scarcely any French, vainly trying to find
some food. He walked about through the cafes waving a one hundred
franc note in each hand and ceaselessly demanding something to eat.

* * * * *

After supper a council of war was held in order to decide upon our
course of action for the morrow. Captain Parker was eager to hunt for
a vortex of the battle where, he held, the primary decision must have
been lost and won and the fighting would have been most intense; while
the action on all the other parts of the line must have been
contingent upon the results at this "tactical center." This "focus"
could not have been to the north or west of Paris, because the great
bodies of French troops are to the east; nor was it on the battle
line nearest Paris, for everything we saw today in and behind the zone
of operations testified to the contrary. In all the actions we have so
far observed, the Germans were retiring deliberately in a retreat
evidently determined by some ulterior cause. We noted many places
where severe fighting had taken place, but in every case it bore the
unmistakable signs of being merely a hotly contested rearguard action.
We so far have neither seen nor heard of any great German defeat such
as must somewhere have occurred in order to start a general retreat,
and to force such numerous rearguard actions. A victorious German army
does not suddenly begin to retire unless compelled to do so by a
gigantic and crushing defeat at some one point; such a defeat must
mean days of losses so frightful that the beaten army is physically
exhausted and its morale shaken.

From a military point of view it was of vital importance to discover
this spot and to study the battlefield for lessons in tactics. Captain
Parker maintained that it would be more profitable to find this center
than to give way to our inclination to go forward into the actual
fighting; that if we could locate it, it would be best to stay upon
the abandoned field of the German defeat to study how the battle had
been fought. He pointed out that the opportunity would be equivalent
to being upon the field of Waterloo or Gettysburg the day after action
ceased. As a result of the conference, it was finally decided to
accept Captain Parker's contention and hunt for the battlefield of the
great and decisive French victory, rather than to turn north toward
the constant booming of cannon. We shall, therefore, continue to work
our way to t