But the defender of ancient things was (again by an accident in what is but a moment for universal history) the weaker power. In the tremendous issue it looked as though numbers and values had fallen apart, and as though the forces of barbarism, though they could never make, would now at last permanently destroy. In what mood, I say, did the defenders of the European story enter the last and most perilous of their debates? We must be able to answer that question if we are to understand even during the course of the war its tendency and its probable end. By the same road, the valley of the Oise, which had seen twenty times before lesser challenges of the kind, the North had rushed down. It was a gauge of its power that all the West was gathered there in common, with contingents from Britain in the heart of the press. The enemy had come on in a flood of numbers: the defence, and half as much as the defence, and more again. The line swung down irresistible, with the massy weight of its club aimed at Paris. If the eastern forts at Toul and at Verdun and the resistance before Nancy had held back its handle, that resistance had but enabled it to pivot with the freer swing. Not only had there fallen back before its charge all the arrayed armies of the French and their new Ally, but also all that had counted in the hopes of the defenders had failed. All that the last few years had promised in the new work of the air, all that a generation had built up of permanent fortified work, had been proved impotent before the new siege train. The barrier fortresses of the Meuse, Liége and Namur, had gone up like paper in a fire. Maubeuge was at its last days. Another week's bombardment and the ring of Verdun would be broken. The sweep has no parallel in the monstrous things of history. Ten days had sufficed for the march upon the capital. Nor had there been in that ten days a moment's hope or an hour of relaxation. No such strain has yet been endured, so concentrated, so exact an image of doom.