ronne; so that when we stood at last on the famous ridge
immediately north of the town which saw, on September 8th, 1914, the
wrecking of the final German attempt on Nancy, there was not much
visible except the dim lines of forest and river in the plain below. Our
view ought to have ranged as far, almost, as Metz to the north and the
Vosges to the south. But at any rate there, at our feet, lay the Forest
of Champenoux, which was the scene of the three frantic attempts of the
Germans debouching from it on September 8th to capture the hill of
Amance, and the plateau on which we stood. Again and again the 75's on
the hill mowed down the advancing hordes and the heavy guns behind
completed their work. The Germans broke and fled, never to return. Nancy
was saved, the right of the six French Armies advancing across France,
at that very moment, on the heels of the retreating Germans, in the
Battle of the Marne, was protected thereby from a flank attack which
might have altered all the fortunes of the war, and the course of
history; and General Castelnau had written his name on the memory
of Europe.

_But_--the Kaiser was not there! Even Colonel Buchan in his admirable
history of the war, and Major Whitton in his recent book on the campaign
of the Marne, repeat the current legend. I can only bear witness that
the two French staff officers who walked with us along the Grand
Couronne--one of whom had been in the battle of September 8th--were
positive that the Kaiser was not in the neighbourhood at the time, and
that there was no truth at all in the famous story which describes him
as watching the battle from the edge of the Forest of Champenoux, and
riding off ahead of his defeated troops, instead of making, as he had
reckoned, a triumphant entry into Nancy. Well, it is a pity the gods did
not order it so!--"to be a tale for those that should come after."

One more incident before we leave Lorraine! On our way up to the high
village of Amance, we had passed some three or four hundred French
soldiers at work. They looked with wide eyes of astonishment at the two
ladies in the military car. When we reached the village, Prince R----,
the young staff officer from a neighbouring Headquarters who was to meet
us there, had not arrived, and we spent some time in a cottage, chatting
with the women who lived in it. Then--apparently--while we were on the
ridge word reached the men working below, from the village, that we were
English. And