and forced French gunners to retire from their
positions.

The occupation of Charleville was a German victory, but was also a
German graveyard. After this historic episode in what has been an
unending battle the main body of French withdrew before the Germans, who
were now pouring down the valley, and retired to new ground.

It was a retirement which has had one advantage in spite of its
acknowledgment of the enemy's amazing pertinacity. It has enabled the
allied armies to draw closer together, its firm front sweeping around in
a crescent from Abbeville, around south of Amiens, and thence in an
irregular line to the eastern frontier.

On the map it is at first sight a rather unhappy thing to see that
practically the whole of France north of Amiens lies open to German
descent from Belgium. To break up the German Army piecemeal and lure it
to its own destruction it was almost necessary to manoeuvre it into
precisely the position which it now occupies. The success of Gen. Pau
shows that the allied army is taking the offensive again, and that as a
great fighting machine it is still powerful and menacing.

I must again emphasize the difficulty of grasping the significance of a
great campaign by isolated incidents, and the danger of drawing
important deductions from the misfortunes in one part of the field. I do
so because I have been tempted again and again during the past few days
to fall into similar mistakes. Perhaps in my case it was pardonable.

It is impossible for the armchair reader to realize the psychological
effect of being mixed up in the panic of a great people and the retreat
from a battlefield.

The last real fighting was taking place at a village called Bapaume all
day Friday. It was very heavy fighting here on the left centre of the
great army commanded by Gen. Pau, and leading to a victory which has
just been announced officially in France.

A few minutes before midnight Friday, when they came back along the road
to Amiens, crawling back slowly in a long, dismal trail, the ambulance
wagons laden with the dead and dying, hay carts piled high with saddles
and accoutrements, upon which lay, immobile like men already dead, the
spent and exhausted soldiers, they passed through the crowds of silent
people of Amiens, who only whispered as they stared at the procession.
In the darkness a cuirassier, with head bent upon his chest, stumbled
forward, leading his horse, too weak and tired to bear him.

Many ot