The French fell back because all the weight of the German army was thrown against France, while the Austrians were left to look after the slowly mobilizing Russians. Two million five hundred thousand men on their first line the Germans had, as we know now, against the French twelve hundred thousand and Sir John French's army fighting one against four. To make sure of saving Paris as the Germans swung their mighty flanking column through Belgium, Joffre had to draw in his lines. The Germans came over the hills as splendidly as the French had gone. They struck in all directions toward Paris. In Lorraine was their left flank, the Bavarians, meant to play the same part to the east that von Kluck played to the west. We heard only of von Kluck; nothing of this terrific struggle in Lorraine. From the Plateau d'Amance you may see how far the Germans came and what was their object. Between the fortresses of Epinal and of Toul lies the Trouée 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 realization 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 out-ranging the French, to demoralize 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 viewpoint on the Plateau d'Amance.