the airman said, "to look down upon these
hundreds and thousands of moving military columns, the long gray lines
of the Kaiser's picked troops, some marching in a northerly, others in a
northeasterly direction, and all moving with a tremendous rapidity.

"The retreat was not confined to the highways, but many German soldiers
were running across fields, jumping over fences, crawling through
hedges, and making their way through woods without any semblance of
order or discipline.

"These men doubtless belonged to regiments which were badly cut up in
the fierce fighting which preceded the general retreat. Deprived of the
majority of their officers, they made a mere rabble of fugitives, Many
were without rifles, having abandoned their weapons in their haste to
escape their French and British pursuers."

GERMANS ABANDON GUNS

The London Times correspondent describes the German retreat in a
hurricane, with rain descending in torrents, the wayside brooks swollen
to little torrents.

"The gun wheels sank deep in the mud, and the soldiers,
unable to extricate them, abandoned the guns," he said.

"A wounded soldier, returned from the front, told me
that the Germans fled as animals flee which are cornered and
know it.

"Imagine the roadway littered with guns, knapsacks, cartridge
belts, Maxims and heavy cannon. There were miles of
roads like this.

"And the dead! Those piles of horses and those stacks
of men I have seen again and again. I have seen men shot so
close to one another that they remained standing after death.

"At night time the sight was horrible beyond description.
They cannot bury whole armies.

"In the day time over the fields of dead carrion birds
gathered, led by the gray-throated crow of evil omen with a
host of lesser marauders at his back. Robbers, too, have
descended upon these fields.

"Trainload after trainload of British and French troops
swept toward the weak points of the retreating host.

"The Allies benefited by this advantage of the battle-ground;
there is a network of railways, like the network of a
spider's web."

FIGHTING DESCRIBED BY U.S. OFFICERS

Two military attaches of the United States embassy at Paris, Lieut.-Col.
H. T. Allen and Capt. Frank Parker, both of the Eleventh cavalry,
U.S.A., returned on September 15 from an automobile trip over the
battlefield where from September 8 until the night of September 11 the
French and Germ