attempting to outflank the English army, that is, to throw part of his forces around the extreme western end of the English army, which had to keep retiring rapidly to avoid being encircled. The French army was obliged to fall back to keep in touch with the British.

The English retired nearly one hundred miles without losing their cheerfulness or their confidence. It was this turning movement on the left that forced all the allies to retire. An English writer who was with the army said that though the Germans constantly attacked with reckless courage, yet the British and French retired slowly with their faces to the foe, and showing the greatest heroism. The numbers of the Germans were greater than those of the Allies, and the Germans gave them no rest. Night and day they hammered away, coming on like great waves. The gaps the English made were filled instantly. The German guns played upon the Allies constantly. Their cavalry swept down upon them recklessly. If the English had great losses, the Germans had greater. The English fought with cool bravery. They never wavered an instant. But the pressure upon them could not be resisted. Column after column, squadron after squadron, mass after mass, the enemy came on like a battering ram, crushing everything in its way. They swarmed on all sides, even though shattered by shot and shell. Nothing but the steadfast courage,

the sheer pluck, the spirit, the soul of the English soldiers saved the army from complete destruction.

"The enemy hung on to us like grim death," said a wounded soldier. "They wanted us to retreat in a direction that would best suit their plans. But we were not taking marching orders from them. We went our own way at our own pace. We were retiring, not retreating."

Then on the fifth of September came General Joffre's appeal to the defenders of civilization, and particularly to the French soldiers: "The hour has come to hold our positions at any cost and to fight rather than to retreat. No longer must we look at the enemy over our shoulders, for the time has come to put forth all our efforts in attacking and defeating him."

A French writer has said of the retreat, which by order of General Joffre had now come to an end, "Their bodies retreated, but never their souls;" and he might have added of the German advance, "It was an advance of bodies, not of souls." It was material might in men and guns forcing back an army weaker in everything except soul and spirit. The World War has shown over and over again, not only at the Marne but at a hundred other places and in a hundred other ways, that soul and spirit are the real conquerors and that God is not always, as Napoleon said, on the side of the larger battalions.

The Germans had come on flushed with success and egotism, destroying French property, looting, and dissipating. Their spirit was the spirit they found in the French wine cellars, and as for soul, as civilized people understand the word, they had none. They were an army of tired, conquering brutes. Their morale was low because of their great success and all that had accompanied it of feasts and slaughter. The morale of the French was never higher. Every day and every hour they had been compelled to retreat, giving up, giving up all that they loved even better than life itself to these brutes, until the brain of the French army said on the evening of September 5, 1914, "You have gone so far in order that you may now stand successfully." And in the morning at dawn, it was not only the bodies of the French soldiers that hurled themselves against the invaders, but the souls of French men, the soul of France; and all along the line from Verdun to Meaux, under the gallant leadership of Manoury, Foch, Sarrail, Castelnau, and others, the French armies held. If they had not held - not only held but attacked — all of future history would be different.

General Foch, commander in chief at the Second Battle of the Marne, inspired his troops in this first battle to supernatural bravery. He knew they must not yield, so with his right broken, his left shattered, he attacked with his center. It was that or retreat.

His message to the commander-in-chief, General Joffre, will never be forgotten.

"My left has been forced back, my right is routed. I shall attack with the center."

The Germans could not put their souls into the battles as the French soldiers did, and besides, the Germans were weakened by feasting and dissipation. With the Huns it was the right of might; with the Allies it was the might of right, and in the end the second always defeats the first.

Some one has well said:

"It is the law of good to protect and to build up. It is the law of evil to destroy. It is in the very nature of good to lead men aright. It is in the very nature of evil to lead men astray. Goodness makes for wisdom. Badness is continually exercising poor judg

ment.

"Germany and Austria have made colossal mistakes in this war because of their colossal violation of truth and justice. In brutally wronging Serbia, they lost the friendship and support of Italy. In perpetrating the monstrous crime against Belgium, they brought against them the whole might of the British Empire. In breaking international law with their reckless submarine warfare, they caused the United States to enter the war on the side of the Allies.'

It is said that the army of the German Crown

Prince retreated before the impetuous attack of the French and, because of this retreat, all the other German armies were obliged to do likewise. It is more probable, however, that the general retreat was due to General Joffre's strategy. The Germans under General von Kluck were within about twenty miles of Paris, near Meaux on the Marne, when suddenly they were struck in the flank and rear by about twenty thousand fresh troops brought out unexpectedly from Paris in motor trucks, taxis, limousines, and all kinds of pleasure cars. Now the Germans, who had caused the retreat of the French and British armies upon Paris by continually outflanking the British, were in their turn outflanked and compelled to retreat, and Paris was saved.

An English writer has said that although the Germans were outflanked only in the west, yet the blow passed from one end of the German line to the other, from Meaux to Verdun, just as the blow from the buffer of the engine, when it is coupled to the train, passes from one truck to another to the very end of the train.

The Germans in the next few days retreated from the Marne to the Aisne, where they entrenched. Paris and France and Europe and the only world worth living in were saved. The French government moved back to Paris.

Hall Caine in "Three Hundred and Sixty-five