I will just give one instance of what that devotion meant, a devotion which, as has everywhere been agreed, saved the situation. Close under a ridge a battery had been in action without a moment's rest for the last six hours. One gun after another had been knocked out, the battery commander and every officer save one killed, all the men of the detachments killed or wounded, until there was left just one gun, one subaltern, and one driver. And still they kept the battery in action; still they loaded and fired, as they had been doing all through that ghastly day. "Got a drink?" said the subaltern; "a cigarette? Good! Thank God for a white man's cigarette again!" And he went on with his job. That was what "covering the movement" meant. But the battle had been won. General Smith-Dorrien, his officers and men, had accomplished the almost superhuman task thrust upon them. They had not merely held the German attack through all the long hours of that blazing August day; they had _broken_ it. For the remainder of the Retreat it never recovered its sting and energy, and so the Force and Paris were saved. Events have had time to shape themselves during the months that have lapsed since August, 1914, and it is possible to view them in a certain perspective. It has been urged that we British have exaggerated the importance of the work of the Force in the Retreat; that while we were holding a line of no more than 20 odd miles, the French were extended over a front of 400 miles against an equally strong attack; that, by the prominence given to the work of the Force to the neglect of that of the French, a distorted picture has been given of the operations during August from Alsace to the sea. To these arguments I would reply that Germany was staking everything upon that rush to Paris. For years past we had known that her intentions were to bring France to her knees within the first month or so, to admit of turning to meet Russia before that country had fully mobilised. And so, with this definite task in view, Germany concentrated her main attack through Belgium and south by Mons. She had not only her greatest strength in the armies of von Kluck and von Buelow, but she included in these masses of troops the flower of the German Army, picked regiments like the Prussian Guard, the "Iron" 3rd Corps of Brandenburg,[1] and others. Add to these facts the sustained violence of the invasion, and the concentrated hate which was levelled against Belgians and British by the invaders when the attack was continually and successfully checked, and I think that there is sufficient evidence to indicate the vital importance of the work of the British Force. Moreover, the French people themselves had, with fine generosity, recognised that it was the British Force, under God's hand, which had saved Paris: for on Sunday, August 30th, prayers of thanksgiving were offered up in the churches on behalf of our troops.