The relief of these people at the return of the Allies may be imagined.
Here, as elsewhere, some houses were burned, but otherwise the damage
did not appear to be very serious.

*The Retreat to Paris*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

NEAR AMIENS, Aug. 30.--Looking back on all I have seen during the last
few days, I find it difficult to piece together the various incidents
and impressions and to make one picture. It all seems to me now like a
jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death--a litter of
odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme
which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose,
to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements
of soldiers and people, to the death carts trailing back from unknown
places, and to the great dark fear that has enveloped all the tract of
country in Northwest France through which I have been traveling, driven
like one of its victims from place to place. Out of all this welter of
individual suffering and from all the fog of mystery which has
enshrouded them until now, when the truth may be told, certain big facts
with a clear and simple issue will emerge and give one courage.

The French Army and our English troops are now holding good positions in
a much stronger and closer line and stemming the tide of the German
hordes rolling up to Paris. Gen. Pau, the hero of this war, after his
swift return from the eastern front, where he repaired the deadly check
at Muelhausen, has dealt a smashing blow at a German Army corps which was
striking to the heart of France.

Paris is still safe for the time being, with a great army of allied
forces, French, English, and Belgians, drawn across the country as a
barrier which surely will not be broken by the enemy. Nothing that has
happened gives cause for that despair which has taken hold of people
whose fears have exaggerated the facts, frightful enough when taken
separately, but not giving any proof that resistance is impossible
against the amazing onslaught of the German legions.

I have been into the war zone and seen during the last five days men who
are now holding the lines of defense. I have been among their dead and
wounded, and have talked with soldiers marching fresh to the front. I
have seen the horrid mess which is cleared up after the battle and the
grim picture of retreat, but