were immediately signed the city would be bombarded, and the French, he assured me, sooner than see their beloved Paris reduced to ruins by the 42-centimetre mammoths, would certainly comply, and leave Germany free to turn her attentions and the super-mammoths which she was preparing for their especial benefit to London and England. To-day all this sounds very fantastic and foolish—the idle vapourings of an irresponsible young man of no importance. But that it was in outline the German plan there is no doubt, and, but for the heroic resistance of de Castlenau and Foch and Dubail on the eastern frontier and the taxi-cab march of Gallieni’s Paris army and the other circumstances which caused that curious flank march of von Kluck’s on the north at the moment when his part in the programme was on the eve of completion, it might have gone near to succeeding. We know that if it had it would not have ended the war, for the French would undoubtedly have sacrificed Paris and fought to the bitter end, rather than agree to the proffered peace. But up to the end of the Battle of the Marne no one could say with any approach to certainty that they would not be put to the test. That was the position when we started for Paris. The whole ordered course of modern civilized life had been upset, and anxiety and uncertainty had taken its place. Telephones and telegraphs were only used by the official world, who were nearly as much in the dark as the rest of us. Channel boats were few and far between. Long-distance trains were either not running at all or were restricted to not more than two journeys in the twenty-four hours, and they felt their way like skirmishers advancing over open country, stopping and making a prolonged halt at every single station. The journey from Havre in a carriage dimly lit by a single candle seemed as if it would never end, and I had plenty of time to reflect with mixed feelings on certain articles which had recently been published in _The Times_ pointing out the crying necessity of reducing the time of the whole journey between the two capitals to something under seven hours. This time it took rather over thirty. I was beginning to learn the first lesson of the war, the sovereign virtue of patience.