So much the poilus knew; that comfort supported them. Most of the high company of Joffre’s captains were still with them, winning fresh laurels——Foch, Petain, and Haig, Castlenau, Humbert, Langle, Sarrail, Franchet d’Espérey, Mangin, Guillaumat, Pulteney, Nivelle, Maud’huy, Micheler, and many another. Soon the world at large understood that this strange overturn of fortune was the base of all subsequent victories in the same good cause. More than this——that a man had conceived, designed, organised, and controlled it, and so earned enduring fame——might be vaguely felt, but could not be certainly known until the passage of time allowed it to be said that, as surely as there were warts on Cromwell’s nose, there were shadows to the lights of the record of victory. At length, a true picture is possible; and instead of a play of blind forces, or a senseless “miracle,” we see a supremely dramatic revolt of outraged reason, nobly led, and justly triumphing. The German conspiracy failed on the Marne not by any partial fault or executive error, but by the logic of its most essential characteristics. It was a masterpiece of diabolical preparation: it failed, when the quickly-awakened French mind grappled with it, from dependence upon a rigid mechanism, and the inability of its authors to adjust it to unexpected circumstances. It was a wager on speed——for the enveloping movement bore in it the germs of the ultimate disturbance; that is to say, it presumed the stupidity or pusillanimity of the Republican Command, and this presumption proved fatal. These faults were aggravated by disunion among the army leaders and disillusion among the men, while the Allies were inspired to an almost perfect co-operation. Already delayed and weakened in Belgium, the invading armies saw their surplus strength evaporating in the long pursuit, their dislocated line caught in a sudden recoil, and to be saved from being rent asunder only by closing the adventure. In the disastrous moment when Kluck and Bülow turned in opposite directions, the proudest war school in the world was beaten, and humiliated, by a stout burgess of Rivesaltes. Long before the war itself became hateful, this thought worked bitterly. Criminals do not make the best soldiers. Moltke was cashiered, with him Kluck and Hausen, and we know not how many more. It was the twilight of the heathen gods.