THE GREAT DILEMMA, PARIS–VERDUN
I. THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES THE CAPITAL
Retreat to the Somme was much, to the Marne so much more as was to be
appreciated only in the after-years of the war. Retreat to the Seine,
besides endangering the venerable fortress and pivotal place of Verdun,
left in peril of capture, perhaps of destruction, Paris, the richest
and most beautiful city of Continental Europe, the seat of a strongly
centralised system of government and many industries, the home of two
millions of people, the converging point of the chief national roads
and railways. That Government and people accepted such a risk speaks
eloquently for the mind that imposed it upon them.
The passionate strain of those few days will ever rest in the memories
of those who experienced it. News, vague and unexplained, of the
northern invasion had fallen upon us with avalanche swiftness. Paris
was almost universally regarded as its immediate objective. On August
27, the Viviani Ministry was reconstructed as an enlarged Government
of National Defence, with M. Millerand in M. Messimy’s place at the
Ministry of War, M. Delcassé at the Quai d’Orsay, M. Briand at the
Ministry of Justice, and the Socialist M. Sembat at the Public Works.
The same evening M. Millerand visited the Grand Quartier General
at Vitry-le-François. “On the staircase,” he afterwards wrote, “I
shook hands with General Maunoury, who was leaving for the north to
take command of his new army. The Staff officers were working in
tranquillity, silence, and order. The brains of the army functioned
freely. General Joffre kept me long in conference. I never found him
more calm, more master of himself, more sure of the future. I left him
full of respect, admiration, and confidence.”[42] On the same day,
General Gallieni was appointed military governor of Paris. Amongst the
people of the capital, at least, this step excited keener interest,
since it bore directly upon the question that was beginning to be asked
on all hands——must we leave, or stay? Gallieni, who, long years before,
had been Joffre’s chief in the military organisation of the colony of
Madagascar, was, like him, of the type of soldier-administrator. But
his temperament spoke of his Corsican origin; and he had asked for, and
Joffre had refused him, an army command——circumstances to be remembered
when we see him in action. A man of impeccable honesty, emphatic
will, and few words, he immediately won the confidence of his men and
the population at large, and in the height of the crisis presented a
worthy, if somewhat stiff, personification of the new spirit which
France began to exhibit before her armies had scored any victory.
On August 29, the French official bulletin (communicated to an
anxiously waiting crowd of journalists in a stable-like building beside
the Ministry of War, thereafter to be scanned greedily as the _pièce
de résistance_ of the world’s press) contained a partial revelation of
the whereabouts of the enemy: “The situation _from the Somme to the
Vosges_ remains as yesterday.” At the same time, the new Government,
in a manifesto to the nation, declared that “our duty is tragic,
but simple: to repel the invader, to hold out to the end, to remain
masters of our destinies.” This phrase “_jusqu’au bout_,” repeated by
Gallieni a few days later——with its homologues, “_jusqu’auboutist_,”
“_jusqu’auboutisme_”——was to become for years afterwards a catchword of
the general resolve to fight to a victorious finish.
Refugees and wounded soldiers were now streaming into the city from the
north, and families from the holiday resorts of the west and south.
More than 30,000 fugitives from Belgium and the north of France reached
the Nord Station on the 29th. A considerable current had begun to flow
outwards, and during the next few days the railways were overwhelmed;
but there was at no time real panic among the people of the great city.
On Sunday the 30th, the first of a series of aeroplane raids provided
a novel boulevard entertainment; the president of the City Council, M.
Mithouard, advised residents to send their women and children into the
country; and an edict was issued forbidding the papers to publish more
than one edition daily. Railways, posts, and telegraphs were working
subject to many hours’ delay. The city hospitals were being cleared.
Thousands of civilians were helping the garrison to dig trenches, and
clear fields of fire. The Bois and neighbouring lands were turned into
a vast cattle and sheep farm; and large quantities of wheat were stored
against the possibility of a siege.
