operations in Lorraine would develop towards the north--an opinion
which will be found registered many months later in the official
records recently published. In the matter of numbers my early
estimates exaggerated the proportion of wounded to killed, while
only a few weeks ago I guessed for the number of German prisoners
in the West a number which subsequent official information conveyed
to me proved to be erroneous by between 17 and 18 per cent. I long
worked on the idea that the line from Ivangorod to Cholm was a
double line--a matter of some importance last July. I have since
found that it was single. The total reserve within and behind Paris
which decided the battle of the Marne was, I believe (though the
matter is not yet public), less large than I had suspected, and the
figures I gave would rather include the Sixth Army as well as the
Army of Paris. A few weeks ago I suggested that there was
difficulty in moving a great body of men rapidly across the Upper
Wierpz. Yet the movement, when it was made, might fairly be
described as rapid. At any rate, the aid lent to the Archduke came
more promptly than had seemed possible. I certainly thought, though
I did not say so in so many words, that the capture of the
bridgehead at Friedrichstadt would involve an immediate and
successful advance by the enemy upon Riga, and in this opinion, I
believe, no single authority, enemy or ally, differed. What has
caused the check to the enemy advance here for ten full days no one
in the West can tell, nor, for that matter, does any news from
Russia yet enlighten us.

To this criticism of the writer in the _Daily Mail_ Mr. Belloc's reply
is so final and complete that any addition would be out of place. It is
very necessary, however, that we should devote careful consideration to
the facts which prompted the publication of this criticism; and this
will be done in the succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER VII

MR. BELLOC THE PUBLICIST

So far as this article in the _Daily Mail_ was confined to an exposure
of Mr. Belloc's errors in judgement, it may be regarded as a piece of
legitimate and fair, if foolish, criticism. But the irrelevant jeering
which the article also contained, and, even more, the manner in which
the article was given publication (accompanied, as it was, by the
circulation of posters bearing th