Tactically the arrangements were as good as could be made. When we come to the strength and direction of the enemy’s attack, we are on more doubtful ground. His strength on the British front was estimated at the time, according to all the available information, both French and English, to be at most two army corps, with perhaps one cavalry division, which would have made an equal battle; and it was not unnaturally supposed that he would attack in the general direction of his advance; that is, from the northeast. From an attack in this strength and from this direction we had nothing to fear. As it turned out, however, both the estimate of strength and the supposition of direction were inaccurate. The enemy, making full use of the wooded country in these parts, which gave excellent concealment, and strong enough to throw his forces wide, was, as we shall see, engaged on something much more ambitious; a movement which, had it succeeded (as against any other troops it might well have succeeded), would have brought disaster on the whole Allied army. At what hour precisely the Germans began their attack on the Mons position is uncertain. Some say at dawn, others just after noon. What is certain is that between 12 and 1 P.M. on Sunday the 23d, some of the men of the Royal West Kents, in support on the outskirts of Mons, were having a sing-song and watching the people home from church, and, feeling quite at their ease, had sent their shirts and socks out to wash, for all the world as if on manoeuvres. It is an interesting little scene, and one which would have seemed incomprehensible to the Germans, who by this time pictured our little army cowering in its positions. The abruptness with which the scene changed is no less characteristic. When it was reported that the enemy had turned up "at last" and that "A" company was hard-pressed at the canal, there was no more thought of sing-songs nor even of the dinner "which the orderlies had just gone to fetch"; socks and shirts appeared as if by miracle; and when the "fall-in" went, every man was there, equipped and ready for anything. It is an ordinary incident, and for that reason important; in any institution, whether it be an army or a household, it is the ordinary incidents that count. It is typical of the spirit of an army which has puzzled many even of its admirers by its strange combination of qualities: boyish ease and hilarity coupled with manly fortitude and discipline, and a most perfect and unassailable confidence in its weapons, its leaders, and itself.