wenty-sixth battalion of
Foot Chasseurs at Pont-a-Mousson. He was given twenty-five days'
leave. The wives and children of both were at Morlaix with Madame Foch.

So little expectation of immediate war had France on July 18 that she
granted a fortnight's absence to the commander of those troops which
were expected to bear the first shock of German aggression when it came.

But I happen to know of a French family reunion held at Nancy on July
14 and the days following, which was incomplete. One of the women of
this family was married to a German official at Metz whose job it was
to be caretaker for three thousand locomotives belonging to the
imperial government and kept at Metz for "emergencies." On July 12 (as
it afterwards transpired) he was ordered to have fires lighted and
steam got up in those three thousand engines, and to keep them, night
and day, ready for use at a moment's notice.

Those smoking iron horses in Metz are a small sample of what was going
on all over Germany while France's frontier-defenders were being given
permission to visit Brittany.

But for that matter German war-preparations were going on much nearer
to Nancy than in Metz, while Foch was playing with his grandchildren at
Morlaix.

Beginning about July 21 and ending about the 25th, twelve thousand
Germans left Nancy for "points east," and six thousand others left the
remainder of French Lorraine.

The pretexts they gave were various--vacations, urgent business
matters, "cures" at German watering places. They all knew, when they
left, that Germany was mobilizing for attack upon France. They had
known it for some time before they left.

Since the beginning of July they had been working in Nancy to aid the
German attack. They had visited the principal buildings, public and
private, and especially the highest ones, with plans for the
installation of wireless at the modest price of $34. "It is so
interesting," they said, "to get the exact time, every day, from the
Eiffel Tower!"

They had also some amazingly inexpensive contrivances for heating
houses, or regulating the heating already installed, or for home
refrigeration--things which took them into cellars in Nancy--and before
they left to join their regiments they were exceedingly busy
demonstrating those things.

They were all gone when General Foch was recalled, on July 26.

On July 30 German under-officers crossed the frontier.

On August 3 Uhlans and infantrymen on moto