His Generals could not have been so sure. They must have seen the
exhaustion of their men. Von Kluck must have already felt the weight of
the army, rushed out of Paris by General Galliéni, that threatened to
envelop his right flank. Von Heeringen must have realised that the
offensive was being wrenched from his grasp. And the Crown Prince was
throwing himself in vain upon the forts of Verdun and Nancy.

That night, too, somewhere behind the French lines, a man of very
different stamp from the Kaiser was putting the final touches to the
preparations of the greatest counter-attack in History. He knew that the
enemy had literally overstepped his lines of communications, was
exhausted, and nervous of failure so far from his bases. He knew that as
long as de Castelnau clung on to the heights around Verdun, his centre
and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he
could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now
completely mobilised reinforcements. Moreover, the army that had hurried
pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance
that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely
established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by
the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be outnumbered on his front and
very seriously menaced on his right, and disaster would be certain.

Not that the Subaltern knew or cared much for these things. He and his
men were past caring. Continuous retreat had first evoked surprise, then
resentment, then, as fatigue began to grip them like a vice, a kind of
dull apathy. He felt he would not have cared whatever happened. The
finer emotions of sorrow or hope or happiness were drugged to
insensibility. With the exception of odd moments when, absolutely
causelessly, wild anger and ungovernable rage took possession of him and