When the news of the occupation of St. Mihiel reached Lorraine the XXth Army Corps, which had barely finished its work there of checking a German advance from the direction of Metz, were at once ordered back to the Meuse, and the advanced guard of their cavalry by a forced night march managed to cross it at Lérouville just below Commercy, only five hours behind the German army, and got in touch with them shortly afterwards in the valley of the Aire. The dragoons at once engaged them with machine-guns, and held them till first the artillery and then the infantry of the corps came up and the battle became general. The Metz force made three separate attacks on the position which the French had taken up on the heights of the Aire, but were repulsed each time with heavy losses, and during the night they fell back on the Meuse, still, however, retaining a footing on the left bank of the river in the western suburb of St. Mihiel and the barracks of Chauvoncourt. After their battle of the day before in Lorraine the forced night march of the XXth Corps and their successful engagement on the Heights of the Aire were a magnificent performance, which had the satisfactory effect of putting an end to the bold effort of the right wing of the Metz army to effect the longed-for junction with the Crown Prince. What it unfortunately did not do was to relieve St. Mihiel. As soon as the Germans got back there they proceeded to entrench themselves strongly, and from a position near the town began to bombard the French forts in the Camp des Romains with their Austrian mammoths. Concerning this artillery position M. Lamure was told an instructive little story on one of the rather adventurous expeditions which he made to the neighbourhood of St. Mihiel some weeks after the German occupation had begun. So many stories of the same kind (including one, I believe, about a tennis-court at Tooting) were published in the first part of the war that one became rather shy of believing them, but I have my reasons for thinking that this one is probably true. Anyhow, here it is.