of the First Corps crossed
after sharp fighting, and, in the course of "a gigantic man-hunt" in and
around the town, took a large number of German prisoners, before, by
nightfall, coming into touch with the left of the French Fifth Army
under Franchet d'Espercy. At Dornans you are only a few miles north of
the Marshes of St. Gond, where General Foch, after some perilous
moments, won his brilliant victory over General Billow and the German
Second Army, including a corps of the Prussian Guards; while at Chalons
I look up from a record I am reading of the experiences of the Diocese
during the war, written by the Bishop, to watch for the distant
cathedral, and recall the scene of the night of September 9th, when the
German Headquarters Staff in that town, "flown with insolence and wine,"
after what is described as "an excellent dinner and much riotous
drinking," were roused about midnight by a sudden noise in the Hotel,
and shouts of "The French are here!" "In fifteen minutes," writes an
officer of the Staff of General Langle de Gary, "the Hotel was empty."

At Epernay and Chalons those French officers who were bound for the
fighting line in Champagne, east and west of Reims, left the train; and
somewhere beyond Epernay I followed in thought the flight of an
aeroplane which seemed to be heading northwards across the ridges which
bound the river valley--northwards for Reims, and that tragic ghost
which the crime of Germany has set moving through history for ever,
never to be laid or silenced--Joan of Arc's Cathedral. Then, at last, we
are done with the Marne. We pass Bar-le-Duc, on one of her tributaries,
the Ornain; after which the splendid Meuse flashes into sight, running
north on its victorious way to Verdun; then the Moselle, with Toul and
its beautiful church on the right; and finally the Meurthe, on which
stands Nancy. A glorious sisterhood of rivers! The more one realises
what they have meant to the history of France, the more one understands
that strong instinct of the early Greeks, which gave every river its
god, and made of the Simois and the Xanthus personages almost as real as
Achilles himself.

But alas! the whole great spectacle, here as on the Ourcq, was sorely
muffled and blurred by the snow, which lay thick over the whole length
and breadth of France, effacing the landscape in one monotonous
whiteness. If I remember rightly, however, it had ceased to fall, and
twenty-four hours after we reached Nancy, it