidden.

"Are there any wounded here, Sir?" asked our young Lieutenant. The other

officer spoke excitedly. He was a brave man, but he could not hide the

terror in his soul, because he had been standing so long waiting for

death, which stood beside him, but did not touch him. It appeared from

his words that there were several wounded men among the dead down in the

cellar, and that he would be obliged to us if we could rescue them.

We stood on some steps, looking down into that cellar. It was a dark

hole, illumined dimly by a lantern, I think. I caught sight of a little

heap of huddled bodies. Two soldiers, still unwounded, dragged three of

them out and handed them up to us. The work of getting those three men

into the first ambulance seemed to us interminable; it was really no

more than fifteen or twenty minutes. During that time Dr. Munro,

perfectly calm and quiet, was moving about the square, directing the

work. Lieut. de Broqueville was making inquiries about other wounded in

other houses. I lent a hand to one of the stretcher-bearers. What the

others were doing I do not know, except that Mr. Gleeson's calm face

made a clear-cut image on my brain.

I had lost consciousness of myself. Something outside myself, as it

seemed, was saying that there was no way of escape; that it was

monstrous to suppose that all these bursting shells would not smash the

ambulance to bits and finish the agony of the wounded, and that death

was very hideous. I remember thinking, also, how ridiculous it was for

men to kill one another like this and to make such hells on earth.

Then Lieut. de Broqueville spoke a word of command; the first ambulance

must now get back. I was with the first ambulance, in Mr. Gleeson's

company. We had a full load of wounded men, and we were loitering. I put

my head outside the cover and gave the word to the chauffeur. As I did

so a shrapnel bullet came past my head, and, striking a piece of

ironwork, flattened out and fell at my feet. I picked it up and put it

in my pocket, though God alone knows why, for I was not in search of

souvenirs.

So we started with the first ambulance through those frightful streets

again and out into the road to the country. "Very hot!" said one of the

men--I think it was the chauffeur. Somebody else asked if we should get

through with luck. Nobody answered the question. The wounded men with us

were very quiet; I thought they were dead. There was only an incessant

cannonade and the crashing of buildings. The mitrailleuses were at work

now, spitting out bullets. It was a worse sound than that of the shells;

it seemed more deadly in its rattle. I started back behind the car and

saw the other ambulance in our wake. I did not see the motor car.

Along the country roads the fields were still being plowed by shells

which burst over our heads. We came to a halt again in a place where

soldiers were crouched under cottage walls. There were few walls now,

and inside some of the remaining cottages were many wounded men. Their

comrades were giving them first aid and wiping the blood out of their

eyes. We managed to take some of these on board. They were less quiet

than the others we had, and groaned in a heartrending way.

A little later we made a painful discovery--Lieut. de Broqueville, our

gallant young leader, was missing. By some horrible mischance he had not

taken his place in either of the ambulances or the motor cars. None of

us had the least idea what had happened to him; we had all imagined that

he had scrambled up like the rest of us, after giving the order to get

away.

There was only one thing to do--to get back in search of him. Even in

the half hour since we had left the town Dixmude had burst into flames

and was a great blazing torch. If de Broqueville were left in that hell

he would not have a chance of life.

It was Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett who, with great gallantry,

volunteered to go back and search for our leader. They took the light

car and sped back toward the burning town. The ambulances went on with

their cargo of wounded, and Lady Dorothie Feilding and I were left alone

for a little time in one of the cars. We drove back along the road

toward Dixmude, and rescued another wounded man left in a wayside

cottage.

By this time there were five towns blazing in the darkness, and in spite

of the awful suspense which we were now suffering we could not help

staring at the fiendish splendor of that sight.

Dr. Munro joined us again, and after consultation we decided to get as

near to Dixmude as we could, in case our friends had to come out without

their car or had been wounded.

The German bombardment was now terrific. All the guns were concentrated

upon Dixmude and the surrounding trenches. In the darkness under a

stable wall I stood listening to the great crashes for an hour, when I

had not expected such a lease of life. Inside the stable soldiers were

sleeping in the straw, careless that at any moment a shell might burst

through upon them. The hour seemed a night; then we saw the gleam of

headlights, and an English voice called out.

