But in this twilight-time--this _Goetterdaemmerung_ of the end, conditions were abnormal, and the two regiments marched on through forest country, right through the enemy lines towards the Meuse, for about eight kilometres, capturing machine-gunners asleep at their guns, and rounding up parties of the enemy on the roads, till in the early dawn they reached a farm where German officers were sitting round tables with lights burning--only to spring to their feet in dismay, as the Americans surrounded them.

The cold autumn morning--the young bronzed faces emerging from the darkness--the humbled and astonished foe: surely Old and New, Europe and America, were never brought together in a moment more attractive to the story-teller.

A touch of romance amid the tragedy and the glory! But how welcome it is! The full history, however, of the Argonne fighting will probably not be accurately known for some little time to come.

No such obscurity hangs over the glorious fighting on the Marne, through the scenes of which I passed both on the railway journey from Paris to Metz, and in motoring from Chalons to Paris on our return.

Colonel Frederick Palmer's book[9] gives an account of these operations, which, it seems to me, ought to be universally read in the Allied countries.