"It is true that in reality the German shells are not very effective. Only about one in four explodes nicely, but it is a bad thing when, as happened to me, the shells plopped around in a diameter of fifty meters. One hears the zip-zip of bullets, the boom of the great guns, the ste-tang of our French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of noise and stench, the screams at times of dying horses and men joined with the fury of gunfire and rising shrill above it, no man may boast of his courage. There were moments when I was a coward with all of them. "But one gets used to it, as to all things. My ague did not last long. Soon I was shouting and cheering. Again we cleared the enemy out of the village of Bregy, and that was where I fell, wounded in the arm pretty badly by a bit of shell. When I came to myself a brother officer told me things were going on well and that we had rolled back the German right. That was better than bandages to me. I felt very well again, in spite of my weakness. "It is the beginning of the end, and the Germans are on the run. They are exhausted and demoralized. Their pride has been broken; they are short of ammunition; they know their plans have failed. "Now that we have them on the move nothing will save them. This war is going to be finished quicker than people thought. I believe that in a few days the enemy will be broken and that we shall have nothing more to do than kill them as they fight back in retreat." That is the story, without any retouching of my pen, of a young Lieutenant of Zouaves whom I met after the battle of Meaux, with blood still splashed upon his uniform. It is a human story, giving the experience of only one individual in the great battle, but it gives also in outline a narrative of that great military operation which has done irreparable damage to the German right wing in its plan of campaign and thrust it back across the Ourcq in a great retiring movement which has also begun upon the German centre and left. *When War Burst on Arras* [A Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES and The London Daily Chronicle.] A TOWN IN FRANCE, Oct. 7.--Arras has been the pivot of a fierce battle which, commencing Thursday, was still in progress when I was forced to leave the citadel three days later. In that period I was fortunate enough to penetrate into the firing line, and the experience is one that will never be dimmed in my memory. Like the movements of so many pawns on a mammoth chessboard was the feinting with scattered outposts to test the strength of the enemy. I saw the action open with skirmishes at Vitry-en-Artois, and next morning one of the hardest battles which make a link in the chain flung right across France of the gigantic battle of rivers was being prosecuted before my eyes.