‘Avec une ténacité, permettez-moi de dire, toute anglaise, avec les débris de vos divisions décimées, submergées par le flot ennemi, vous avez reformé, sans vous lasser, des unités nouvelles que vous avez engagées dans la lutte, et qui nous ont en fin permis de former la digue où ce flot est venu se briser. Cela aucun des témoins français ne l’oubliera.’ Immediately after this disaster, which had brought the Germans within forty miles of Paris, and Paris within range of their ‘freak’ gun, Marshal Foch withdrew from Flanders his force of about eight Divisions, and transferred them southwards to the French front. Next, he asked that four British Divisions might be moved down to the Somme, so as to ensure the connection between the French and British forces about Amiens; and, ‘after carefully weighing the situation,’ wrote Sir Douglas Haig, ‘I agreed to this proposal.’ But the Generalissimo’s resources still fell short of the plans he was maturing. ‘On the 13th July a further request was received from Marshal Foch that these four British Divisions might be placed unreservedly at his disposal, and that four other British Divisions might be dispatched to take their places behind the junction of the Allied Armies. This request,’ wrote the British Commander-in-Chief, ‘was also agreed to, and the 15th, 34th, 51st and 62nd British Divisions, constituting the XXIInd Corps, under Command of Lieut.-General Sir H. Godley, were accordingly sent down to the French front.’[125] We resume our chronicle, therefore, with the record of the 62nd Division in the counter-offensive by Marshal Foch, which he launched on July 18th, and which, by repeated hammer-strokes, increasing in strength and velocity, was to bring the war to its appointed end. Exactly a hundred days elapsed between July 18th and October 26th, when Ludendorff’s resignation was accepted, and he left German Army Great Headquarters. Before resuming it, however, for the space of those hundred days, a word, though not strictly within our province, may be said about Haig’s decision on July 15th. We are to recall that the Allies had been defeated three times in less than four months, and had given up far more ground than was ever contemplated in the previous winter Councils. A German gun had found the range of Paris, and might find the range of the Channel ports. The secrets of the autumn of victory were locked up in the harvester’s brain; yet he asked for four _plus_ four Divisions to be moved from the British to the French front. We should leave the matter there: all the papers have not yet been published; but perhaps we may quote at this point the reasoned opinion of Major-General Sir F. Maurice: