The relief of these people at the return of the Allies may be imagined.  Here, as elsewhere, some houses were burned, but otherwise the damage did not appear to be very serious.

The Retreat to Paris

By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

NEAR AMIENS, Aug. 30.—­Looking back on all I have seen during the last few days, I find it difficult to piece together the various incidents and impressions and to make one picture.  It all seems to me now like a jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death—­a litter of odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose, to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements of soldiers and people, to the death carts trailing back from unknown places, and to the great dark fear that has enveloped all the tract of country in Northwest France through which I have been traveling, driven like one of its victims from place to place.  Out of all this welter of individual suffering and from all the fog of mystery which has enshrouded them until now, when the truth may be told, certain big facts with a clear and simple issue will emerge and give one courage.

The French Army and our English troops are now holding good positions in a much stronger and closer line and stemming the tide of the German hordes rolling up to Paris.  Gen. Pau, the hero of this war, after his swift return from the eastern front, where he repaired the deadly check at Muelhausen, has dealt a smashing blow at a German Army corps which was striking to the heart of France.

Paris is still safe for the time being, with a great army of allied forces, French, English, and Belgians, drawn across the country as a barrier which surely will not be broken by the enemy.  Nothing that has happened gives cause for that despair which has taken hold of people whose fears have exaggerated the facts, frightful enough when taken separately, but not giving any proof that resistance is impossible against the amazing onslaught of the German legions.

I have been into the war zone and seen during the last five days men who are now holding the lines of defense.  I have been among their dead and wounded, and have talked with soldiers marching fresh to the front.  I have seen the horrid mess which is cleared up after the battle and the grim picture of retreat, but nothing that I have seen or heard from either British or French leads me to believe that our army has been smashed or the Allies demoralized.

It is impossible to estimate our own losses.  Our wounded are being brought back into Havre and Rouen, and undoubtedly there are large numbers of them.  But, putting them at the highest, it is clear to me, from all information gained during the last five days, that there has been no overwhelming disaster, and that in the terrible actions fought on the four days from the 23d to the 27th, and afterward in the further retirement from the line of Cambrai and Le Cateau, swinging southward and eastward upon St. Quentin, our main forces, which were pressed by enormous numbers of the enemy, succeeded in withdrawing in good order, without having their lines broken, while inflicting a terrific punishment upon the German right.