Fortieth day of the war. Overcast sky from dawn to noon, then steady, heavy rain all the afternoon. Southwest wind, blowing in gusts. Thermometer at five P.M. 17 degrees centigrade. The Germans continue to retire north of the Marne towards Soissons. The British army has captured eleven guns, stores, ammunition, and fifteen hundred prisoners. The German retreat measures seventy kilometers in four days. All seems to go well with the allies. The heavy rain is bad for the German retreat, especially in the swampy ground they must pass through. All this cheerful news from the front gives renewed confidence to the two millions of Parisians remaining at home, who begin to feel that there is no longer any imminent danger of being besieged. What might be called a side-issue of the war appeared to-day in the shape of a new English daily newspaper published in Paris, called the _Paris Daily Post_. It consists of a small single sheet--the _Figaro_, and the _Echo de Paris_, are the only papers now printed on double sheets--and in an editorial note declares that its policy is to "preach courage and confidence." It is an unpretentious, lively, amusing little production and may eventually have a brilliant career. Many of the wounded now coming in to the hospitals are being treated for rheumatism contracted in the trenches during days and nights of exposure to the rain. A man of the East Lancashire Regiment, who had his left arm smashed by a shell, said that when his detachment were attacked at dawn in a village near Compiegne, "the terrified women and children rushed into the streets in their night gowns. Their houses were being smashed like pie-crust. It made us feel badly to see some of these poor women and children blown to pieces by the German shells. We tried to put them in whatever shelter was available." Professor Pierre Delbet, of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, relates an extraordinary conversation between a young general commanding a division of the Prussian Guard Corps and Doctor Delbet's mother, who is a venerable lady of seventy-seven. Professor Delbet went yesterday to visit his mother at her country house situated in a village on the Grand Morin River, in the heart of the region where the fighting took place a few days ago. Madame Delbet's house is in the center of the village, and on her grounds a small wooden bridge connects the courtyard and flower garden with the vegetable garden on the other bank. There are two public bridges at the ends of the village, but these had been blown up by the French engineer soldiers. Last Friday morning the Germans arrived and smashed open the double gate of Madame Delbet's house. A young general, with an eyeglass fixed to his left eye, approached, while a soldier stood with a loaded revolver pointed at the old lady's head. The general remarked with politeness: "Madame, you will let us pass over your private bridge." "I have no means of preventing you, but I warn you the bridge is not very solid."