Part 30

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 other men were leading poor beasts this way, and infantry soldiers, some with bandaged heads, clung to the backs of carts and wagons, and seemed asleep as they shuffled by.

The light from roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and glazed eyes, flashed into caverns of canvas-covered carts, where twisted men lay huddled on straw. Not a groan came from the carts, but every one knew it was a retreat.

The carts carrying the quick and the dead rumbled by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither right nor left for any greeting with friends.

There was a hugger-mugger of uniforms, of provision carts, and with ambulances--it was a part of the wreckage and wastage of war; and to the onlookers, with the exaggeration, unconsciously, of the importance of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance and an ominous reminder of 1870.

Really this was an inevitable part of a serious battle, not necessarily a retreat from a great disaster.

But more pitiful even than this drift back were scenes which followed. As I turned back into the town I saw thousands of boys who had been called to the colors and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to second lines of defense.

They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced boy tried to hide his tears as women from the crowd ran forward to embrace him. These lads were keeping up their valor by noisy demonstrations; but, having seen the death carts pass, I could not bear to look into the faces of those little ones who are following their fathers to the guns.

Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens. Reports had come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and Abbeville. There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the town barracks. They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange quietude in the streets. Hardly a man in uniform was to be seen in the places which had been filled with soldiers the day before.

Only a few people realized the actual significance of this. How could they know that it was a part of the great plan to secure the safety of France? How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which would draw the Germans into the open?

The fighting on the Cambrai-Cateau line seems to have been more desperate even that the terrible actions at Mons and Charleroi. It was when the British troops had to swing around to a more southerly line to guard the roads to Paris, that the enemy attacked in prodigious numbers, and their immense superiority in machine guns did terrible work among officers and men.

But on all sides, from the French officers, there is immense praise for the magnificent conduct of our troops, and in spite of all alarmist statements I am convinced from what I have heard that they have retired intact, keeping their lines together, and preventing their divisions from being broken and cut off.

The list of casualties must be very great, but if I can believe the evidence of my own eyes in such towns as Rouen, where the Red Cross hospitals are concentrated, they are not heavy enough to suggest anything like a great and irretrievable disaster.

DIEPPE, Sept. 3.--Let me describe briefly the facts which I have learned of in the last five days. When I escaped from Amiens, before the tunnel was broken up, and the Germans entered into possession of the town on Aug. 28, the front of the allied armies was in a crescent from Abbeville, south of Amiens on the wooded heights, and thence in an irregular line to south of Mezieres. The British forces, under Sir John French, were at the left of the centre, supporting the heavy thrust-forward of the main German advance, while the right was commanded by Gen. Pau.

On Sunday afternoon fighting was resumed along the whole line. The German vanguard had by this time been supported by a fresh army corps, which had been brought from Belgium. At least 1,000,000 men were on the move, pressing upon the allied forces with a ferocity of attack which has never before been equaled. Their cavalry swept across a great tract of country, squadron by squadron, like the mounted hordes of Attila, but armed with the dreadful weapons of modern warfare. Their artillery was in enormous numbers, and their columns advanced under cover of it, not like an army, but rather like a moving nation--I do not think, however, with equal pressure at all parts of the line. It formed itself into a battering ram with a pointed end, and this point was thrust at the heart of the English wing.

It was impossible to resist this onslaught. If the British forces had stood against it they would have been crushed and broken. Our gunners were magnificent, and shelled the advancing German columns so that the dead lay heaped up along the way which was leading down to Paris; but as one of them told me: "It made no manner of difference; as soon as we had smashed one lot another followed, column after column, and by sheer weight of numbers we could do nothing to check them."

After this the British forces fell back, fighting all the time. The line of the Allies was now in the shape of a V, the Germans thrusting their main attack deep into the angle.

This position remained the same until Monday, or, rather, had completed itself by that date, the retirement of the troops being maintained with masterly skill and without any undue haste.

Meanwhile Gen. Pau was sustaining a terrific attack on the French centre by the German left centre, which culminated on (date omitted). The River Oise, which runs between beautiful meadows, was choked with corpses and red with blood.

From an eyewitness of this great battle, an officer of an infantry regiment, who escaped with a slight wound, I learned that the German onslaught had been repelled by a series of brilliant bayonet and cavalry charges.

"The Germans," he said, "had the elite of their army engaged against us, including the Tenth Army Corps and the Imperial Guard, but the heroism of our troops was sublime. Every man knew that the safety of France depended upon him and was ready to sacrifice his life, if need be, with joyful enthusiasm. They not only resisted the enemy's attack but took the offensive, and, in spite of their overpowering numbers, gave them tremendous punishment. They had to recoil before our guns, which swept their ranks, and their columns were broken and routed.

"Hundreds of them were bayoneted, and hundreds were hurled into the river. The whole field of battle was outlined by dead and dying men whom they had to abandon. Certainly their losses were enormous, and I felt that the German retreat was in full swing and that we could claim a real victory for the time being."

Nevertheless the inevitable happened, owing to the vast reserves of the enemy, who brought up four divisions, and Gen. Pau was compelled to give ground.