o that "bad knock" was out of her experience. She
had never won at first, but she had always won in the end; she had
won the last battle. The next day's news was worse and the next
day's still worse. The Germans seemed to be approaching Paris by
forced marches. Paris might fall--no matter! Though the French army
were shattered, one heard Englishmen say that the British would
create an army to wrest victory from defeat. The spirit of this was fine,
but one realized the enormity of the task; should the mighty German
machine crush the French machine, the Allies had lost. To say so
then was heresy, when the world was inclined to think poorly of the
French army and saw Russian numbers as irresistible.

The personal call was to Paris before the fate of Paris was to be
decided. My first crossing of the Channel had been to Ostend; the
second, farther south to Boulogne; the third was still farther south, to
Dieppe. Where next? To Havre! Events were moving with the speed
which had been foreseen with myriads of soldiers ready to be thrown
into battle by the quick march of the railroad trains.

Every event was hidden under the "fog of war," then a current
expression--meagre official bulletins which read like hope in their brief
lines, while the imagination might read as it chose between the lines.
The marvel was that any but troop trains should run. All night in that
third-class coach from Dieppe to Paris! Tired and preoccupied
passengers; everyone's heart heavy; everyone's soul wrenched;
everyone prepared for the worst! You cared for no other man's views;
the one thing you wanted was no bad news. France had known that
when the war came it would be to the death. From the first no
Frenchman could have had any illusions. England had not realized
yet that her fate was with the soldiers of France, or France that her
fate and all the world's was with the British fleet.

An Italian in our compartment would talk, however, and he would
keep the topic down to red trousers, and to the red trousers of a
French Territorial opposite, with an index finger when his gesticulatory
knowledge of the French language, which was excellent, came to the
rescue of his verbal knowledge, which was poor. The Frenchman
agreed that red trousers were a mistake, but pointed to the blue
covering which he had for his cap--which made it all right. The Italian
insisted on keeping to the trousers. He talked red trousers till the
Frenchman got out at his station, an