132 The Great War time boldly affirmed that the plan had already been realized, that the British had been overwhelmed, the French driven away from Paris. In the whole pe- riod of the Great War from the first shots at Liege to the Battle of the Aisne this was the most exciting moment in every capital and in Paris there was heard on all sides the grim comment, " It is 1870 again." Yet on August 28, at the moment when German hopes were highest, an official bulletin at Paris held out the hope that the Allies had, at least momen- tarily escaped the enveloping net. This bulletin de- clared: — "The situation on our front from the Department of the Somme to the Vosges remains the same as yesterday." But for the world there had been no " yesterday." So far as Paris or London knew, outside of the war offices, the left flank of the Allies still stood at Cambrai, Arras, Le Cateau, the first town in Pas de Calais, the others in the Aisne. Here was a confession of lost territory, instantly subordinated to the plain Indication that far greater perils had been escaped. For, if the Allied armies were in the Department of the Somme, they were near the second line of French permanent defences, which military writers have frequently described under the name of the Laon-La Fere-Rhelms barrier. The left flank of this position stretched along the marshy valley of the Upper Somme, by Peronne, once a fortress, north of Amiens to the Channel at Abbeville. Behind this position the roads to Paris were still open, Dieppe