at we knew the Germans were retreating.

Such talks as I listened to that afternoon--only yesterday--at my gate,
from such a fluent, amusing, clever French chap,--a bicyclist in the
ambulance corps,--of the crossing the Meuse and the taking, losing,
re-taking, and re-losing of Charleroi. Oddly enough these were the
first real battle tales I had heard.

It suddenly occurred to me, as we chatted and laughed, that all the time
the English were here they had never once talked battles. Not one of
the Tommies had mentioned the fighting. We had talked of "home," of the
girls they had left behind them, of the French children whom the English
loved, of the country, its customs, its people, their courage and
kindness, but not one had told me a battle story of any kind, and I had
not once thought of opening the subject. But this French lad of the
ambulance corps, with his Latin eloquence and his national gift of humor
and graphic description, with a smile in his eyes, and a laugh on his
lips, told me stories that made me see how war affects men, and how
often the horrible passes across the line into the grotesque. I shall
never forget him as he stood at the gate, leaning on his wheel,
describing how the Germans crossed the Meuse--a feat which cost them so
dearly that only their superior number made a victory out of a disaster.

"I suppose," he said, "that in the history of the war it will stand as a
success--at any rate, they came across, which was what they wanted. We
could only have stopped them, if at all, by an awful sacrifice of life.
Joffre is not doing that. If the Germans want to fling away their men
by the tens of thousands--let them. In the end we gain by it. We can
rebuild a country; we cannot so easily re-create a race. We mowed them
down like a field of wheat, by the tens of thousands, and tens of
thousands sprang into the gaps. They advanced shoulder to shoulder.
Our guns could not miss them, but they were too many for us. If you had
seen that crossing I imagine it would have looked to you like a disaster
for Germany. It was so awful that it became comic. I remember one
point where a bridge was mined. We let the first divisions of artillery
and cavalry come right across on to our guns--they were literally
destroyed. As the next division came on to the bridge--up it went--men,
horses, guns dammed the flood, and the cavalry literally crossed on
their own dead. We are bold enough, but we are not so foo