according to the custom of anonymity. A great modern army like the
French is a machine; any man, high or low, only a unit of the
machine. In this case the real name of X is Castelnau. If it lacks the
fame which seems its due, that may be because he was too busy to
take the Press into his confidence. Fame is not the business of
French generals nowadays. It is war. What counted for France was
that he never let the Germans get near the gap at Mirecourt.

Having failed to reach the gap, the Germans, with that stubbornness
of the offensive which characterizes them, tried to take Nancy. They
got a battery of heavy guns within range of the city. From a high hill it
is said that the Kaiser watched the bombardment. But here is a story.
As the German infantry advanced toward their new objective they
passed a French artillery officer in a tree. He was able to locate that
heavy battery and able to signal its position back to his own side. The
French concentrated sufficient fire to silence it after it had thrown forty
shells into Nancy. The same report tells how the Kaiser folded his
cloak around him and walked in silence from his eminence, where the
sun blazed on his helmet. It was not the Germans' fault that they
failed to take Nancy. It was due to the French.

Some time a tablet will be put up to denote the high-water mark of the
German invasion of Lorraine. It will be between the edge of the forest
of Champenoux and the heights. When the Germans charged from
the cover of the forest to get possession of the road to Nancy, the
French artillery and machine-guns which had held their fire turned
loose. The rest of the story is how the French infantry, impatient at
being held back, swept down in a counter-attack, and the Germans
had to give up their campaign in Lorraine as they gave up their
campaign against Paris in the early part of September. Saddest of all