The passionate strain of those few days will ever rest in the memories of those who experienced it. News, vague and unexplained, of the northern invasion had fallen upon us with avalanche swiftness. Paris was almost universally regarded as its immediate objective. On August 27, the Viviani Ministry was reconstructed as an enlarged Government of National Defence, with M. Millerand in M. Messimy’s place at the Ministry of War, M. Delcassé at the Quai d’Orsay, M. Briand at the Ministry of Justice, and the Socialist M. Sembat at the Public Works. The same evening M. Millerand visited the Grand Quartier General at Vitry-le-François. “On the staircase,” he afterwards wrote, “I shook hands with General Maunoury, who was leaving for the north to take command of his new army. The Staff officers were working in tranquillity, silence, and order. The brains of the army functioned freely. General Joffre kept me long in conference. I never found him more calm, more master of himself, more sure of the future. I left him full of respect, admiration, and confidence.”[42] On the same day, General Gallieni was appointed military governor of Paris. Amongst the people of the capital, at least, this step excited keener interest, since it bore directly upon the question that was beginning to be asked on all hands——must we leave, or stay? Gallieni, who, long years before, had been Joffre’s chief in the military organisation of the colony of Madagascar, was, like him, of the type of soldier-administrator. But his temperament spoke of his Corsican origin; and he had asked for, and Joffre had refused him, an army command——circumstances to be remembered when we see him in action. A man of impeccable honesty, emphatic will, and few words, he immediately won the confidence of his men and the population at large, and in the height of the crisis presented a worthy, if somewhat stiff, personification of the new spirit which France began to exhibit before her armies had scored any victory. On August 29, the French official bulletin (communicated to an anxiously waiting crowd of journalists in a stable-like building beside the Ministry of War, thereafter to be scanned greedily as the _pièce de résistance_ of the world’s press) contained a partial revelation of the whereabouts of the enemy: “The situation _from the Somme to the Vosges_ remains as yesterday.” At the same time, the new Government, in a manifesto to the nation, declared that “our duty is tragic, but simple: to repel the invader, to hold out to the end, to remain masters of our destinies.” This phrase “_jusqu’au bout_,” repeated by Gallieni a few days later——with its homologues, “_jusqu’auboutist_,” “_jusqu’auboutisme_”——was to become for years afterwards a catchword of the general resolve to fight to a victorious finish.