On the night of the 31st, I received privately the alarming news——only
made public on September 3——that the Government had that afternoon
decided to abandon the capital. The staffs and papers of the Ministries
were already being removed; Ministers themselves, with the President of
the Republic, and the Ambassadors, except those of Spain and the United
States, started for Bordeaux during the night of September 2. Many
of the treasures of the Louvre and other museums and galleries were
carried away at the same time. M. Poincaré and all the Ministers signed
a lengthy manifesto declaring that they were departing “on the demand
of the military authority,” in order to keep in touch with the whole
country, after assuring the defence of the city “by all means in their
power.” A quarter of the inhabitants of Paris had by now left, or were
endeavouring to leave, the city. The remainder, very anxious——for the
red-handed enemy was only a day’s march away——but still outwardly calm,
preferred to any eloquence of political personages the terse promise of
General Gallieni: “I have received the mandate to defend Paris against
the invader. This mandate I shall fulfil to the end.” Certainly, the
Government was in duty bound to see that it did not fall into the hands
of Von Kluck. The utmost that can be said for the popular sentiment of
the day is that, having prepared for departure, the chief magistrates
of the Republic might perhaps have remained a few hours longer, when
they would have discovered that there was no need to move after all.
II. KLUCK PLUNGES SOUTH-EASTWARD
The German Staff had, in fact, no immediate intention of attacking
Paris; and Kluck, passing beyond gunrange of the outer forts of the
entrenched camp, was racing south-east toward Meaux and Château-Thierry
after the British and the French 5th Armies. This unexpected change
of direction was only discovered on the afternoon of September 2, and
confirmed during the next twenty-four hours by successive cavalry and
aviation reports brought in to the headquarters of the British Army,
Maunoury’s Army, and the Paris garrison. It had, in fact, begun two
days before, though it could not then be considered decisive. No sooner
had he occupied Amiens, and crossed the Somme and Avre, than Kluck
began to alter his course from south-west to south-east, while Maunoury
and the British continued due south (the former two days behind the
latter). Thus, while conducting foreguard actions with the British,
Kluck increasingly left aside Maunoury, and came into contact with the
5th Army. Under Joffre’s orders, Maunoury continued his direct march on
Paris, his last units not leaving Clermont till early on the morning of
September 2, whereas the Expeditionary Force had crossed the Aisne on
August 30, and traversed Senlis, Crépy, and Villers-Cotterets on the
following day, to pass the Marne at and near Meaux. It is true that
detachments of the German extreme right got as far afield as Creil, on
the evening of September 2, and Chantilly on the following morning, but
they were no more than a flank guard. Senlis, on September 2, was the
last place occupied in any force, the last scene of fighting, and of
assassination, pillage, and incendiarism, on the main road to Paris, 23
miles away. Immediately in front lay the forests of Ermenonville and
Chantilly, an uncomfortable country for what had become a mere wing-tip
of the invasion.
While Maunoury’s exhausted troops were thus left liberty, behind
these woods, to re-form and rest across the north-eastern suburbs of
Paris (from Dammartin to the Marne), Kluck’s main body was making
south-eastward after the British at a hot pace, at the same time
closing up on its left with other forces coming due south from
Soissons through Villers-Cotterets. Crépy-en-Valois was occupied by
the Germans on September 1, 120,000 troops passing through toward
Nanteuil-le-Haudouin and Betz, which were reached on September 3. By
the time Gallieni got wind of the new direction, in fact, nearly the
whole of Kluck’s Army and Bülow’s right wing were nearing Meaux and
Château-Thierry (27 and 54 miles east of Paris). On September 3, the
British blew up the Marne bridges behind them, and altered their line
of retreat to south-west, reaching quietude and reinforcements on the
Seine on September 4. Kluck pursued his south-eastward course, and,
having crossed the Marne, Petit Morin, and Grand Morin, established
himself, on September 5, with his Staff, in the house of a Dr. Alleaume
in the little country town of Coulommiers. “This is the last stage,”
he is reported as saying; “the day after to-morrow, we shall leave
Coulommiers to enter Paris.”[43] That programme could not be carried
out. Three days later, the boaster had fled, and Sir John French was
ensconced in Coulommiers Town Hall.
Before we go on to trace the advantage the Allied commanders took of
this situation, we may pause to consider two questions which have been,
and may yet be, keenly discussed: (1) How came Kluck, reputedly one of
the best of living German officers, to perform this evolution across
Maunoury’s front, and so to reach a position that was to prove fatal
to the whole enterprise? (2) Was the German Staff right in deciding to
postpone the attack upon Paris?
