All I could conclude, as we forced our way back, was that the day was not against us. The movement of men was forward. The strange telepathic current that runs through villages long before reports reach them, was all of relief. It was cheerful soldiers in blue who shoved my car on to the water-logged barge on the Marne; and, after a drift downward during which we scarcely breathed, it was laughing peasants who pulled us up on the far bank. It is something to have been at least across the Marne and near on such a day, to have had the sound of those guns in one's ears, to have watched for the first time in five weeks' campaigning the forward movement of our armies. * * * * * The next morning, as soon as the barriers would let me pass, I was out again in pursuit of the receding armies. Day by day these flights became longer, and as the first glow of victory after the Marne battles passed into the deadly quietude of the long death grapple on the Aisne, day by day the difficulties of approaching the front increased. The easy smiling soldiers became again suspicious, and the constant challenges and "arrests" more numerous. Saturday, with the pursuit. North through Neufchelles again, and all but on to the banks of the Aisne. I had to leave the car, because of vanished bridges, and get forward north and west on foot. I was blocked at last in the heart of an advancing column, resting in a half burned village. The shells were bursting on the far side of the slopes. The French forces were coming up, and were dispersing as they arrived over the fields, distributing to the scattered positions. Far from our right and ahead there came the fainter sound of the guns of the British contingents, continuing the forward movement. They have advanced far since I approached behind their successful battle at Torcy. (This Torcy, on the Clignon, should not be confused with Torcy near Lagny, south of the Marne.) Occasionally, from the remote north-west, I thought I heard the echo of the same sound coming down the wind. If this were so, could it be that much desired enveloping movement from the west? A few prisoners passed in carts. All with the herded, hunted, pallid look of frightened and exhausted men. Think of their start for this great march a few weeks back, amid the shouting and flags, and to the sound of the perpetual vaunting, foolish processional--"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!" And now, lucky to escape the squalid wayside grave, the little raw brown mounds all over the fields. One or two, in the grey tunic, with the colourless face and the bare head of the prisoner, were hanging on to French officers' motors, acting as grooms or mechanics.