Another rousing shout, which soon merged into the cheery strains of "All aboard for Dixie," and the battery began a march, this time in the right direction, which only stopped at 2 A.M. for the sake of the horses. The men were ready to go on for a week. The great Retreat had ended. The Advance had begun. How and why the tide turned against the invaders at that, for them, most critical moment we cannot exactly tell. It was, as I see it, a combination of circumstances. There was the imminence of the Russian invasion into Prussia, and it was said that the Germans withdrew two army corps from the Western front to meet it. There was the sudden production by the French Commander-in-Chief of an entirely new French army from behind Paris to attack the German right. But one thing, at least, is certain. Von Kluck made, perhaps, the biggest mistake in his life in imagining that "the contemptible little army" which he and his legions had been hunting for a fortnight was now too dispirited and broken for further fighting; and, with that conviction in his mind, he started to do the very thing which the most elementary military textbooks tell you is absolutely wrong. He moved his army across the unbroken front of a hostile force. General Smith-Dorrien had been compelled to do the same thing with the Second Corps only three days before. But he did it with the full knowledge of the dangers, and he took every possible precaution to obviate them. He succeeded. Von Kluck, in his delusion, saw no danger. He failed. "I should conceive it," says Sir John French, "to have been about noon on September 6th ... that the enemy realised the powerful threat that was being made against the flank of his columns moving south-east, and began the great retreat which opened the battle of the Marne." * * * * * And there I draw the tableau curtains on the first act of the drama. How inadequately the story has been told, or rather outlined, no one is more conscious than the writer. For every omission the critics may find, I will find two. But if I have so written that the great-hearted public may realise a little more of what the Retreat from Mons meant to the lads of ours who worked and fought so marvellously, to themselves at home, to our brothers and sisters overseas, then indeed I am satisfied. Of necessity I have had to omit a great deal which may not be told until the war has ended. To an officer on the active list freedom of speech is rightly denied. But some day I shall hope to write in fuller detail and to do more justice to the work of individuals. It is only right that the public should learn the actual facts.