In the night of September 3d, knowing that the enemy would have to leave only a rear guard on one bank of the Ourcq, General Gallieni and General Clergerie decided to march against that rear guard, to drive it back with all the weight of the Manoury army, to cut the enemy's communications, and take full advantage of his hazardous situation. Immediately the following order was addressed to General Manoury: Because of the movement of the German armies, which seem to be slipping in before our front to the southeast, I intend to send your army to attack them in the flank, that is to say, in an easterly direction. I will indicate your line of march as soon as I learn that of the British army. But make your arrangements now so that your troops shall be ready to march this afternoon and to begin a general movement east of the intrenched camp tomorrow. At ten in the morning a consultation was held by Generals Gallieni, Clergerie, and Manoury, and the details of the plan of operations were immediately decided. General Joffre gave permission to attack and announced that he would himself take the offensive on the 6th. On the 5th, at noon, the army from Paris fired the first shot; the battle of the Ourcq, a preface to the Marne, had begun. General Clergerie then told what a precious purveyor of information he had found in General von der Marwitz, cavalry commander of the German first army, who made intemperate use of the wireless telegraph and did not even take the trouble to put into cipher his dispatches, of which the Eiffel Tower made a careful collection. "In the evening of September 9th," he said, "an officer of the intelligence corps brought me a dispatch from this same Marwitz couched in something like these terms: 'Tell me exactly where you are and what you are doing. Hurry up, because XXX.' The officer was greatly embarrassed to interpret those three X's. Adopting the language of the poilu, I said to him, 'Translate it, "I am going to bolt."' True enough, next day we found on the site of the German batteries, which had been precipitately evacuated, stacks of munitions; while by the roadside we came upon motors abandoned for the slightest breakdown, and near Betz almost the entire outfit of a field bakery, with a great store of flour and dough half-kneaded. Paris and France were saved. "Von Kluck could not get over his astonishment. He has tried to explain it by saying he was unlucky, for out of a hundred governors not one would have acted as Gallieni did, throwing his whole available force nearly forty miles from his stronghold. It was downright imprudence." CHAPTER VIII JAPAN IN THE WAR