My Corps rendezvoused on the 26th at 4 A.M. around Suippes. The country had been thoroughly reconnoitred, and, guided by officers of the Topographical Staff, all combatant branches moved straight across country, in the good old Napoleonic method, trains and Corps Artillery only by the roads. The rain had ceased, and the going was fairly good; anyway, we all agreed that it was infinitely preferable work to stewing in dusty lanes in closed columns, with never a breath of fresh air, even though in the bottoms the soil was somewhat heavy. The men were in the best of spirits at the start—reviving the good old march to Sedan joke, ‘Mit Armen links schwenkt! Gerade aus’—but the sun came out, and by 5 P.M., when we had covered nearly twenty miles as the crow flies, faces began to look drawn and weary. Then we caught the sound of the guns in front, and the men stepped out again briskly. About 6.30 we got the order to halt and bivouac; fortunately we were close to some ponds and a stream. Our cavalry had this time come little into conflict with the enemy, but after driving in a few patrols had come on the French infantry, practically deployed for action, heading a little west of north, and had not attempted to make any impression. Indeed, there was no reason why they should, for they could see everything perfectly from some neighbouring ridges, and so had fulfilled their duties. We, at least, knew where the enemy was, and he did not know where we were. So far we had the advantage. The fight began with a race for the ridges. We had no particular advantage, and a scrimmaging fight began at once all along the line. Our artillery was in great part neutralised; so was that of the other side. It simply became a struggle of endurance—the Germans, relying on the superior discipline of their men, could afford to feed the fighting line more slowly (_i.e._ with greater distance between the following lines), and thanks to the perfection of their Staff, trained to work as nearly as possible under wartime conditions, the mechanism of the feed worked with less friction and more certainty; fresh troops were always forthcoming when they were required. On the other side the machinery wanted lubricating, owing to their radically defective conception of the nature of the infantry fight, which induced them to move to the attack in a succession of extended lines following one another too quickly; their strength melted away almost before they reached the actual fighting line, and then the Staff failed to send support quickly enough. It was soon evident that they were bleeding to exhaustion more rapidly than we were.