Here is a Corps which has gone through, for the first time, the awful ordeal of a day's modern shell-fire and massed infantry attack. The men have supped full of horrors, and, at 3 A.M., hungry, weary and with nerves stretched to their utmost tension, they have received orders to move. There is not a regiment which has not lost heavily, especially in officers, and there is not a man but receives the command with his senses tangled in bewilderment. Now it should be remembered that up to this time all our dispositions had been made for an advance. The impedimenta to the rear of the firing-line were so arranged that they might the more easily follow up a British attack. There was no real thought of retiring. The British were in the place of honour on the left of the line, and intended, with our French comrades, to drive the enemy back again through Belgium. I will not say that all this was a foregone conclusion, but at least it was "confidently anticipated." Remembering this, you will perhaps realise more vividly how staggering were the contents of that telegram from French G.H.Q. The work, therefore, of clearing the roads of the transport was exceedingly difficult. This devolves upon the Q.M.G.'s department, and General Smith-Dorrien has placed on record the wholly admirable way in which it was accomplished by General Ryecroft and his Staff. But proper Staff work for all the retiring troops during the hours of darkness was even more complicated. Thus some few of the companies, with no one to guide them, start off in the wrong direction and march straight into the German lines; they are shot or captured. Others wander off to the east, struggle painfully through the shell-fire on Mons, and drift into their comrade ranks of the First Corps. Others, again, march off to the west, and are hopelessly lost; they are either captured by the flanking German corps or they get through and meet with friendly peasants, to turn up eventually at base ports or other towns. Night marching across unknown country is not always easy in peace time, with guides at the heads of columns. Now there was the added confusion of the crowds of emigrants, a perfect network of roads to choose from, and, above all, continual alarms of enemy attacks which the British had to turn to meet. The whole of the night and all the Monday was one long period of marching, fighting, marching and fighting. Early in the morning another infantry brigade, the 19th, arrived by railway, detraining at Valenciennes, and it is no exaggeration to say that the men went straight off the trains into the thick of the fight. It was a very welcome reinforcement of about 4,000 men.