feverish negotiations, and had made haste to recast the creed which had hitherto been Germany’s faith. On 27th October Berlin accepted President Wilson’s terms, which were that the only armistice to be considered must be one that made impossible the renewal of hostilities on the part of Germany, and was negotiated by a people’s Government and not by the Great General Staff. The acceptance of such conditions was tantamount to an admission of defeat in the field. On Saturday the 26th Ludendorff resigned his command. The twilight of the gods had fallen upon his old proud world, and the direction of affairs had gone for good from the hands of him and his kind. By now the condition of the German armies was in the last degree desperate. On 21st March they had had a reserve of eighty fresh divisions, and during the summer no division was returned to the line without at least a month of rest and training. By 30th October they had but one fresh division, and the intervals of rest had shrunk to nine days. There were divisions on their front which mustered less than 1,000 rifles, and the total shortage of rifles to establishment was not less than 500,000. Their casualties since March had been some 2,500,000, of which at least 1,000,000 represented permanent losses. Of the 18,000 pieces of artillery on their front on 15th July, a third had since been captured or destroyed. Worse still, they had been manœuvred into a position from which retreat was in the long run impossible. Pershing and Gouraud were about to cut their main trunk line in the south, and Haig’s deadly pressure was shepherding them northward into the gap of Liége, where, unless an armistice intervened, on the scene of their worst infamies they would suffer a more terrible Sedan. But it must not be thought that in those days the Allies, and especially the British, won easy victories. The enemy resisted with a gallantry and devotion worthy of a more honourable cause. Between the 27th September and the 11th November our First, Third, and Fourth Armies faced and defeated sixty-one divisions, of which twenty-one had been twice in the battle, eight thrice, and two four times. The rearguard actions by machine-gun posts were often brilliant and almost always resolute, and the defence of the Selle line, notably at Le Cateau, would have done credit to any troops. If we had broken through all the great prepared positions, we were none the less fighting in a country which allowed strong defences to be improvised, and the enemy did not fail to take advantage of it.