3
One of the most dramatic incidents of the war was the transport of the
army of Paris to the fighting line--in taxi-cabs. There were 2000 of
these cabs in Paris, and on this day of September 1 they
disappeared as though the earth had swallowed them, just as the
earth had swallowed one of them not long before when the floods had
sapped the streets. A sudden order from General Gallieni, the Military
Governor of Paris, had been issued to each driver, who immediately
ignored the upraised hands of would-be passengers and the shouts
of people desperate to get to one of the railway stations with
household goods and a hope of escape. At the depots the drivers
knew that upon the strength of their tyres and the power of their
engines depended the safety of Paris and perhaps the life of France.
It was an extraordinary incident in the history of modern war. Five
soldiers were loaded into each cab, four inside and one next to the
driver, with their rifles and kit crammed in between them. In one
journey twenty thousand men were taken on the road to Meaux. It
was a triumph of mobility, and when in future the Parisian is tempted
to curse those red vehicles which dash about the streets to the
danger of all pedestrians who forget that death has to be dodged by
never-failing vigilance, his righteous wrath will be softened, perhaps,
by the remembrance that these were the chariots of General
Manoury's army before the battle of Meaux, which turned the tide of
war and flung back the enemy in retreat.
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