rds to his soldiers: "You
broke the strength and the hopes of the enemy. That day Victory
changed her camp. She has been faithful to us ever since." It makes
one of the most picturesque stories of the war. The German offensive
which broke out, as we know, along the whole of their new Marne front
on July 15th, had been exactly anticipated for days before it began
by General Gouraud and his Staff. The Fourth French Army, which
Gouraud commanded, was lying to the north-east of Rheims, and the
German attack on the Monts de Champagne, already the scene in 1916
and 1917 of so much desperate fighting, was meant to carry the German
line down to the Marne that same day. Gouraud was amply informed by
his intelligence staff, and his air service, of the enemy preparations,
and had made all his own. The only question was as to the exact day
and hour of the attack. Then by a stroke of good fortune, at eight
o'clock on the very evening preceding the attack, twenty-seven prisoners
were brought in--of whom some are said to have been Alsatian--and
closely questioned by the Staff. "They told us," said Gouraud, "that
the artillery attack would begin at ten minutes past midnight, and the
infantry attack between three and four o'clock that very night. I
thereupon gave the order for our bombardment to begin at 11.30 p.m. in
order to catch the assembling German troops. I had 200 _batteries
secretes_ ready--of which the enemy had no idea--which had given
beforehand no sign of their existence. Then we sat with our watches in
our hands. Was it true--or not true? 12.5--12.6--12.8--12.9.--Probably
it was a mare's nest. 12.10--_Crac!_--the bombardment had begun. We
sprang to our telephones!" And presently, as the captured German
officers began to come in, their French captors were listening to
their bewildered astonishment "at the number of our batteries they had
never discovered, which were on none of their maps, and only revealed
themselves at the very moment of their own attack."

Meanwhile, the first French position was not intended to be held. The
advance posts were told to delay and break up the enemy as much as
possible, but the famous Monts were to be abandoned and the real
resistance was to be offered on a position intermediate between the
first and second position, and so densely held that no infiltration of
the enemy was to be possible. Everything happened, for once, really
"according to plan." The advance posts, whose order was "to sacri