Von Hausen had far to go. He had to get back, back, back into contact with the German line or he would be wiped out absolutely. Von Buelow had been driven far north by d'Esperey, Langle de Cary had stubbornly held the Duke of Würtemberg. Von Hausen had far to go, and the French, fevered with success, would not stop. Hour after hour through that pouring night, the dripping trees saw a slaughter grim and great. Not until nearly morning did the pursuers halt, and that night Foch established his headquarters in La Fère Champenoise, twenty-five miles in advance of his headquarters of the night before.
France was saved!
The Battles of the Marne were won!
With the conclusion of the Battle of the Marne, Horace found his occupation gone. A victorious army is not in need of volunteer dispatch-riders, even though they may be partly accredited. This the boy felt himself to be by reason of having the right to wear a French uniform under special conditions and by having been entrusted with dispatches.
None the less, Horace was convinced that he could pass the sentries, at least, and he could follow behind the advance. He would at least be seeing the war for himself, and, if he were successful in making his way to the rear of his old army, the Fourth, he might be given something to do. Anything was better than idling his time away in Paris, and Croquier, working over-time, was never home except to sleep.
On Sunday, September 13, just one week from the day when Gallieni had sent his fleet of taxicabs to reënforce Manoury at Meaux, Horace started forth once more on his motor-cycle. The sentries at the gate knew him and he passed by with a cheery word of greeting. The uniform of the dispatch-rider passed him by many sentries, but one, either more careful or more curious than the rest, stopped him.
"Dispatch-rider formerly with the Fourth Army, temporarily attached to the army defending Paris, returning to my own command," the boy answered. The facts were true enough, though the implication was a little forced. He thanked his stars that the sentry did not ask for his identification disk, which, of course, he did not possess. Inquiry might have caused him to be suspected of being a spy.
Out through the suburbs of the city, Horace rode at slow pace, enjoying the fair weather after the rain. Beyond the suburbs he passed through little villages, as yet untouched by war. Then, as he trended farther north and east, he suddenly entered a region still panting with horror and dismay.
This was Horace's first sight of a battleground that had been swept by two armies. The retreat he had witnessed from Givet, was a retreat from an advance-guard shock, and while the roads had been covered with débris and flocked with refugees, it had shown little of the signs of actual warfare. In his participation in the retreat from Mons, he had seen a fighting retreat. The ground between the Marne and the Aisne was not like either of these. It was a battle-swept desolation.
A land of terrible contrasts! Gardens filled with a riot of color, where, here and there as it chanced, the flower-beds had not been trampled down, while in the middle stared the ruined walls and eye-less orbits of a shell-rent house. The trees were scarred with shell, the roads littered with broken boughs. Here and there, in the fields on either side, shallow trenches had been scraped. Hay stacks and straw stacks had been torn down for cover.