From the Plateau d’Amance you may see how far the Germans came and what was their object. Between the fortresses of Épinal and of Toul lies the Troueé de Mirecourt--the Gap of Mirecourt. It is said that the French had purposely left it open when they were thinking of fighting the Germans on their own frontier and not on that of Belgium. They wanted the Germans to make their trial here--and wisely, for with all the desperate and courageous efforts of the Bavarian and Saxon armies they never got near the gap. If they had forced it, however, with von Kluck swinging on the other flank, they might have got around the French army. Such was the dream of German strategy, whose realisation was so boldly and skilfully undertaken. The Germans counted on their immense force of artillery, built for this war in the last two years and outranging the French, to demoralise the French infantry. But the French infantry called the big shells “_marmites_” (saucepans), and made a joke of them and the death they spread as they tore up the fields in clouds of earth. Ah, it took more than artillery to beat back the best troops of France in a country like this--a country of rolling hills and fenceless fields cut by many streams and set among thick woods, where infantry on a bank or at a forest’s edge with rifles and rapid-firers and guns kept their barrels cool until the charge developed in the open. Some of these forests are only a few acres in extent; others are hundreds of acres. In the dark depths of one a frozen lake was seen glistening from our position on the Plateau d’Amance. “Indescribable that scene which we witnessed from here,” said an officer, who had been on the plateau throughout the fighting. “All the splendid majesty of war was set on a stage before you. It was intoxication. We could see the lines of troops in their retreat and advance, batteries and charges shrouded in shrapnel smoke. What hosts of guns the Germans had! They seemed to be sowing the whole face of the earth with shells. The roar of the thing was like that of chaos itself. It was the exhilaration of the spectacle that kept us from dropping from fatigue. Two weeks of this business! Two weeks with every unit of artillery and infantry always ready, if not actually engaged!” The general in command was directing not one but many battles, each with a general of its own; manœuvring troops across the streams and open places, seeking the cover of forests, with the aeroplanes unable to learn how many of the enemy were hidden in the forests on his front, while he tried to keep his men out of angles and make his movements correspond with those of the divisions on his right and left. Skill this requires; skill equivalent to German skill; the skill which you cannot organise in a month after calling for a million volunteers, but which grows through years of organisation.