had had of French on our own right was when one staff-officer
said in front of me that the French away to the east had been held up.
That was at Doue.

Our retreat had been solitary. The French, everybody thought, had left
us in the lurch at Mons and again at Le Cateau, when the cavalry we knew
to be there refused to help us. For all we knew the French Army had been
swept off the face of the earth. We were just retiring, and retiring
before three or four times our own numbers. We were not even supported
by the 1st Corps on our right. It was smashed, and had all it could do
to get itself away. We might have been the Ten Thousand.

But the isolation of our desperate retreat dismayed nobody, for we all
had an unconquerable belief in the future. There must be some French
somewhere, and in spite--as we thought then--of our better judgments, we
stuck to the story that was ever being circulated: "We are luring the
Germans into a trap." It was impressed upon us, too, by "the Div." that
both at Mons and Le Cateau we were strategically victorious. We had
given the Germans so hard a knock that they could not pursue us at once;
we had covered the retirement of the 1st Corps; we had got away
successfully ourselves. We were sullen and tired victors, never
defeated. If we retreated, it was for a purpose. If we advanced, the
Germans were being crushed.

The Germans thought we were beaten, because they didn't realise we knew
we were victorious the whole time.

I do not say that we were always monotonously cheerful. The night after
Le Cateau we all thought the game was up,--until the morning, when
cheerfulness came with the sun. Then we sighed with relief and
remembered a little bitterly that we were "luring the Germans on."

Many a time I have come across isolated units in hot corners who did
not see a way out. Yet if a battery or a battalion were hard hit, the
realisation of local defeat was always accompanied by a fervent faith
that "the old Fifth" was doing well. Le Cateau is a victory in the
soldier's calendar.

Le Cateau and La Bassee,
It jolly well serves them right.

We had been ten days or more on the Aisne before we grasped that the
force opposite us was not merely a dogged, well-entrenched rearguard,
but a section of the German line.

Soon after we arrived a French cavalry officer had ridden into D.H.Q.,
and after his departure it was freely rumoured that he had ridden right
round the German position. News