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 On August 15, 1914, the Empire of Japan issued an ultimatum to Germany. She demanded the evacuation of Tsing-tau, the disarming of the warships there and the handing over of the territory to Japan for ultimate reversion to China. The time limit for her reply was set at 12 o’clock, August 24th. To this ultimatum Germany made no reply, and at 2:30 P. M., August 23d, the German Ambassador was handed his passports and war was declared. The reason for the action of Japan was simple. She was bound by treaty to Great Britain to come to her aid in any war in which Great Britain might be involved. On August 4th a note was received from Great Britain requesting Japan to safeguard British shipping in the Far East. Japan replied that she could not guarantee the safety of British shipping so long as Germany was in occupation of the Chinese province of Tsing-tau. She suggested in turn that England agree to allow her to remove this German menace. The British Government agreed, on the condition that Tsing-tau be subsequently returned to China. The Japanese Government in taking this stand was acting with courage and with loyalty. Toward individual Germans she entertained no animosity. She had the highest respect for German scholarship and German military science. She had been sending her young men to German seats of learning, and had based the reorganization of her army upon the German military system. But she did not believe that a treaty was a mere “scrap of paper,” and was determined to fulfil her obligations in the treaty with England.