eemed them all by a national heroism
beyond the highest words of praise, and by a fine struggle for
efficiency and organization which were lamentably lacking in the early
days of the war. Knowing now the frightful blunders committed at the
outset, and the hair's-breadth escape from tremendous tragedy, the
miracle of the sudden awakening which enabled France to shake off
her lethargy and her vanity, and to make a tiger's pounce upon an
enemy which had almost brought her to her knees is one of the
splendid things in the world's history which wipe out all rankling
criticism.

Yet then, before the transformation, the days were full of torture for
those who knew something of the truth. By what fatal microbe of folly
had the French generals been tempted towards that adventure in
Alsace? Sentiment, overwhelming common sense, had sent the
finest troops in France to the frontiers of the "lost provinces," so that
Paris might have its day of ecstasy round the statue of Quand-Meme.
While the Germans were smashing their way through Belgium,
checked only a little while at Liege and giving a clear warning of the
road by which they would come to France, the French active army
was massed in the east from Luxembourg to Nancy and wasting the
strength which should have been used to bar the northern roads, in
pressing forward to Mulhouse and Altkirch. It gave Georges Scott the
subject of a beautiful allegory in L'Illustration--that French soldier
clasping the Alsatian girl rescued from the German grip. It gave
Parisian journalists, gagged about all other aspects of the war zone, a
chance of heroic writing, filled with the emotion of old heartaches now
changed to joy. Only the indiscretion of a deputy hinted for a moment
at a bad reverse at Mulhouse, when a regiment recruited from the
South, broke and fled under the fire of German guns because they
were unsupported by their own artillery. "Two generals have been
cashiered." "Some of the officers have been shot." Tragic rumours
leaked into Paris, spoiling the dream of an irresistible advance.

So far, however, neither Paris nor the French public as a whole had
any inkling of graver things than this. They did not know--how could
they know anything of this secret war?--that on all parts of the front
the French armies' were falling back before the German invasion
which bore down upon them in five great columns of overwhelming
strength; and that on the extreme left, nearest to Paris, the French