In all that follows it is necessary to add in, by way of reinforcements on the German side, the very great moral encouragement which the enemy had received by their triumphal passage through Belgium. They were in overwhelming strength; their heavy guns had crushed the fortresses in a few hours like so many egg-shells; they had, for many a long year, believed themselves invincible as against the world; and now they were marching directly upon Paris with the confident hope that within three months France would have ceased to exist as a nation, and that by the end of the year the war would be finished, with terms of peace dictated by their all-highest and supremely-powerful deity, the Kaiser. It was, too, not merely an army disciplined and trained in the minutest details of war which was thus bludgeoning forward into France; it was, in effect, a nation in arms. A nation which, for many a long year past, had been educated to regard war as the greatest of all earthly things---a supreme issue to which all the sciences and arts of the preliminary years of peace were to be directed. It was a nation which regarded as fully legitimate any means whatever to the supreme end desired. I recall a remark made to me during the South African War by a Prussian naval officer. "You English," he said, "do not know the rudiments of war. When the day comes for us to go to war you shall see how we deal with the men, women and children. With us terror is our greatest weapon." To-day the world knows how that weapon has been mercilessly wielded; and how impotent it has been. On her side Britain was equally united, but in a different sense. She had taken up the gauntlet because her people were assured that the cause was a just one. In those early days the Expeditionary Force was not concerned one way or the other with the reasons for its presence in France. The men were, for the most part, quite ignorant of the facts; they were there as a professional army to do their "bit," as they had often had to do it before, and I cannot recall a single instance during the first month where the men spoke of the meaning of the war. In numbers they were hopelessly insignificant beside the enormous masses ranged against them, but, for its size, the army with the colours has always been recognised the world over as without a peer.