the test once more. But the French Commander-in-Chief was proof against the temptation. He held firmly to his plan, and continued the long and depressing retreat.

A Hand-to-hand Fight during the Battle of the Marne.    By permission of the Sphere.

The action here illustrated took place on the South bank of the Marne, where the Germans found themselves attacked by French colonial troops. The Germans were soon beaten back, after a fierce affray amidst burning houses and broken barricades.

Upon the devoted British fell the full force of the German shock. Hopelessly outnumbered, and with the enemy on three sides, they nevertheless struggled out of van Kluck's grasp, and made a fighting retreat that will go down to posterity as one of the finest feats known to the history of warfare. Terrible were their losses, as were those of the French armies on their right; but they were still unbroken, and were still capable of striking hard when the Allied line should be knitted up anew. In the early days of September this was accomplished; the whole Allied line lay extended from the southern outskirts of Paris eastwards to Verdun. It had been welded into strength by misfortune; it had taken the measure of the foe, and was eager for revenge.

To the Germans it appeared that Paris had been abandoned, and in Berlin men confidently declared that the war was over, and that only the fruits of victory remained to be reaped. Von Kluck, sweeping irresistibly towards the capital, believed that he had only wearied and broken foes before him. He had good reason for this belief, for he could not conceive that any armies could have retreated so rapidly and suffered so severely and yet remain fit to oppose him. He was full of confidence, but it was the confidence of ignorance. He was totally unaware that a new army, fresh and unwearied, was silently concentrating in the streets of Paris.

In Britain there were the worst of forebodings. The Allied armies had been driven back helter-skelter with a terrible tale of losses, and von Kluck was within gunshot of the outer forts of the French capital. The 5th of September was the darkest hour before the dawn. Everywhere the Allied armies seemed to be on the verge of disaster. Von Kluck was wheeling his right in order to envelop the 5th French Army; farther east the Würtembergers were striking hard at the French centre; the Crown Prince, to the south of Verdun, was waiting for the huge siege guns with which he hoped to batter down the defences of that great fortress; Maubeuge was at its last gasp; and at Nancy the Bavarians, under the eye of the Kaiser himself, were preparing to break through the eastern barrier. The man in the street at home could only stifle his feelings of dismay, and hope that by some miracle victory might yet be snatched from the jaws of defeat.

Motor-cyclist Dispatch Rider breaking through a Patrol of Uhlans.    By permission of The Sphere.

The motor-cyclist enables communications to be kept up, and messages to be sent to and from headquarters all along the far-extended lines of the Allies. Adventures similar to that illustrated above were common in the early stages of the war.

So far the war had been one unbroken triumph for Germany. She had succeeded even beyond the expectations of her people at home. Fortress after fortress had fallen; victory after victory had been won; the capital of France was at her mercy; prisoners had been captured in huge numbers, and guns by the score. To crown all, just as Sedan Day was approaching and the fall of Paris was hourly expected, the news arrived that von Hindenburg had won an astounding victory at Tannenberg, in Eastern Prussia. The whole German nation went mad with delight. Its wildest ambitions were about to be realized.

One short week later there was a sudden and dramatic change in the aspect of affairs. The Allies had made a leap forward; von Kluck, beaten and outflanked, was being harried northward through the woods of Compiègne; von Buelow, with his famous Guards reduced to half their strength, was hurrying towards the Aisne; the Duke of Würtemberg, foiled in his attacks on the French centre, was in sullen retreat; Verdun was still intact; and in Lorraine the Kaiser had seen the White Cuirassiers of Bavaria hurled back in confusion from the French line. The avalanche had fallen, but it had failed to overwhelm the Allied armies. The Germans were now, for the first time, tasting the bitterness of forced retreat.

Back they were thrust, but not in rout, to the plateau beyond the Aisne, where, in a position of great strength, they were forced to fight, against all their traditions, on the defensive. For weeks they were besieged, but day by day their entrenchments were strengthened until they resembled fortresses. All the courage and skill and patience of the attackers could not bolt them from these burrows by means of frontal attacks. Then an attempt was made to outflank them by a northward movement of the Allied left. As this movement proceeded, a similar manoeuvre was begun by the foe. Each side attempted to outflank the other, and a feverish race set in for the North Sea, where both flanking movements must perforce end. Three French armies were strung out northwards as far as the La Bassée canal; the British army was transferred from the Aisne to fill the gap beyond; and a new army was collected and hurried to the assistance of the Belgians, who extended the line to the sea. The Allies just won the race, and the Germans found themselves besieged once more, this time on a line of trenches some 450 miles in length. For months to come they strove to break through the Allied lines; with what success future pages of this history will tell.

Such, in brief outline, is the story which has been told in our two former volumes. It is the story of the most ruthless and determined assault that has ever been made upon the liberties of mankind in the whole history of the world. We see master minds plotting and planning for long, secret years, watching and waiting for an occasion to swoop down upon unsuspecting neighbours and rob them of life and freedom and the fruits of their toil. We see them launching millions of men, armed with every death-dealing device that fiendish ingenuity can frame, against a little peaceful people that dares to stand in their way. The earth shakes with the roar of gigantic guns and the thunderclaps of bursting shells. Fortresses crumble to shapeless ruin; homesteads are given to the flames; temples of God are profaned and despoiled; monuments of art and piety are blotted out; cities are shattered; young and old, man, woman, and child, are given to the sword, and wherever the battle has raged there are ghastly heaps of dead and dying, "friend and foe in one red burial blent."

Onward sweep the conquering legions, with pillars of cloud by day and pillars of fire by night, and it would seem that nothing human could give them pause. Armies recoil before them; but strive as they may, they cannot overwhelm them. Victory sits upon their banners, when suddenly those whom they have hunted and harried across the fair fields of France spring forward with undaunted fire and vigour, and the torrent is stayed. Then it is swept back, and soon the invaders are hemmed in by a ring of steel, against which they fling themselves in baffled rage like a trapped tiger against the bars of his cage.

Such is the story of seventy-seven days