That was how the position in the north presented itself to the armies in the east, when they had time to look beyond their own share in the common defence, though as a matter of fact they were much too fully occupied to take the calm and dispassionate view of the situation which is now possible. A soldier during a modern battle can see and understand nothing of what is going on except on his own immediate front. He is in a state of complete ignorance as to what may be happening to the other half of his own battalion in the next village. But these men were hundreds of miles from the events in Flanders. Even their chiefs can have known very little of what was going on. Only one thing was certain. All the news there was was bad news. Everywhere France and her armies were getting the worst of it, and all that the individual soldier could do was to obey his orders and do his own bit of fighting with all the courage and endurance he could command. I suppose that if we could see into the minds of the rank and file of the first and second armies in those black days of disaster and doubt, we should find that the one thing that sustained them, next to their proud love of France, was the thought that they had Belfort and Epinal and Toul and Verdun behind them. They had been brought up in the belief that the four famous fortresses were to be the main defence against the invading Germans, they knew nothing of the crushing effects of mammoth siege guns, and believed that the forts of Liége were still holding out, and possibly, if they had been left to their own devices, they would have fallen back at once, as soon as they realized that the offensive was over, on the solid protection of these bulwarks of the frontier. Fortunately their generals knew better, and the series of battles that saved the entire line, and therefore France, was fought in the open country, well in advance of the fortresses. But the fine strategy and inspiring leadership of de Castelnau and Dubail and Pau and Foch, magnificent as they were, could have done nothing without the marvellous spirit of the officers and men under their command. And that spirit, after nearly a year and a half of the war, is more alive and vigorous than ever. The point is worth dwelling upon, because of its bearing on the future. The French in all probability have had their worst time and the Germans their best. But even if that is not the case, even if our Allies and we have to go through deeper waters still, we have this to depend upon, that those armies of the east, like their brother soldiers who fought at Charleroi and on the Marne, never once despaired, even when they might well have thought that their cause was hopelessly lost. Instead they first set their backs to the wall, and organized victory out of defeat, and then contentedly settled down to a method of fighting entirely foreign to the genius of their race. The fourth stage is yet to come, but as to the results of it we need have no fears.