s they were holding our men in the
Forest of Compiegne. They had been as near to Paris as Senlis, almost
within gunshot of the outer forts.

"Nothing seems to stop them," said many soldiers with whom I spoke. "We
kill them and kill them, but they come on."

The situation seemed to me almost ready for the supreme tragedy--the
capture or destruction of Paris. The northwest of France lay very open
to the enemy, abandoned as far south as Abbeville and Amiens, too
lightly held by a mixed army corps of French and Algerian troops with
their headquarters at Aumale.

Here was an easy way to Paris.

Always obsessed with the idea that the Germans must come from the east,
the almost fatal error of this war, the French had girdled Paris with
almost impenetrable forts on the east side, from those of Ecouen and
Montmorency, by the far-flung forts of Chelles and Champigny, to those
of Susy and Villeneuve, on the outer lines of the triple cordon; but on
the west side, between Pontoise and Versailles, the defenses of Paris
were weak. I say "were," because during the last three days thousands of
men have been digging trenches and throwing up ramparts. Only the
snakelike Seine, twining into Pegoud loop, forms a natural defense to
the western approach to the city, none too secure against men who have
crossed many rivers in their desperate assaults.

This, then, was the Germans' chance; it was for this that they had
fought their way westward and southward through incessant battlefields
from Mons and Charleroi to St. Quentin and Amiens and down to Creil and
Compiegne, flinging away human life as though it were but rubbish for
deathpits. The prize of Paris, Paris the great and beautiful, seemed to
be within their grasp.

It was their intention to smash their way into it by this western entry
and then to skin it alive. Holding this city at ransom, it was their
idea to force France to her knees under threat of making a vast and
desolate ruin of all those palaces and churches and noble buildings in
which the soul of French history is enshrined.

They might have done it but for one thing which has upset all the
cold-blooded calculations of their staff, that thing which perhaps I may
be pardoned for calling the miracle. They might have done it, I think,
last Wednesday and Thursday, even perhaps as late as last Friday.

I am not saying these things from rumor and hearsay, I am writing from
the evidence of my own eyes after traveling several