Since then they have fought a great battle and fallen back fighting over a distance of nearly 100 miles. Yet it is just the same confident and cheerful army it was ten days ago. The retirement must have been a fearful ordeal. Everybody is aware of the tremendous efforts the enemy have been making to strike at the capital of France. They have been content with demonstrations on the east and with masking the fortress positions along that border; they have descended in hordes from the north; they have poured out their blood like water from the Meuse to the Somme; but they have reserved their greatest efforts and sacrifices for the north-west. It is this turning movement on the left flank of the British that has forced the allied armies to retire. Never was attack made with more reckless courage nor pressed with such relentless ferocity. And never was defence conducted with greater heroism. Every mile has been contested with stubborn gallantry, British and French retiring with their faces to the foe. Their numbers were overwhelming. They gave us no rest. Night and day they hammered away, coming on like great waves. The gaps we made were filled instantly. Their artillery, which is well handled, played upon us incessantly. Their cavalry swept down upon us with amazing recklessness. If we have heavy losses the enemy have even greater. Officers tell me that our men fought with cool gallantry. They never wavered an instant. But the pressure was irresistible. Column after column, squadron after squadron, mass after mass, the enemy came on like a battering ram crushing everything in its way. Shattered to fragments by shot and shell, the hordes of the enemy seemed instantly to renew themselves; they swarmed on all sides. Nothing but the sheer pluck, the steadfast courage and the unflinching determination of our soldiers saved the army from annihilation. The losses inflicted on the enemy must have been enormous. They attacked in solid formation, and whole brigades of infantry were decimated by the fire of our rifles and guns. No army of civilised men can endure such devastation as was wrought among the Germans in this long battle over scores of miles. The retirement was effected with admirable coolness and skill. The positions of the covering troops were well chosen, and our guns shelled the advancing columns until the dead lay in heaps along the roads and in the fields. “The enemy hung on to us like grim death,” said a wounded soldier, who insisted on remaining in the ranks. “They wanted us to retire in a direction they had determined upon. But we were not taking our marching orders from them. We went our own way, and at our own pace. We were retiring—not retreating.”