*VICTORY.* *CHAPTER XXXI.* *THE LAST DAY.* By the first days of November 1918 the war was won. In October both Turkey and Bulgaria had been beaten to the ground. On the 4th of November Austria capitulated. Ludendorff had resigned, the German Emperor had sought refuge at Army Headquarters from the troubles of his capital, the German navy had mutinied, and a revolution was beginning in Berlin. Foch was on the eve of his last step in the West. The Americans were moving on Sedan. Haig was in the position of Wellington on the eve of Waterloo, when he raised his hat as a signal for "Everything to go in." On 1st November Valenciennes fell. On 4th November Haig attacked on the 30 miles between that city and the Sambre. Twenty British divisions scattered thirty-two German divisions, taking 19,000 prisoners and more than 450 guns. That day broke the enemy’s resistance. Henceforth he was not in retreat but in flight, and the two wings of his armies were separated for ever. There remained only the 50 miles between Avesnes and Mezières as an avenue of escape for all the German forces of the south, and Foch was preparing to swing his right wing north of Metz to close the last bolt-hole. If a negotiated armistice did not come within a week there would be a compulsory armistice of complete collapse and universal surrender. That day Germany appointed delegates to sue for peace. On the 8th, Rawlinson occupied Avesnes and Byng reached the skirts of Maubeuge. The first week of that month of November the weather was wet and chilly, very different from the bright August when British troops had last fought in that region. The old regular forces which in 1914 had then borne the shock of Germany’s first fury had mostly disappeared. Many were dead, or prisoners, or crippled for life, and the rest had been dispersed through the whole British army. The famous first five divisions, which had made the Retreat from Mons, were in the main composed of new men. But there were some who had fought steadily from the Sambre to the Marne and back again to the Aisne, and then for four years in bitter trench battles, and had now returned, after our patient fashion, to their old campaigning ground. Even the slow imagination of the British soldier must have been stirred by that strange revisiting. Then he had been marching south in stout-hearted bewilderment, with the German cavalry pricking at his flanks. Now he was sweeping to the north-east on the road to Germany, and far ahead his own cavalry and cyclists were harassing the enemy rout, while on all the eastern roads his aircraft were scattering death.