What he could not know, however, was the exact intentions of the Germans: whether they were going to attack the Home Army and simultaneously enter the city, or whether they would relinquish occupation until they had made certain of the destruction of the Allies. To meet the alternative he employed his habitual energy and resource; he was prepared for the two events. Even after the battle he took unlimited precautions, accumulating vast stocks of fodder and cattle in the Bois de Boulogne, until the famous playing-ground looked like a western cattle-ranch; he took, also, a careful census of the city, so that food might be apportioned to the population. As a military precaution he continued to construct trenches and defences of all sorts. Why did he pursue this mole-like activity of throwing up earth, since the danger was past? Galliéni had a double purpose: to reassure Parisians against the return of the Germans and to train the young soldier in the art of modern war. And so he built endless lines of trenches, until the country round Paris from Beauvais in the north to Fontainebleau in the south was scored and ribbed with excavations. In their depths he hid monstrous black cannon, ready to belch flame and disappear again into their pits. He left nothing to chance. A year after his appointment to the Governorship, he rose to the higher plane of Minister of War. The Viviani Cabinet had quietly given way to the Briand Administration, and, with that thoroughness of which the French are capable in great crises, they began to reconstruct their military organisation. His new post gave Galliéni a vast rôle, in which his lively temper and insatiable capacity for work found full employment. His part in the battle of the Marne had become known, and enhanced his reputation. It was realised that he had acted with immense decision. Thus he became newly popular with the Parisians, and his singular features—the eyes gleaming behind the glasses as if they were unsleeping in vigilance—were reproduced everywhere. His popularity threatened to rival that of Joffre, except that Joffre appealed more subtly and invariably to the army. The new Minister, however, was more Parisian than the Generalissimo, more distinctly Latin—Parisian, also, in a certain truculence more affected than real, for Galliéni is a tender-hearted man, a little diffident outside the strict orbit of his duty. He was particularly strenuous in his dealings with the _embusqué_. That furtive creature, who shelters behind the flag, was brought forth from his snug post in the rear. Several hundreds found employment at the Ministry of War; thousands more were scattered up and down the country in dépôts, in stores and factories, in headquarters of commanders. Galliéni routed them out mercilessly, and sent one hundred and fifty thousand of them to their regiments. From his own ministry in the Rue St. Dominique, one chilly November morning, there emerged a