with the spirit of _la revanche_, but of patriots who have gone to the defence of their country because they thought it time. That night, five weeks after the war had begun, we penetrated a good deal further into Alsace, to within about twenty miles of the Rhine. It was before the hard-and-fast line of the trenches had been drawn, and between the outposts on either side there was a wide stretch of No-Man’s land in the Sundgau (the corner of the Rhine plain in the angle between the ranges of the Vosges and the Bernese Jura) which was constantly traversed by both French and Germans. Colonel Quais, the officer commanding the brigade stationed at Montreux Vieux, had arranged for the following day a reconnaissance in force as far as Ferette, which lies close to the Swiss frontier a little way west of Basle. Part of his object was to round up the German troops by which it was tenanted, as they had been making themselves a nuisance to his cavalry patrols. His force consisted of two regiments of infantry and two batteries of 75’s, with detachments of dragoons and bicyclists. From Montreux Vieux to Pfetterhausen, to which they had marched that evening, was only eleven miles, and from Pfetterhausen to Ferette another seven or eight. But night marches are leisurely affairs, and to be on the ground in good time in the morning, we had to start before midnight. So after a very early dinner with the Colonel and his staff we turned in at eight o’clock on the shake-downs which he provided for us, and, after three hours’ sleep and a hasty snack, five of us packed into a smallish car and set off for what he called his little _fête_, with high hopes of what the morrow might bring forth. Unfortunately, for all of us—our kind host as well as ourselves—the promised fight did not come off, but for all that the trip was well worth making. It is not every night in the war that English journalists get a chance of a forty-mile march into German territory with an escort of between two and three thousand French troops.