In the little corridor he picked up his dark-blue cap and we set out for official headquarters, followed by several of the officers. He walked rapidly, taking the street to give me the narrow sidewalk and going along with head bent against the wind. In the square, almost deserted, a number of staff cars had gathered, and lorries lumbered through. We turned to the left, between the sentry and the gendarme, and climbing a flight of wooden stairs were in the anteroom of the general's office. Here were tables covered with papers, telephones, maps, the usual paraphernalia of such rooms. We passed through a pine door, and there was the general's room--a bare and shabby room, with a large desk in front of the two windows that overlooked the street, a shaded lamp, more papers and a telephone. The room had a fireplace, and in front of it was a fine old chair. And on the mantelpiece, as out of place as the chair, was a marvellous Louis-Quinze clock, under glass. There were great maps on the walls, with the opposing battle lines shown to the smallest detail. General Foch drew my attention at once to the clock. "During the battle of the Yser," he said, "night and day my eyes were on that clock. Orders were sent. Then it was necessary to wait until they were carried out. It was by the clock that one could know what should be happening. The hours dragged. It was terrible." It must have been terrible. Everywhere I had heard the same story. More than any of the great battles of the war, more even than the battle of the Marne, the great fight along the Yser, from the twenty-first of October, 1914, to the twelfth of November, seems to have impressed itself in sheer horror on the minds of those who know its fearfulness. At every headquarters I have found the same feeling. It was General Foch's army that reënforced the British at that battle. The word had evidently been given to the Germans that at any cost they must break through. They hurled themselves against the British with unprecedented ferocity. I have told a little of that battle, of the frightful casualties, so great among the Germans that they carried their dead back and burned them in great pyres. The British Army was being steadily weakened. The Germans came steadily, new lines taking the place of those that were gone. Then the French came up, and, after days of struggle, the line held. General Foch opened a drawer of the desk and showed me, day by day, the charts of the battle. They were bound together in a great book, and each day had a fresh page. The German Army was black. The French was red. Page after page I lived that battle, the black line advancing, the blue of the British wavering against overwhelming numbers and ferocity, the red line of the French coming up. "The Man of Ypres," they call General Foch, and well they may. "They came," said General Foch, "like the waves of the sea." It was the second time I had heard the German onslaught so described.