A final long and enforced wait at last made it apparent that the sound was, if anything, coming nearer in this quarter. The Germans might be pushing a counter-attack southward. In any case, further progress would have been hazardous. The retreat was like the advance. Glimpses of moving men through the trees; long waits; distant knots of ambulance men waiting, or moving southward. Always the confusing echo of firing, sometimes silent for intervals, sometimes clear and close as the south-west wind lulled. So back and over the Oise, with a big leafy branch to cover my drift across the river. It was, frankly, a relief to rejoin my moving base, doing ambulance duty at Estrées, and to be on the clear road again. As I left the river, several barges of wounded were moving slowly southward. The little columns of Red Cross motors held the roads. This has been a terribly costly battle. We have held our own magnificently, but it has been against superior numbers, backed by accurate shell-fire from strongly-entrenched positions. Unless the line can be pierced on the east, the great hope, thus limiting the Germans to the few lines of communications to the northern "troué," and unless their western lines can be seriously threatened from the north-west or in Belgium, we may look for a long, wearing winter campaign, a "stalemate" in the present positions. But a good deal has still to happen before we need make up our minds for that. Creil, Monday. I have been now once again making south, to resume contact with the battle along the Aisne. You have heard the account of the melancholy condition of the country north of and around Meaux, and of the ruins of Senlis. Creil is in little better state. This was one point at which the tremendous German march upon Paris was first checked, to swing, with lost momentum, south and east, and then recoil. The roads to the north and east bear the usual signs of past warfare. Wayside entrenchments, significantly enough often facing north-west, as if the Germans, when they checked, had half prepared to meet attack from that quarter. Hastily obliterated milestones and sign-posts. Villages with a house here and there destroyed. At Cauffry, for instance, the big Mairie is burnt out, nothing else touched.