with motor-cars, for the
aeroplanes were few in number.

On the 4th of September Wing Commander Samson, having started out with
two cars, one of them fitted with a Maxim gun, heard at Cassel by
telephone that six German officers in a motor-car had just passed
through Bailleul on their way to Cassel. The steep hill down from Cassel
to the plain beneath offered him an excellent point of vantage to lie in
wait for them, but he was unwilling to take it, for a fight close to the
town would have given the Germans an excuse for pretending that they had
been attacked by civilians, and for shooting some of the inhabitants. So
he went out to meet them, and engaged them at a range of five hundred
yards on the Cassel-Bailleul road. Two of the Germans were wounded, and
their car made off to Bailleul. Wing Commander Samson lay in wait for
them for almost two hours, in the hope that they would return reinforced
to continue the engagement. During this time an old French captain of
gendarmes, about sixty-five years of age, with a long-barrelled pistol,
arrived in a limousine, accompanied by his wife. He had raised a little
army of ten gendarmes, who came up soon after, armed with carbines.
Madame and the limousine then retired from the battle-field, while the
gallant captain disposed his army behind the hedge to await the return
of the enemy. But the enemy did not return; a message from the Bailleul
post office told how they had halted only three minutes in Bailleul, and
how they and all the other German military cars in Bailleul had gone
back post-haste to Lille, leaving behind them a quantity of wine which
they had collected from the residents. 'We had a tremendous reception',
says Air Commodore Samson, 'from the inhabitants of Cassel, who had
enjoyed a splendid view of our little engagement from their commanding
position on the hill-top. I was pleased that they had seen Germans
running away, as it would remove from their minds that 1870 feeling
which there is little doubt the Germans still produced in the minds of
civilian Frenchmen. This fight gave us a prestige in the villages
greater than its result called for. Probably the six German officers
reported that they had run up against tremendous odds.'

In the course of the next few weeks there were many such adventures. On
the 5th of September, the eve of the battle of the Marne, General Bidon
reported that the Germans, who had occupied Lille in force, were about
to leave, and that