Ashmead-Bartlett and Gleeson had come back. They had gone to the

entrance to Dixmude, but could get no further, owing to the flames and

shells. They, too, had waited for an hour, but had not found de

Broqueville. It seemed certain that he was dead; and, very sorrowfully,

as there was nothing to be done, we drove back to Furnes.

At the gate of the convent were some Belgian ambulances which had come

from another part of the front with their wounded. I helped to carry

one of them in, and strained my shoulders with the weight of the

stretcher. Another wounded man put his arm around my neck, and then,

with a dreadful cry, collapsed, so that I had to hold him in a strong

grip. A third man, horribly smashed about the head, walked almost

unaided into the operating room. Mr. Gleeson and I led him with just a

touch on his arm. This morning he lies dead on a little pile of straw in

a quiet corner of the courtyard.

I sat down to a supper, which I had not expected to eat. There was a

strange excitement in my body, which trembled a little after the day's

adventures. It seemed very strange to be sitting down to table with

cheerful faces about me, but some of the faces were not cheerful. Those

of us who knew of the disappearance of de Broqueville sat silently over

our soup.

Then suddenly Lady Dorothie Feilding gave a little cry of joy, and

Lieut. de Broqueville came walking briskly forward. It seemed a miracle;

it was hardly less than that. For several hours after our departure from

Dixmude he had remained in that inferno. He had missed us when he went

down into the cellar to haul out another wounded man, forgetting that he

had given us the order to start. There he had remained, with buildings

crashing all around him until the German fire had died down a little. He

succeeded in rescuing his wounded man, for whom he found room in a

Belgian ambulance outside the town and walked back along the road to

Furnes.

We clasped hands and were thankful for his escape. This morning he has

gone again to what is left of Dixmude with a flying column. Dr. Munro

and Mr. Gleeson, with Lady Dorothie Feilding and her friends, are in the

party, although in Dixmude German infantry have taken possession of the

outer ruins.

The courage of this English field ambulance under the Belgian Red Cross

is one of those splendid things which shine through this devil's work of

war.

*At the Kaiser's Headquarters*

By Cyril Brown of The New York Times.

GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Oct. 20.--The most vulnerable,

vital spot of the whole German Empire is, paradoxically, in France--the

small city on the Meuse where the Grosses Hauptquartier, the brains of

the whole German fighting organism, has been located for the last few

weeks. After a lucky dash through the forbidden zone of France held by

the Germans I managed to pay a surprise visit to the Great Headquarters,

where, among other interesting sights, I have already seen the Kaiser,

the King of Saxony, the Crown Prince, Major Langhorne, the American

Military Attaché; Field Marshal von Moltke, and shoals of lesser

celebrities with which the town is overrun. My stay is of indeterminate

length, and only until the polite but insistent pressure which the

Kaiser's secret police and the General Staff are bringing to bear on

their unbidden guest to leave becomes irresistible.

It was a sometime TIMES reader, a German brakeman, who had worked in New

York and was proud of being able to speak "American," who helped me to

slip aboard the military postzug (post train) that left the important

military centre of L---- at 1:30 A.M. and started to crawl toward the

front with a mixed cargo of snoring field chaplains, soldiers rejoining

their units, officers with iron crosses pinned to their breasts,

ambulance men who talked gruesome shop, fresh meat, surgical supplies,

mail bags, &c. Sometimes the train would spurt up to twelve miles an

hour. There were long stops at every station, while unshaven Landsturm

men on guard scanned the car windows in search of spies by the light of

their electric flash lamps. After many hours somebody said we were now

in Belgium.

There are no longer any bothersome customs formalities at the Belgian

border, but the ghost of a house that had been knocked into a cocked hat

by a shell indicated that we were in the land of the enemy. Houses that

looked as if they had been struck by a Western cyclone now became more

numerous. A village church steeple had a jagged hole clean through it.

After more hours somebody else said we were in France. Every bridge,

culvert, and crossroad was guarded by heavily bearded Landsturm men, who

all looked alike in their funny, antiquated, high black leather

helmets--usually in twos--the countryside dotted with cheery little

watch fires.

In the little French villages all lights were out in the houses. The

streets were barred like railroad crossings except that the poles were

painted in red-white-black stripes, a lantern hanging from the middle of

the barrier to keep the many army automobiles that passed in the night

from running amuck.

