6
On September 2 the Germans had reached Creil and Senlis--staining
their honour in these two places by unnecessary cruelty--and were no
further than thirty miles from Paris, so that the shock of their guns
might be heard as vague vibrations in the capital.
To the population of Paris, and to all civilians in France, it seemed a
stupendous disaster, this rapid incredible advance of that great
military machine of death which nothing, so far, had been able to
stop--not even the unflinching courage and the utter recklessness of
life with which the Allies flung themselves against it. Yet with an
optimism which I could hardly justify, I, who had seen the soldiers of
France, was still confident that, so far from all being lost, there was
hope of victory which might turn the German advance.
I had seen the superb courage of French regiments rushing up to
support their left wing, and the magnificent confidence of men who
after the horrors of the battlefields, and with the full consciousness
that they were always retiring, still, said: "We shall win. We are
leading the enemy to its destruction. In a little while they will be in a
death-trap from which there is no escape for them."
"This spirit," I wrote in my dispatch, "must win in the end.
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