This ravine was in the heart of the forest. It was well hidden; it might be defended. There was water in it; and there were farms upon the borders of the forest where food might be had. When, a little before dawn, a German force came back and descended upon them, the men melted before it like the morning mists before the sun; and the Germans did not know what to do, so they made camp, and cooked, and ate, and slept. And the men of the regiment made their way, singly, and by twos and threes, through the forest toward the ravine that was the rendezvous. This spot was called in your tongue, gentlemen, the Ravine of the Cold Tooth. III Now modern warfare, gentlemen, is a curious and inconsistent thing. It is vast, and yet it is minute. This battered regiment, added to the French armies at that moment, would have been of small account. A burst of shrapnel, a mine, an unimportant counter thrust might have accounted for them all. Their weight in an attack would have been inconsiderable. But this regiment which did not know how to surrender, and which was at large behind the German lines, was another matter, my friends. It was worth well nigh a division to France. For an army is as vulnerable as it is vast, gentlemen; and it can do only one thing at a time. The Emperor discovered this truth, long ago, in Spain. When he scattered his army to overcome the guerillas, he exposed himself to the blows of the Iron Duke; and when he effected a concentration to attack Wellington, the Spanish peasants sliced off every straggler. He was incessantly harassed, and he lost that campaign; and that was his first defeat. The warfare of today--or, let us say, the warfare of yesterday, which we hope will never be the warfare of tomorrow--the warfare of yesterday was like that. The army’s front is like the front of a dam, vast and impregnable; but behind, that front is bolstered and strengthened and buttressed by many little lines of communication and supply, just as a dam may be buttressed on the lower side. A division may shatter itself in vain against the army’s front; a hundred men may cut one of those little lines behind. This was the fact which aided Jacques Fontaine and his men, the regiment. You must understand, also, gentlemen, that in the heat of open battle, a fighting line is an unstable thing. It sways, and bends, and yields, and rebounds; and fragments are broken off from it. They return to their places, or they do not return. At times, the line itself is shattered, when it grows too thin. And when the line is shattered, its component parts are thrown to every side. In open country, these component parts--men, gentlemen--may be run down and sabred by the cavalry, or they may surrender.