ll was confused in that mixture of haze and shell-smoke and maze of
trenches, with the appearing and disappearing soldiers living patterns
of the carpet which at times itself seemed to move to one's tiring,
intensified gaze. Each one was working out his part of a plan; each was
a responsive unit of the system of training for such affairs.

The whole would have seemed fantastic if it had not been for the sound
of the machine guns and the rifles and the deeper-throated chorus of the
heavy guns, which proved that this was no mesmeric, fantastic spectacle
but a game with death, precise and ordered, with nothing that could be
rehearsed left to chance any more than there was in the regulation of
the traffic which was pressing forward, column after column, to supply
the food which fed the artillery-power and man-power that should crush
through frontal positions.

IX

WHEN THE FRENCH WON

A big man's small quarters--General Foch--French capacity for
enjoying a victory--Winning quality of French as victors--When the
heart of France stood still--The bravery of the race--Germany's
mistaken estimate of France--Why the French will fight this war to a
finish--French and Germans as different breeds as ever lived
neighbor--The democracy of the French--_Elan_--"War of movement."

The farther south the better the news. There was another world of
victory on the other side of a certain dividing road where French and
British transport mingled. That world I was to see next on a day of
days--a holiday of elation.

A brief note, with its permission to "circulate within the lines,"
written in a bold hand in the chateau where General Foch directed the
Northern Group of French Armies, placed no limitation on freedom of
movement for my French friend and myself.

Of course, General Foch's chateau was small. All chateaux occupied by
big commanders are small, and as a matter of method I am inclined to
think. If they have limited quarters there is no room for the intrusion
of anyone except their personal staff and they can live with the
simplicity which is a soldier's barrack training.

Joffre, Castelnau and Foch were the three great names in the French Army
which the public knew after the Marne, and of the three Foch has,
perhaps, more of the dash which the world associates with the French
military type. He simplified victory, which was the result of the same
arduous preparation as on the British side, with a single