rs were scanned; almost reluctantly we were
allowed to pass on, to the Secret Region of Crucifix Corner, which
spying eyes must not see--the region of aeroplane hangars, endless
hangars, lost among trees, and melting dimly into a dim horizon, their
low, rounded roofs "camouflaged" in a confusion of splodged colours.

There was so much to see--so much which was abnormal, and belonged to
war--that we might have passed without glancing at a line of blue water,
parallel with our road at a little distance, had not Brian said, "Have
we come in sight of the Ourcq? We ought to be near it now. Don't you
know, the men of the Marne say the men of the Ourcq did more than they
to save Paris?"

The Becketts had hardly heard of the Ourcq. As for me, I'd forgotten
that part in the drama of September, 1914. I knew that there was an
Ourcq--a canal, or a river, or both, with a bit of Paris sticking to its
banks: knew it vaguely, as one knows and forgets that one's friends'
faces have profiles. But Brian's words brought back the whole story to
my mind in a flash. I remembered how Von Kluck was trapped like a rat,
in the _couloir_ of the Ourcq, by the genius of Gallieni, and the
glorious cooeperation of General Manoury and the dear British
"contemptibles" under General French.

It was a desperate adventure that--to try and take the Germans in the
flank; and Gallieni's advisers told him there were not soldiers enough
in his command to do it. "Then we'll do it with sailors!" he said.
"But," urged an admiral, "my sailors are not trained to march."

"They will march without being trained," said the defender of the
capital. "I've been in China and Madagascar, I know what sailors can do
on land."

"Even so, there will not be enough men," answered the pessimists.

"We'll fill the gaps with the police," said the general, inspired
perhaps by Sainte-Genevieve.

So the deed was dared; and in a panic at sight of the mysteriously
arriving troops, Von Kluck retreated from the Ourcq to the Aisne. It was
when he heard how the trick had been played and won by sheer bravado,
that he cried out in rage, "How could I count on such a _coup_? Not
another military governor in a hundred would have risked throwing his
whole force sixty kilometres from its base. How should I guess what a
dare-devil fool Gallieni would turn out? But if Trochu, in '70, had been
the same kind of a fool, we should never have got Paris!"

Half the ghosts in history seemed to haun