The soul of the French nation triumphed in this death struggle, and their armies, defeated on the frontier, turned after the long marches of retreat, and attacked and fought with glorious and desperate tenacity. British attention has naturally been concentrated upon the intense military situation developed before and around Paris, in which our own army played a decisive part; and the various pressures which operated upon von Kluck have now been minutely exposed. Attacked on his right flank and rear by Maunoury’s army while advancing to the main battlefield, he was compelled to counter-march first two of his corps and then his two remaining corps in order to make head against the new danger. Thus a gap of 30 miles was opened in the German line between von Kluck and von Bülow. Into this gap marched the battered but reanimated British army. The tide had turned. But the whole of this great situation about Paris was itself only complementary to the battle as a whole. The gaze of the military student must range along the whole line of the French armies, the defeat of any one of which would have been fatal. Most of all his eye will rest upon the very centre of the Paris-Verdun line, where Foch though driven back maintained his resistance. ‘My centre cedes. My right recoils. Situation excellent. I attack.’ But all the four French armies between Paris and Verdun fought with desperate valour, while Dubail and de Castelnau round the corner maintained their superb defence. And thus, weakened by its rapid advance, the whole German line came to a standstill. And as this condition was reached, the penetration by the British and by the Fifth French army on the British right, of the gap in the German line between von Bülow and von Kluck determined both these commanders in succession to retreat, and thus imposed a retrograde movement upon the whole of the invading hosts. ‘The most formidable avalanche of fire and steel ever let loose upon a nation’ had spent its force. From the moment when the German hopes of destroying the French armies by a general battle and thus of ending the war at a single stroke had definitely failed, all the secondary and incidental objectives which hitherto they had rightly discarded became of immense consequence. As passion declined, material things resumed their values. The struggle of armies and nations having failed to reach a decision, places recovered their significance, and geography rather than psychology began to rule the lines of war. Paris now unattainable, the Channel Ports—Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne—still naked, and lastly Antwerp, all reappeared in the field of values like submerged rocks when the tidal wave recedes.