"
_God, forbid!_ So says the whole English-speaking race, you on your side
of the sea, and we on ours.
But the feeling of abhorrence which is not, at such a moment as this,
sternly and incessantly translated into deeds is of no account! So let
me return to a last survey of the War. On my home journey from Nancy, I
passed through Paris, and was again welcomed at G.H.Q. on my way to
Boulogne. In Paris, the breathless news of the Germans' quickening
retreat on the Somme and the Aisne was varied one morning by the welcome
tidings of the capture of Bagdad; and at the house of one of the most
distinguished of European publicists, M. Joseph Reinach, of the
_Figaro_, I met, on our passage through, the lively, vigorous man, with
his look of Irish vivacity and force--M. Painleve--who only a few days
later was to succeed General Lyautey as French Minister for War. At our
own headquarters, I found opinion as quietly confident as before. We
were on the point of entering Bapaume; the "pushing up" was going
extraordinarily well, owing to the excellence of the staff-work, and the
energy and efficiency of all the auxiliary services--the Engineers, and
the Labour Battalions, all the makers of roads and railways, the
builders of huts, and levellers of shell-broken ground.
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