Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/364

 they did; that was why they were so sure-so boastfully, absolutely sure!

. . . . send the word; send the word to beware!

It was American; nothing else! No other men in the world could have gone by so absolutely sure of themselves, singing—swinging—like that. And oh, Ruth loved them! Her people; only a few, indeed, as men were reckoned in this war; but such men! Still singing—swinging—they swept by, drawing after them a vortex of the French, who, a few moments before, had been abandoning the battle. They were all past now, the Americans; oh, how few they had been to face the German army with Paris and all the fate of France behind them.

A few miles on—it could not have been farther—the Americans met the Germans; and what they did there in the woods near the tiny town of Meaux came to Ruth in wonderful fashion. The battle, which each hour—each moment through that terrible morning—had been steadily coming nearer and nearer; the battle ceased to approach. There was no doubt about it! The fighting, furious twice over and then more furious, simply could not get closer. Now the battle was going back! The marines—the American marines, sent in to stop the gap and hold the Paris road—had not merely delayed the Prussian advance; they had halted it and turned it back!

That night Ruth learned a little of the miracle of the American marines from one of the men who had fought. He had been brought back, badly wounded, and for a time, while her ambulance was held up, Ruth was able to administer to the man, and he talked to her.