flowing eastwards
to the Ourcq, the Therouanne, the Gergogne, the Grivette. "From village
to village," says Colonel Buchan, "amid the smoke of burning haystacks
and farmsteads, the French bayonet attack was pressed home."

"Terrible days of life-and-death fighting! [writes a Meaux resident,
Madame Koussel-Lepine] battles of Chambry, Barcy, Puisieux,
Acy-en-Multien, the 6th, 7th, and 8th of September--fierce days to which
the graves among the crops bear witness. Four hundred volunteers sent to
attack a farm, from which only seven come back! Ambuscades, barricades
in the streets, loopholes cut in the cemetery walls, trenches hastily
dug and filled with dead, night fighting, often hand to hand, surprises,
the sudden flash of bayonets, a rain of iron, a rain of fire, mills and
houses burning like torches--fields red with the dead and with the
flaming corn fruit of the fields, and flower of the race!--the sacrifice
consummated, the cup drunk to the lees."

Moving and eloquent words! They gain for me a double significance as I
look back from them to the little scene we saw at Barcy under the
snow--a halt of some French infantry, in front of the ruined church. The
"_salut an drapeau_" was going on, that simple, daily rite which, like a
secular mass, is the outward and visible sign to the French soldier of
his country and what he owes her. This passion of French
patriotism--what a marvellous force, what a regenerating force it has
shown itself in this war! It springs, too, from the heart of a race
which has the Latin gift of expression. Listen to this last entry in the
journal of Captain Robert Dubarle, the evening before his death
in action:

"This attack to-morrow, besides the inevitable emotion it rouses in
one's thoughts, stirs in me a kind of joyous impatience, and the pride
of doing my duty--which is to fight gladly, and die victorious. To the
last breath of our lives, to the last child of our mothers, to the last
stone of our dwellings, all is thine, my country! Make no hurry. Choose
thine own time for striking. If thou needest months, we will fight for
months; if thou needest years, we will fight for years--the children of
to-day shall be the soldiers of to-morrow.

"Already, perhaps, my last hour is hastening towards me. Accept the gift
I make thee of my strength, my hopes, my joys and my sorrows, of all my
being, filled with the passion of thee. Pardon thy children their errors
of past days. Cover them with thy gl