[Illustration: _British Official Photograph_ The wonderful exploit of one Brigade of the 46th Division, consisting of the South Staffords and North Staffords Regts., who crossed the St. Quentin Canal, which is part of the Hindenburg Line, by swimming in life-belts. They gained their objectives and also captured two bridges which allowed the guns to be taken across. The Brigade is seen on the steep slope of the Canal.]
At Metz I was conscious of a hostile and bitter element in the town, not to be wondered at when one remembers that Metz has a population of 25,000 immigrant Germans out of a population of less than 70,000. But in the country towns of Alsace and in Strasbourg itself, my own impression, for what it is worth, was everywhere an impression of solid and natural rejoicing in the new order of things. That there are a large number of Germans in Strasbourg and Alsace generally is, of course, true. There were some 450,000 before the war, out of a population of rather more than two millions, and there are now at a rough estimate about 300,000, of whom nearly 100,000 are to be found in Metz and Strasbourg. The whole administration of the two provinces, with very few exceptions, was a German administration, imported from Germany, and up to the outbreak of war, the universities and the schools--_i.e._, the whole teaching profession--were German, and many of the higher clergy. The leading finance of the provinces was German. And so on. But I cannot see any reason to doubt that the real feeling of the native population in the two provinces, whether in town or country, has remained throughout these forty-eight years strongly and passionately French. "Since when did you expect the French to come back?" asked M. Mirman, the present Commissioner of the French Republic at Metz, of an old peasant whom he came across not long ago on an official inspection. The old man's eyes kindled--"_Depuis toujours!_" he said--"I knew it would come, but I was afraid it mightn't come till I was dead, so I used to say to my son: 'If I am dead, and the French come back, you will go to the cemetery, you will knock three times on my grave--I shall hear!' And my son promised."
My present concern, however, is not with the Alsace-Lorraine question, but with the brilliant Army Commander who now occupies what used to be the Headquarters of the German Army Corps which held Alsace. My acquaintance with him was due to a piece of audacity on my part. The record of General Gouraud in Champagne, and at the Dardanelles, was well known to me, and I had heard much of his attractive and romantic personality. So, on arriving at our hotel after a long day's motoring, and after consulting with the kind French Lieutenant who was our escort, I ventured a little note to the famous General. I said I had been the guest of the British Army for six days on our front, and was now the guest of the French Army, for a week, and to pass through Strasbourg without seeing the victor of the "front de Champagne" would be tantalising indeed. Would he spare an Englishwoman, whose love for the French nation had grown with her growth and strengthened with her years, twenty minutes of his time?