"The enemy hung on to us like grim death," said a wounded soldier. "They wanted us to retreat in a direction that would best suit their plans. But we were not taking marching orders from them. We went our own way at our own pace. We were retiring, not retreating." Then on the fifth of September came General Joffre's appeal to the defenders of civilization, and particularly to the French soldiers: "The hour has come to hold our positions at any cost and to fight rather than to retreat.... No longer must we look at the enemy over our shoulders, for the time has come to put forth all our efforts in attacking and defeating him." A French writer has said of the retreat, which by order of General Joffre had now come to an end, "Their bodies retreated, but never their souls;" and he might have added of the German advance, "It was an advance of bodies, not of souls." It was material might in men and guns forcing back an army weaker in everything except soul and spirit. The World War has shown over and over again, not only at the Marne but at a hundred other places and in a hundred other ways, that soul and spirit are the real conquerors and that God is not always, as Napoleon said, on the side of the larger battalions. The Germans had come on flushed with success and egotism, destroying French property, looting, and dissipating. Their spirit was the spirit they found in the French wine cellars, and as for soul, as civilized people understand the word, they had none. They were an army of tired, conquering brutes. Their morale was low because of their great success and all that had accompanied it of feasts and slaughter. The morale of the French was never higher. Every day and every hour they had been compelled to retreat, giving up, giving up all that they loved even better than life itself to these brutes, until the brain of the French army said on the evening of September 5, 1914, "You have gone so far in order that you may now stand successfully." And in the morning at dawn, it was not only the bodies of the French soldiers that hurled themselves against the invaders, but the souls of French men, the soul of France; and all along the line from Verdun to Meaux, under the gallant leadership of Manoury, Foch, Sarrail, Castelnau, and others, the French armies held. If they had not held--not only held but attacked--all of future history would be different. General Foch, commander in chief at the Second Battle of the Marne, inspired his troops in this first battle to supernatural bravery. He knew they must not yield, so with his right broken, his left shattered, he attacked with his center. It was that or retreat. His message to the commander-in-chief, General Joffre, will never be forgotten. "My left has been forced back, my right is routed. I shall attack with the center."