ere to surrender to Krupp, his master and
theirs; the French, the British, the Russians were to surrender to Krupp
as the Germans themselves, after a few swiftly broken strikes, had
already surrendered to Krupp. Through every cogwheel in that
incomparable machinery, through every link in that iron and unending
chain, ran the mastery and the skill of a certain kind of artist; an
artist whose hands are never idle through dreaming or drawn back in
disgust or lifted in wonder or in wrath; but sure and tireless in their
touch upon the thousand little things that make the invisible machinery
of life. That artist was there in triumph; but he had no name. The
ancient world called him the Slave.

From this advancing machine of millions, the slighter array of the
Allies, and especially the British at their ultimate outpost, saved
themselves by a succession of hair's-breadth escapes and what must have
seemed to the soldiers the heartrending luck of a mouse before a cat.
Again and again Von Kluck's cavalry, supported by artillery and
infantry, clawed round the end of the British force, which eluded it as
by leaping back again and again. Sometimes the pursuer was, so to speak,
so much on top of his prey that it could not even give way to him; but
had to hit such blows as it could in the hope of checking him for the
instant needed for escape. Sometimes the oncoming wave was so close that
a small individual accident, the capture of one man, would mean the
washing out of a whole battalion. For day after day this living death
endured. And day after day a certain dark truth began to be revealed,
bit by bit, certainly to the incredulous wonder of the Prussians, quite
possibly to the surprise of the French, and quite as possibly to the
surprise of themselves; that there was something singular about the
British soldiers. That singular thing may be expressed in a variety of
ways; but it would be almost certainly expressed insufficiently by
anyone who had not had the moral courage to face the facts about his
country in the last decades before the war. It may perhaps be best
expressed by saying that some thousands of Englishmen were dead: and
that England was not.

The fortress of Maubeuge had gaped, so to speak, offering a refuge for
the unresting and tormented retreat; the British Generals had refused it
and continued to fight a losing fight in the open for the sake of the
common plan. At night an enormous multitude of Germans had come
une