The mystery of Kluck's retirement has never been satisfactorily explained.
All we really know is that something happened which forced him back, and that this something was in the last resort connected with what at the time we ventured to call military over-trading—with the fact that he bad overdone the policy of rush. No doubt it is always possible that Falkenhayn will do better, that his knowledge of the desperate straits of Germany will give him the courage of despair, and that he will not let action be " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Ho may then be able to do what General Early did in less favourable conditions in the last few months of the war between the North and South— make a raid up to the very doors of the national capital. Early, it may be remembered, got so near Washington that not only wore his watch-fires easily visible at night from the roof of the White House, but Mr. Lincoln ordered out his landau after luncheon and drove up to a point now well within the Washington tramcar radius and visited a redoubt which was being fiercely attacked by the Confederate forces. Yet the South did not win the war.