It was natural that the problem should at first be posed in this double
form, because, when information is scanty, it is easier to criticise
an individual commander than a Grand Staff, and because the fate of a
capital is more generally interesting than a strategical hypothesis.
The most usual reply to the two questions was that, while the commander
had made an evident blunder, the Command had only followed the orthodox
military rule that no lesser objective should be allowed to interfere
with that of breaking the enemy’s main armies, and, the French and
British armies being unbroken, it was right not to adventure upon
another task, the reduction of a great city which might be obstinately
defended, till this was accomplished. That Berlin understood the
importance of taking the French capital, and hoped to take it quickly,
may be assumed.[44] Among other detailed evidence, the tardiness of a
message from Berlin to the Ambassador of the United States (then still
neutral) in Paris warning him to prepare for this event,[45] and the
fact that the German armies were not at first provided with maps of
the region of the capital (see note 2), reinforce the probability that
this aim was originally, as after August 29, subordinated to that of a
decisive battle.
But the wisdom of the decision has been strongly questioned. “First to
beat the enemy army,” says General Cherfils, “is a means to an end, and
generally the best. But this means is only a rule generally justified,
not at all a principle. The principle of war is higher, and, like other
principles, immutable——it is that the aim of war is to impose peace,
and to this end to produce on the enemy government or command an effect
of decisive demoralisation. We all know that Paris was not defended,
and that, if the Germans had pushed right on to the capital with their
I Army, nothing would have prevented them from destroying two of the
forts, bombarding Paris, and entering the city. I ask if, at that hour,
such a disaster would, not have produced an effect of demoralisation
equal to the finest victory. The Germans neglected to put in play the
terrifying surprise of such a catastrophe. I am sure the Grand Staff
must have regretted it.”[46]
More convincing reasons than this may be found for the fact that
Kluck was afterwards relegated, first to a lesser command, in which
he was wounded, and then to the retired list. It is an exaggeration
to speak of the city as “not defended.” The garrison consisted of
four Territorial divisions, to which Maunoury could have added on
September 5 the nine divisions of his new army. The ring of outer
forts, with a circumference of nearly a hundred miles, was too long
to be held by such a force; but it was also too long for investment
or general attack by the ten or eleven divisions Kluck might have
brought up. The German commander would, doubtless, have struck at a
short sector; and the question, probably unanswerable, is whether the
defenders, in their inadequate trenches connecting the old-fashioned
forts, could have prevented him from breaking through, at least until
the general battle on the Marne was won. It is highly probable they
could have done so. It is certain that Gallieni would have made a
spirited and obstinate defence; he had received specific permission
to blow up the Seine bridges within the city, if he found it necessary
to retire to the south bank. We know, also, that Kluck would have had
to wait several days before his heavy artillery could be brought into
position. Although the shortest distance between the outer forts and
the boundaries of the city is about eight miles, much of Paris might
then have been destroyed. But, the Government having gone south, would
there have been any “decisive demoralisation”? And what, meanwhile,
would have happened to the remaining armies? Assuming that the 6th
French Army would have been wholly occupied with Kluck in the Paris
area, instead of on the Ourcq, could Bülow, the Saxons, and the Duke of
Würtemberg have fulfilled their task on the Marne? Would there not have
been a dangerous gap on their right? Kluck would then have found it
much more difficult to disentangle himself, and perhaps impossible, in
case of a general retreat, to keep touch with his colleagues.
It has been stated, not very convincingly, that, in daring to pronounce
against such an adventure, Kluck encountered the opposition of the
Emperor and part of the Imperial Staff.[47] Von Bülow testifies that
the Staff abandoned the advance on Paris directly after the order was
given (p. 69). The problem which had arisen was of a larger and graver
character than that which has excited so much ingenious speculation.
