Before, however, going on to talk about the St. Mihiel business, and the attack on the northern half of the fortress line, something, I think, ought to be said about another fortified position, the only one between the great Verdun-Belfort fine and the frontier, the solitary fort of Manonviller, a few miles east of Lunéville, which stood alone between it and the enemy. The mystery of Manonviller also stands alone, or almost alone, in the history of the war. I know very little about it; no one, I fancy, knows much, except, perhaps, the high authorities and some members of the garrison, and these last are prisoners in Germany. It was supposed to be immensely strong and considerably feared by the Germans. There are many stories about its fall which may or may not be true. Some people say that the garrison only lost four or five killed and wounded, that right at the beginning of the attack it was found that the telephone communication with Toul had been cut off, and even that its guns were never fired at all. But in any case it is certain that the garrison of nine hundred men surrendered on August 28th after a two days’ bombardment, probably carried out by two Austrian 305’s stationed on the frontier at Avricourt, and that it was loudly whispered and widely believed that there was something queer about the matter. Since Longwy was able to hold out for three weeks there cannot, I am afraid, be much doubt that there was something curious about the surrender of its stronger sister-fort, which was swept out of the way of the German advance like a sand-castle by the waves of the sea. After the Battle of the Grand Couronné the army of the Crown Prince of Bavaria occupied a front extending to the north-west from the frontier opposite Lunéville, past Pont-à-Mousson and Thiaucourt in the direction of Verdun, stopping some distance short of the point at which the left of the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army began. The left wing, as far as Thiaucourt, was kept busy in preventing the French from advancing on Saarburg and Metz; the right, reinforced by part of the Metz army, began at this time a determined forward movement across the plain of the Woevre to the wooded Hauts de Meuse. They had two objects in view: to break through the line of the fortresses between Verdun and Toul, and to cross the river and join hands with the right wing of the Crown Prince’s army so as to encircle Verdun.