In the afternoon set out for Chauny, in direction of Compiègne, where we arrive in the evening. All along the line were scattered the poor people. We have twelve on our waggon, and let them eat our food. We had our own provisions, and we gave them to these people. August 30 (Sunday). Stationed at Compiègne awaiting orders. One hears more clearly the sound of the cannon. After the news this morning I write a line. It appears that the Germans have been destroyed at St. Quentin. To-day we have assisted at a duel between a biplane and an aeroplane. I had nearest me the German aeroplane, which fell in the English lines. The officer in charge with it had with him a child of six years old, who was also a German. They were only wounded. After St. Quentin were with the English troops under the orders of the English Headquarters Staff. The rumours which tell of German defeats must be false, because the English troops retire, and we evacuate Longuart, where we destroy the station and the railway lines. 10 The retreat of the British army--it is amazing to think that there were only 45,000 men who had tried to stem the German avalanche--was developing into a run. Only some wild fluke of chance (the pious patriot sees God's hand at work, while the cynic sees only the inefficiency of the German Staff) saved it from becoming a bloody rout. It is too soon even now to write the details of it. Only when scores of officers have written their reminiscences shall we have the full story of those last days of August, when a little army which was exhausted after many battles staggered hard away from the menace of enormous odds seeking to envelop it. It was called a "retirement in good order." It was hardly that when the Commander-in-Chief had to make a hurried flight with a mounted escort, when the Adjutant- General's department, busy in the château of a French village, suddenly awakened to the knowledge that it had been forgotten and left behind (I heard a personal story of the escape that followed the awakening), and when companies, battalions, and regiments lost touch with each other, were bewildered in dark woods and unknown roads, and were shelled unexpectedly by an enemy of whose whereabouts they had now no definite knowledge. The German net of iron was drawing tighter. In a few hours it might close round and make escape impossible. General Allenby's division of cavalry had a gallop for life, when the outposts came in with reports of a great encircling movement of German horse, so that there was not a moment to lose if a great disaster were to be averted. It was Allenby himself who led his retreat at the head of his division by the side of a French guide carrying a lantern.