Sedan, a beehive of activity, was reached at daybreak. Here most of the

military, plus the Field Chaplains, got out. From here on daylight

showed the picturesque ruin the French themselves had wrought--the

frequent tangled wreckage of dynamited steel railway bridges sticking

out of the waters of the river, piles of shattered masonry damming the

current, here and there half an arch still standing of a once beautiful

stone footbridge. I was told that over two hundred bridges had been

blown up by the retreating French in their hopeless attempt to delay the

German advance in this part of France alone.

Several hours more of creeping over improvised wooden bridges and

restored roadbeds brought the post train to the French city that had

20,000 inhabitants before the war which the Kaiser and the Great

Headquarters now occupy.

Wooden signs printed in black letters, "Verboten," (forbidden,) now

ornament the pretty little park, with its fountain still playing,

outside the railroad station. The paths are guarded by picked

grenadiers, not Landsturm men this time, while an officer of the guard

makes his ceaseless rounds. Opposite the railroad station, on the other

side of the little park, is an unpretentious villa of red brick and

terra cotta trimmings, but two guard houses painted with red-white-black

stripes flank the front door and give it a look of importance. The

street at either end is barred by red, white and black striped poles and

strapping grenadiers on guard are clustered thick about it. You don't

need to ask who lives there. The red brick house (it would not rent for

more than $100 a month in any New York suburb) is the present temporary

residence of the Over War Lord. Its great attraction for the Kaiser, I

am told, is the large, secluded garden in the rear where this other "man

of destiny" loves to walk and meditate or, more usually, talk--though

the few remaining French inhabitants could have a frequent opportunity

of seeing him walk in the little closed public park if they were

interested, but the natives seem outwardly utterly apathetic.

Several of the Kaiser's household, in green Jäger uniforms, were

lounging around the door for an early morning airing, while secret

service men completed the picture by hovering in the immediate

neighborhood. You can tell that they are German secret service agents

because they all wear felt alpine hats, norfolk jackets, waterproof

cloth capes and a bored expression. They have been away from Berlin for

nearly three months now. About fifty of them constitute the "Secret

Field Police" and their station house is half a block away from the

Kaiser's residence.

Just around the corner from the Kaiser, within a stone's throw of his

back door, is another red-brick house with terra-cotta trimmings, rather

larger and more imposing. The names of its new residents, "Hahnke,"

"Caprivi," and "Graf von Moltke," are scrawled in white chalk on the

stone post of the gateway. Further up the same street another chalk

scrawl on a quite imposing mansion informed me that "The Imperial

Chancellor" and "The Foreign Office" had set up shop there. Near by were

Grand Admiral von Tirpitz's field quarters. A bank building on another

principal street bore the sign, "War Cabinet."

The Great General Staff occupies the quaint old Hotel de Ville. An

unmolested ramble showed that all the best residences and business

buildings in the heart of the town were required to house the members of

the Great Headquarters, who number, in addition to the Kaiser and his

personal entourage, thirty-six chiefs or department heads, including the

Imperial Chancellor, the War Minister, the Chief of the Great General

Staff, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, the Chief of the Ammunition

Supply, the Chief of the Field Railways, the Chief of the Field

Telephone and Telegraph Service, the Chief of the Sanitary Service, the

Chief of the Volunteer Automobile Corps, &c., making, with secretaries,

clerks, ordonnances, and necessary garrison, a community of 1,200 souls.

I could not help wondering why the Allies' aviators weren't "on the

job." A dozen, backed up by an intelligent Intelligence Department,

could so obviously settle the fortunes of the war by blowing out the

brains of their enemy. Perhaps that is why the whereabouts of the Great

Headquarters is guarded as a jealous secret. The soldiers at the front

don't know where it is, nor the man on the street at home, and, of

course, its location is not breathed in the German press. Theoretically,

only those immediately concerned are "in the know." Visitors are not

allowed, neutral foreign correspondents are told by the authorities in

Berlin that "it is impossible" to go to the Grosser Hauptquartier.

Two aeroplane guns are mounted on the hills across the river at a point

immediately opposite the Kaiser's residence, while near them a picked

squad of sharpshooters is on the watch night and day for hostile fliers.

To further safeguard not only the person of the Kaiser but the brains

of the fighting machine the spy hunt is kept up here with unrelenting

pertinacity.

"We went over the town with a fine-tooth comb and cleaned out all the

suspicious characters the very first day we arrived," said a friendly

detective.

