ne of them say:

"What a pity there isn't always war."

That same night, about eleven o'clock, a heavy sound was heard coming
from the direction of the city. Some urchins shouted:

"It's the soldiers. It's the soldiers."

An entire Algerian division was, as a matter of fact, detraining and
hurrying to fight before Paris. Behind it followed a long line of
taxi-cabs, the famous line of taxi-cabs requisitioned by General
Gallieni to carry munitions to the battle field of the Ourcq. They
made an incomparable spectacle, that magnificent summer night, in the
bright moonlight, the long column of Algerian cavalry, with their
shining burnouses, on fiery little horses. Applause burst forth from
the mob and reached the soldiers. The women threw kisses at them, but
they overwhelmed my men and me with reproaches:

"See," they shrieked at us, "if we had minded you and gone home, we
wouldn't have seen them."

* * * * *

Paris, which didn't know about the Battle of Charleroi, knew about the
Battle of the Marne. Paris knew about the Battle of the Marne not only
on account of the troops who marched through its streets, but because
it heard the big guns roar for three days, without stopping, towards
the north.

What has not already been written and said about the Battle of the
Marne, a conflict which will remain legendary in history? What will
not be said and written on that subject in the future?... Some writers
will see in it a miracle, others a strategic action engineered by a
genius, others a chance stroke of destiny. The truth of the matter is
more simple and appealing than any of these explanations and, although
the whole truth is not yet known about the fight at the Marne, enough
is known to make clear the two or three chief reasons why victory came
to France and defeat to Germany, safety to civilization and a repulse
to barbarism.

To be sure there was a great deal of strategy in it; and the stroke
that was conceived in the master brain of Joffre and carried out by
Generals Gallieni and Maunoury--a stroke which consisted in forming a
new army on the extreme right of the German hordes to come and hurl
itself sharply against these hordes--was a brave and bold maneuver
which prepared the way for victory.

But this maneuver would not in itself have sufficed to win the victory
if Maunoury had not attacked with an irresistible elan on the extreme
left, upsetting the German plan of battle; if F