Le Colonel l'honorable GEORGE MORRIS. _R.I.P._ Le Capitaine C. A. TISDALL, de la garde Irlandaise. Le Lieut. GEOFFREY LAMBTON. Le Lieut. GEORGE E. CECIL, des Grenadiers de la Garde. CHAPTER IV THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE (2ND BATTALION) The German General Staff at this juncture realised that a retreating army is not necessarily a beaten one. For the last ten days, with their maps spread before them, they had had the satisfaction of moving the pins and flags representing their forces continually and rapidly nearer and nearer Paris. But if the French Army--the British Army, they thought, could be safely ignored--were to succeed in escaping south, it would remain a constant menace. It might even interfere with the Emperor's spectacular entry into Paris, every detail of which had been sketched out beforehand by the officials, whose business it was to stage-manage all the theatrical pageantry of their Imperial master's movements. So a big _coup_ was wanted--a smashing blow at the French. If the centre of the French line could be pierced by the combined efforts of Von Hausen's, the Duke of Würtemberg's, and the Crown Prince's armies, and if simultaneously Von Kluck's army, which had reached Senlis, and was only twenty-five miles from Paris, could execute a swift movement to the south-east, the Fifth French Army would be caught in a vice. This strategic plan really menaced the whole of the interior of France, and had it succeeded might have resulted in her downfall. In all these calculations of the German Staff it appears to have been assumed that the British Army was practically out of action, and that whatever remained of it had in all probability been sent to reinforce the weak spot at Bar-le-Duc. To accomplish his decisive stroke, Von Kluck had to execute that most dangerous of all manoeuvres, a flank march with the object of rolling up the left of the French line. The German General Staff assumed that the left of the Fifth French Army was the left of the whole French line, and that nothing beyond a few cavalry patrols had to be reckoned with. Von Kluck was accordingly given orders to march his army to the left and attack the Fifth French Army under General Franchet d'Esperey. They knew nothing of the Sixth Army under General Maunoury, which had arrived with such dramatic suddenness in taxi-cabs from Paris.