The Headquarters Staff of the German army decided otherwise. Scared by the possibility of having their left wing smashed back to the west between Paris and the sea, with their communications cut, they swung round steadily to the south-east and drove their famous wedge-like formation southwards, with the purpose of dividing the allied forces of the West from the French centre. The exact position then was this: Their own right struck down to the south-east of Paris, through Château Thierry to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre and beyond; and another strong column forced the French to evacuate Rheims and fall back in a south-westerly direction. It was not without skill, this sudden change of plan, and it is clear that the German Staff believed it possible to defeat the French centre and left centre and then to come back with a smashing blow against the army of Paris and the "contemptible" British. But two great factors in the case were overlooked. One was the value of time, and the other was the sudden revival in the spirit of the French army now that Paris might still be saved. They gave time--no more than that precious twenty-four hours--to General Joffre and his advisers to repair by one supreme and splendid effort all the grievous errors of the war's first chapter. While they were hesitating and changing their line of front, a new and tremendous activity was taking place on the French side, and Joffre, by a real stroke of genius which proves him to be a great general in spite of the first mistakes, for which he was perhaps not responsible, prepared a blow which was to strike his enemy shrewdly. 2 I had the great fortune of seeing something of that rush to the rescue which gave hope that perhaps, after all, the tragedy which had seemed so inevitable--the capture of the world's finest city--might not be fulfilled. This great movement was directed from the west, the south, and the east, and continued without pause by day and night. In stations about Paris I saw regiment after regiment entraining--men from the southern provinces speaking the patois of the south, men from the eastern departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Chalons, and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre of France in the garrisons along the Loire. They were all in splendid spirits, strangely undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance. "Fear nothing, my little one," said a dirty unshaven gentleman with the laughing eyes of d'Artagnan, "we shall bite their heads off. These brutal 'Boches' are going to put themselves in a veritable death-trap. We shall have them at last."