"There are no cranks or anarchists left here. Today the order is going

out to arrest all men of military age--between 18 and 45--but there are

few, if any, left. We also made a house-to-house search for arms and

collected three wagonloads, mostly old.

"Our Kaiser is as safe here now as he would be anywhere in Germany. We

know every one who arrives and leaves town. It seems impossible for a

spy to slip in and still more to slip out again through the lines--but

we are always on the watch for the impossible. The fear of spies is not

a delusion or a form of madness, as you suggest. Here is one case of my

personal knowledge: A German Boy Scout of 16, who had learned to speak

French and English perfectly at school, volunteered his services and was

attached to the staff of an army corps. This young chap succeeded in

slipping into Rheims, where he was able to locate the positions of the

French batteries and machine guns, and make his way back to our lines

with this invaluable information. For this feat the boy received the

Iron Cross. After being in the field for six weeks he got home-sick,

however, and has been allowed to go home for a visit."

From a spectacular point of view the Great Headquarters is rather

disappointing. A few mixed patrols of Uhlans, dragoons, and hussars

occasionally ride through the principal streets to exercise their

horses. Occasionally, too, you see a small squad of strapping

grenadiers, who break into the goose step on the slightest provocation

as when they pass a General or other officer of the Great General Staff,

whom you recognize by the broad red stripes on their "field gray"

trousers.

There is no pomp or ceremony even when royalty is running around at

large. Thus when the King of Saxony arrived in town, a few hours after

I did, no fuss was made whatever. The Saxon King and his staff, three

touring car loads, all in field gray, drove straight to the villa

assigned them, and, after reciprocal informal visits between King and

Kaiser, the former left to visit some of the battlefields on which Saxon

troops had fought, and later paid a visit to his troops at the front.

For this exploit, the Kaiser promptly bestowed on him the Iron Cross,

first and second class, on his return to town.

Even the Kaiser's heart is not covered with medals, nor does he wear the

gorgeous white plume parade helmet nowadays, when going out for a

horse-back ride or a drive. I saw him come from a motor run late in the

afternoon--four touring cars full of staff officers and personal

entourage--and was struck by the complete absence of pomp and ceremony.

In the second car sat the Kaiser, wearing the dirty green-gray uniform

of his soldiers in the field. At a distance of fifteen feet, the Over

War Lord looked physically fit, but quite sober--an intense earnestness

of expression that seemed to mirror the sternness of the times.

The Kaiser goes for a daily drive or ride about the countryside usually

in the afternoon, but occasionally he is allowed to have a real outing

by his solicitous entourage--a day and more rarely a [Transcriber: text

missing in original]

"His Majesty is never so happy as when he is among his troops at the

front," another transplanted Berlin detective told me. "If his Majesty

had his way he would be among them all the time, preferably sleeping

under canvas and roughing it like the rest--eating the 'simple' food

prepared by his private field kitchen. But his life is too valuable to

be risked in that way, and his personal Adjutant, von Plessen, who

watches over his Majesty like a mother or a governess, won't let him go

to the front often. His Majesty loves his soldiers and would be among

them right up at the firing line if he were not constantly watched and

kept in check by his devoted von Plessen." However, the Kaiser sleeps

within earshot of the not very distant thunder of the German heavy

artillery pounding away at Rheims, plainly heard here at night when the

wind blows from the right direction.

Of barbarism or brutality the writer saw no signs, either here or at

other French villages occupied by the Germans. The behavior of the

common soldiers toward the natives is exemplary and in most cases

kindly. There are many touches of human interest. I saw about a hundred

of the most destitute hungry townsfolk, mostly women with little

children, hanging around one of the barracks at the outskirts of the

town until after supper the German soldiers came out and distributed the

remnants of their black bread rations to them. It is not an uncommon

sight to see staff officers as well as soldiers stopping on the streets

to hand out small alms to the begging women and children. Many of the

shops in town were closed and boarded up at the approach of the

Prussians, but small hotel keepers, café proprietors, and tradesmen who

had the nerve to remain and keep open are very well satisfied with the

German invasion in one way, for they never made so much money before in

their lives. Most of the German soldiers garrisoned here have picked up

a few useful words of French; all of them can, and do, call for wine,

white or red, in the vernacular. Moreover, they pay for all they

[Transcriber: original 'them'] consume. I was astonished to see even the

detectives paying real money for what they drank. Several tradesmen told

me they had suffered chiefly at the hands of the French soldiers

themselves, who had helped themselves freely to their stock before

retreating, without paying, saying it was no use to leave good wine, for

the Prussian swine.

