And it is, of course, evident from what has happened since I parted from my hosts at the Château, that we have now amply succeeded during the last few weeks in bringing the retreating enemy to bay. No more masked withdrawals, no more skilful evasions, for either Hindenburg or his armies! The victories of Easter week on and beyond the Vimy Ridge, and the renewed British attack of the last few days--I am writing on May 1st--together with the magnificent French advance towards Laon and to the east of Reims, have been so many fresh and crushing testimonies to the vitality and gathering force of the Allied armies. What is to be the issue we wait to see. But at least, after the winter lull, it is once more joined; and with such an army as the War Office and the nation together, during these three years, have fashioned to his hand--so trained, so equipped, so fired with a common and inflexible spirit--Sir Douglas Haig and his lieutenants will not fail the hopes of Great Britain, of France--and of America! At the beginning of March these last words could not have been added. There was an American professor not far from me at dinner, and we discussed the "blazing indiscretion" of Herr Zimmermann's Mexican letter. But he knew no more than I. Only I remember with pleasure the general tone of all the conversation about America that I either engaged in or listened to at Headquarters just a month before the historic meeting of Congress. It was one of intelligent sympathy with the difficulties in your way, coupled with a quiet confidence that the call of civilisation and humanity would very soon--and irrevocably--decide the attitude of America towards the war. * * * * * The evening at the Château passed only too quickly, and we were sad to say good-bye, though it left me still the prospect of further conversation with some members of the Intelligence Staff on my return journey from Paris and those points of the French line for which, thanks to the courtesy of the French Headquarters, I was now bound. The last night under the little schoolmistress's quiet roof amid the deep stillness of the village was a wakeful one for me. The presence of the New Armies, as of some vast, impersonal, and yet intensely living thing, seemed to be all around me. First, as an organisation, as the amazing product of English patriotic intelligence devoted to one sole end--the defence of civilisation against the immoral attack of the strongest military machine in the world. And then, so to speak, as a moral entity, for my mind was full of the sights and sounds of the preceding days, and the Army appeared to me, not only as the mighty instrument for war which it already is, but as a training school for the Empire, likely to have incalculable effect upon the future.