III. JOFFRE’S OPPORTUNITY
For it was no exaggeration to say that a rapid victory was an
_essential_ condition of the German plan. The envelopment of the west
wing of the Allies might succeed if it were effected by the time
they reached the Somme, or a little beyond, but not later, and that
for three main reasons. In the first place, there was, south of the
Somme, Maunoury’s force, not large at first, but constantly growing,
a grave threat to Kluck’s west flank, whether realised or not. In the
second place, there was Foch’s new army forming at the centre; and,
between Lanrezac and Foch, Bülow’s advance was so compromised that it
had become necessary for Kluck to move eastward in order to relieve
his comrade. Thirdly, Paris stood across the path of a more directly
southward movement, with the certainty of delaying, and the probability
of dislocating, an immediate attack. The design of envelopment by
the west was, therefore, necessarily abandoned. Between August 29
and September 1, when he had passed the Somme, Kluck ceased his
south-westerly course, which no longer had any important purpose, and
came in touch with Bülow, to support his blow at the strongest of the
French Armies, the 5th. It was probably thought, on the following days,
that Maunoury would be locked up in Paris by a distraught Government,
and that the British Army, virtually disabled, would not require very
serious attention. Personal ambition, fear of being late for the action
that was to give a dramatic victory, may have spurred on the commander
of the I Army.[48]
So Kluck continued his course till his advance guards had reached a
point on the Brie plateau 50 miles south-east of Paris. His first
purpose was fulfilled. The space between the central lines of the
German I and II Armies on September 4 may be roughly measured by the
distance between Crépy-en-Valois and Fismes——no less than 50 miles.
Next day, this space was bridged. It could not have been otherwise
closed, except by arresting one or both forces, that is to say by
suspending the whole enterprise. Paris had been covered as well as
was possible with the forces in hand, the IV Reserve Corps, with a
cavalry division, being left north of the Marne, while the II Corps
was to turn from Coulommiers facing the south-east of the capital. It
is uncertain how far Kluck knew of the strength or position of the
French 6th Army.[49] As it afterwards came into action on the Ourcq, he
could not know of it, for it was not yet fully constituted; but he had
been repeatedly in conflict with some of its elements, from Baupaume
to Senlis. The German Command can hardly have supposed that Paris
would be left without a respectable garrison, especially as they were
certainly cognisant of Gallieni’s proclamation. Whether they under-
or over-estimated the strength Gallieni and Maunoury could put forth,
the result would be much the same. In any case, Kluck must close up
toward Bülow and cover his flank; new lines of communication must be
organised; if the French should attempt a serious flank attack, it
could be delayed till the main battle had been won.
It was, doubtless, a risky disposition, made more than risky by Kluck’s
headstrong determination to have his full share in the decisive shock.
British critics, with his failings in the north in mind, have dealt
very severely with this commander; French writers, better acquainted
with the fighting on the Ourcq, are more respectful. Kluck’s movement,
like the advance of Prince Ruprecht and Heeringen across the face of
Castelnau’s Army toward the Gap of Charmes, may have contained a large
element of recklessness, born of foolish contempt for the retiring
forces. But he was not responsible for the dilemma in which he was
involved. The error was that of the German Grand Staff rather than of
any particular commander. We shall see that, if Kluck was gambling, he
had not lost his head. Had the Allied retreat been less prolonged, had
he been able to come up with the French 5th and British Armies sooner,
he might have won, or at least have stopped on the Marne, instead of
the Aisne. He had no longer a free choice of his movements. To have
stayed between Aisne and Marne would not have solved the problem; it
would have eased the British advance. Every man was needed on the
extreme front, if the whole aim of the invasion was not to be missed.
Bülow had had to leave one corps behind at Maubeuge, and was just
losing the support, on his left, of one of Hausen’s Saxon corps (the
XI), ordered off to the Russian front. Foch’s new army of the centre
had, doubtless, been discovered before this time, though its numbers
would not yet be known. Kluck had to throw forward every regiment not
demonstrably needed elsewhere. All the German commands were now engaged
in a reckless gamble; but, where his masters lost their nerve, Kluck
did not. To this complexion had the great enveloping movement come
under pressure of the Joffrean dilemma. With all his anxieties, the
French Generalissimo may well have smiled blandly as he saw the enemy
enter between the horns of Paris and Verdun.
It is important to realise that the consequences we have to trace
arose, not chiefly from individual blundering, but from the nature
of the invasion, from a plan of campaign resting upon the need and
expectation of a rapid victory, and the French manner of meeting it.