I had not prowled around the Great Headquarters for many hours when the

Secret Field Police, patrolling all the streets, showed signs of

curiosity, and to forestall the orthodox arrest and march to

headquarters (already experienced [Transcriber: original 'experience']

once, in Cologne) waited upon Lieut. Col. von Hahnke, Military

Commandant of the city, and secured immunity in the form of the

Commandant's signature on a scrap of paper stamped in purple ink with

the Prussian eagle. Commandant Hahnke, after expressing the opinion that

it was good that American newspaper men were coming to Germany to see

for themselves, and hoping that "the truth" was beginning to become

known on the other side, courteously sent his Adjutant along to get me

past the guard at the Great General Staff and introduce me to Major

Nikolai, Chief of Division III. B., in charge of newspaper

correspondents and Military Attachés. Here, however, the freedom of the

American press came into hopeless, but humorous, collision with the

Prussian militarism.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get here?" snapped

the Prussian Major. A kind letter of introduction from Ambassador

Gerard, requesting "all possible courtesy and assistance from the

authorities of the countries through which he may pass," and emblazoned

with the red seal of the United States of America, which had worked like

magic on all previous occasions, had no effect on Major Nikolai. Neither

had a letter from the American Consul at Cologne, nor a letter of

introduction to Gen. von Buelow, nor any one of a dozen other impressive

documents produced in succession for his benefit.

"No foreign correspondents are permitted to be at the Great

Headquarters. None has been allowed to come here. If we allow one to

remain, fifty others will want to come, and we should be unable to keep

an eye on all of them," he explained. "You must go back to Berlin at

once."

Reluctant permission was finally obtained to remain one night on the

possibly unwarranted intimation that the great American people would

consider it a "national affront" if an American newspaperman was not

allowed to stay and see the American Military Attaché, Major Langhorne,

who was away on a sightseeing tour near Verdun, but would be back in the

morning. However, a long cross-examination had to be undergone at the

hands of the venerable Herr Chief of the Secret Field Police Bauer, who

was taking no chances at harboring an English spy in the Houptquartier

disguised as a correspondent.

I found Major Langhorne standing the strain of the campaign

[Transcriber: original 'compaign'] well, and I gathered the impression

that he intended to see the thing through, and that there was much which

America could learn from the titanic operations of the Germans. Major

Langhorne and the Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, Spanish, Rumanian,

and Swedish military attachés are luxuriously quartered a mile and a

half out of town in the handsome villa of M. Noll, the landscape

painter, present whereabouts unknown. The attachés all have a sense of

humor, "otherwise," said one of them, "we could never stand being cooped

up here together." The gardener's daughter, a pretty young Frenchwoman,

the only servant who remained behind when the household fled at the

approach of the Germans, is both cook and housekeeper, and when I

arrived I found the seven military attachés resolved into a board of

strategy trying to work out the important problem of securing a pure

milk supply for her four-month-old baby.

Work consists of occasional motor runs to various points along the long

front. I was told that recently Major Langhorne ran into some heavy

shrapnel and shell fire, and was lucky to get away with a whole skin.

When asked to tell about it, Major Langhorne passed it off laughingly as

"all in the day's work."

In spite of the fact that they are engaged in keeping their end up in a

life-and-death fight for national existence, the Great General Staff has

found time to give the American Military Attaché every possible

opportunity to see actual fighting.

The foreign military attachés have made many of their expeditions in

company with the small band of German war correspondents, who live in

another villa close by, under the constant chaperonage of Major von

Rohrscheldt. They are allowed to see much, but send little. The relative

position of the press in Germany is indicated by the fact that these

German war correspondents are nicknamed "hunger candidates." A military

expert who was well posted on American journalism explained to me,

however, that the very tight censorship lid was not for the purpose of

withholding news from the German people, but to keep valuable

information from being handed to the enemy. He pointed out that the

laconic German official dispatches dealt only with things actually

accomplished, and were very bare of detail, while, on the other hand,

the French and English press had been worth more than several army corps

to the Germans, concluding, "It may be poor journalism, but it's the

right way to make war."

* * * * *