French lines, a man of very
different stamp from the Kaiser was putting the final touches to the
preparations of the greatest counter-attack in History. He knew that the
enemy had literally overstepped his lines of communications, was
exhausted, and nervous of failure so far from his bases. He knew that as
long as de Castelnau clung on to the heights around Verdun, his centre
and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he
could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now
completely mobilised reinforcements. Moreover, the army that had hurried
pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance
that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely
established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by
the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be outnumbered on his front and
very seriously menaced on his right, and disaster would be certain.

Not that the Subaltern knew or cared much for these things. He and his
men were past caring. Continuous retreat had first evoked surprise, then
resentment, then, as fatigue began to grip them like a vice, a kind of
dull apathy. He felt he would not have cared whatever happened. The
finer emotions of sorrow or hope or happiness were drugged to
insensibility. With the exception of odd moments when, absolutely
causelessly, wild anger and ungovernable rage took possession of him and
seemed to make his blood boil and seethe, he seemed to be degenerating
into the state of mind commonly attributed to the dumb beasts of the
field--indifferent to everything in the wide world except food and
sleep.

That night a draft commanded by one Subaltern arrived to fill up the
gaps.

The next day the retreat continued. The men's nerves were tried to
breaking-point, and a little detail, small and of no consequence in
itself, opened the lock, as it were, to a perfect river of growing anger
and discontent.

This was how it happened. The Colonel had repeated the previous night
the order about looting, and the men were under the impression that if
any of them took so much as a green apple he would be liable to "death
or some such less punishment as the Act shall provide." They talk about
it and grumble, and then suddenly, without any warning except a
clucking and scratching, the Mess Sergeant is seen by the greater part
of the Battalion to issue triumphantly from a farm gate with two or
three fat hens under his arms. Smiling bro