THE CHARGE OF THE BLACK WATCH AND

SOM

THE SCOTS GREYS

OMETIMES a retreat is in reality a great victory. It has been said that it requires a greater general to direct successfully a great retreat than it does to direct a great attack.

Some marvelous retreats have occurred in the World War, the greatest coming at its very beginning, when the English and French fell back to save Paris and to defeat the Germans at the Marne. This retreat was really a series of battles, day after day, with terrible losses on both sides.

An English private in the Black Watch, named Walter Morton, only nineteen years of age, described for the Scotsmen one of these battles in which his regiment and the Scots Greys made a magnificent charge. His story was as follows:

We went straight from Boulogne to Mons, being one of the first British regiments to reach that place. Neither army seemed to have a very good position there, but the numbers of the Germans were far too great to give us any chance of success. We were hard at it all day on Monday; and on Tuesday, as the

French reinforcements which we had been expecting did not arrive, the order was given to retire.

In our retreat we marched close upon eighty miles. We passed through Cambrai, and a halt was called at St. Quentin. The Germans, in their mad rush to get to Paris, had seldom been far behind us, and when we came to St. Quentin the word went through the ranks that we were going into action. The men were quite jubilant at the prospect. They had not been at all pleased at their continued retirement before the enemy, and they at once started to get things ready. The engagement opened briskly, both our artillery and the Germans going at it for all they were worth. We were in good skirmishing order, and under the cover of our guns we were all the time getting. nearer and nearer the enemy. When we had come to within 100 yards of the German lines, the commands were issued for a charge, and the Black Watch made the charge along with the Scots Greys. Not far from us the 9th Lancers and the Cameronians joined in the attack.

It was the finest thing I ever saw. The Scots Greys galloped forward with us hanging on to their stirrups, and it was a sight never to be forgotten. We were simply being dragged by the horses as they flew forward through a perfect cloud of bullets from the enemy's maxims. All other sounds were drowned by the thunder of the horses' hoofs as they careered wildly on, some of them nearly driven mad by the bullets which struck them. It was no time for much thinking. Saddles were being emptied quickly, as we closed on the German lines and tore past their maxims, which were in the front ranks.

We were on the German gunners before they knew where they were, and many of them went down, scarcely realizing that we were amongst them. Then the fray commenced in deadly earnest. The Black Watch and the Scots Greys went into it like men pos

sessed. They fought like demons. It was our bayonets against the Germans' swords. You could see nothing but the glint of steel, and soon even that was wanting as our boys got, well into the midst of the enemy. The swords of the Germans were no use against our bayonets. They went down in hundreds.

Then the enemy began to waver, and soon broke and fled before the bayonets, like rabbits before the shot of a gun.

There were about 1900 of us in that charge against 20,000 Germans, and the charge itself lasted about four hours. We took close upon 4000 prisoners, and captured a lot of their guns. In the course of the fighting I got a cut from a German sword they are very much like saws - and fell into a pool of water, where I lay unconscious for twenty-three hours. I was picked up by one of the 9th Lancers.

A

THE BATTLES OF THE MARNE

T Marathon (490 B.C.) and at Salamis (480 B.C.) the Greeks defeated the Persians and saved Europe for western civilization. Had the Persians won, the history of Europe and of the world would be the story of the civilization of the East instead of that of the West.

At Tours (732 A.D.) Charles Martel defeated the forces of the Mohammedans, who had already conquered Spain, and saved Europe for Christianity.

At the Marne (1914 and 1918) the French, the English, and (in the second battle) the Americans, defeated the modern Huns and saved Europe for democracy and from the rule of merciless brute force. The First Battle of the Marne has been called the sixteenth decisive battle of the world.

Before the First Battle of the Marne, September 5 to 10, 1914, the German military machine had been winning, as never an army had won before in the entire recorded history of the world. Its path had been one of treachery, of atrocities, of savagery, but one of tremendous and unparalleled victory. The Germans at home called it "the great times."

Brave little Belgium had been able to hold back the German hordes but for a short time at Liége and Namur, but, as future events proved, long enough to make possible the decisive battles at the Marne. The Germans had taken Brussels and Antwerp, had destroyed Louvain, had filled themselves with outrage and murder, had drunk of blood and wine and success until they were thoroughly intoxicated with the belief so common to drunken brutes that no men in the world can stand against them. The little Belgian army, "the contemptible little English army" (as the Kaiser called it), and the magnificent French army had been retreating day by day almost as fast as the Germans could advance. Soon Paris and then all of France would be in German hands - and what a glorious time they would have in the gayest and most beautiful capital of the world. Although bodies of German cavalry raided the coast, the German leaders, elated and intoxicated with thoughts of rich plunder and dissipation, did not turn aside in force. to follow the Belgian army and to take the Channel ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, but pushed on toward Paris. The French government, expecting a siege of the city, moved to Bordeaux.

The main forces of the Germans had turned south from the coast towards Paris with General von Kluck's army of about 200,000 men at the right or west of the German line of advance. General von Kluck was