To this need every lesser aim, however promising in itself, had been
sacrificed. King Albert was allowed to carry his army into the shelter
of Antwerp, there to prepare for the battle of the Yser. Ostend,
Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, all the coast of Flanders and the Channel,
with its hinterland, and with them the sea communications of England,
were ignored in obedience to the strategical doctrine of the major
objective, and in the sure belief that if this were attained, the rest
would follow easily. The watching world was staggered by the immense
boldness of these criminals. Joffre was in no wise intimidated, never
thought of temporising, immediately saw that a most daring crime can
only be overcome by a still more daring virtue, and set all his mind
to the task of gathering the utmost force in the best position for the
decisive test. That meant abandoning the north; so be it——he, too, must
stake all on a blow.
After rescuing the armies from a deadly constraint on the frontier,
after preparing a mass of manœuvre which would restore to him the
initiative, after so lengthening the retreat that a virtual equality of
forces was obtained, Joffre’s aim was to reach a level front whence,
his flanks being safe, he could swing round the whole line in a sudden
riposte. His wings were now, in a measure, protected; and the same
process which had brought the Allied forces near their reserves,
their supplies and their most favourable battleground had attenuated
the enemy’s columns, dislocated their line, and prejudiced their power
of manœuvre. The dilemma which Paris presented in the west, Verdun
repeated at the other end of the line, 170 miles away. There, too,
the beginnings of a modern defensive system were being extemporised.
Sarrail had just succeeded Ruffey in command of the 4th Army; he would
have defended, did, indeed, afterwards defend, his circle of forts and
hill-trenches as Gallieni would have defended the capital. The Imperial
Crown Prince was faced by a replica of Kluck’s problem——to attack the
fortress of the Meuse Heights, and to that extent to neglect the French
field armies; or to neglect the fortress, and risk all that might, and
did, happen. Either the invaders must entangle themselves upon these
protruding points, and so weaken the intermediate forces, or they
must go forward to the crucial encounter leaving a peril unreduced
upon either flank. That the Crown Prince’s answer was the same as
Kluck’s indicates that it was not their individual answer only, but the
decision of the Grand Staff.
On the west, there are, before the battle of the Marne, three main
stages in the development of this result: the loss of a week at the
outset in Belgium, which enabled the French command to shift its
forces north-westward, and the British Army to assemble; the failure
of the surprise on the Sambre and Meuse to produce a decision; and the
failure, on or south of the Somme, either to envelop or to break the
retreating masses. On the east, where there was less possibility of
surprise or manœuvre, a like inability to pierce or envelop appeared
in five successive failures: that of the Gap of Charmes on August 25;
the battle of the Mortagne, at the beginning of September; the battle
of the Grand Couronné of Nancy on September 4–11; that of Fort Troyon
on September 8–13; and that of the Crown Prince’s Army in course of
the main battle of the Marne. To the German marching wing the most
important mission had been entrusted; and its failure must be adjudged
the most grave.
Its greatest exponents have admitted that the danger of dislocation
is inherent in the tactic of envelopment; Clausewitz himself laid
it down that the manœuvre should only be attempted when the force
attacked is wholly engaged with the assailant’s centre.[50] After the
Sambre, the German armies never had this opportunity; and ere they
could change a plan that had governed all their dispositions, it had
aggravated the disorder natural in so violent a pursuit. What at first
sight looks like a sudden change of fickle fortune is, in fact, the
logical end of an immense strategical deception, of weaknesses in an
imposing organism discovered by a higher intelligence, and exploited
by a higher prudence and courage. However the lesser questions we have
touched be answered in the light of fuller knowledge, it seems sure
that history will pronounce Joffre’s master idea one of the boldest and
soundest conceptions to be found in military annals. It dominated the
ensuing battle, which thus yielded an essentially strategic victory.
Gallieni has been justly praised for the promptitude with which he took
advantage of Kluck’s “adventurous situation.” The only alternative for
the latter, however, was another situation hardly, if at all, less
adventurous; and the choice was imposed upon him——as, at the other end
of the line, upon the Crown Prince——by the French Commander-in-Chief.
The manœuvrer had become the manœuvred before the battle began.