SUMMING-UP
The battle of the Marne closed a definite phase of the Great War, and
perhaps——in so far as it was marked by open and rapid movement, and as
it finally exposed certain gross military errors——a phase of warfare in
general. A fresh examination of the plans of the preceding years and
the events of the preceding month immensely enhances the interest of
the whole development; for it shows the real “miracle of the Marne” to
have been an uprush of intelligence and patriotic will in which grave
faults of strategy and tactics were corrected, and the victory to be
the logical reward of a true conception, executed with unfailing skill
through a new instrument created while the conditions of the struggle
were being equalised. In whatever sense we may speak of a “greatest”
battle of history, this was assuredly, of all clashes of force, that in
which reason was most conspicuously vindicated.
Insanely presumptuous as was her ambition of reducing France, Russia,
and Britain, Germany had at the outset some remarkable advantages.
Chief among these must be counted the power of surprise, due to her
long secret preparation, and a complete unity of command in face of
dispersed Allies. The German forces concentrated on the west were not
numerically superior to those of France, Britain, and Belgium; their
effective superiority was considerable. Half of the active corps,
which alone the French expected as troops of shock, were doubled with
thoroughly trained reserve formations, giving a mass of attack of 34
corps, instead of 22, a difference larger than the two armies of the
enveloping movement. Their strength was also increased by a clear
superiority in several branches of armament and field service (the
French field-gun and the use by the Allies of the French railways
being notable exceptions), and in some particulars of tactical
practice, especially the prudent use of field defences. The basic
idea being to strike France down before Russia and Britain could
effectually interfere, speed was a principal condition of success; and
the plan of the Western campaign was probably the only one on which
it could be realised. One-third of the whole force was to hold the
old Franco-German frontier in a provisional defence, while one-third
attacked through Luxembourg and the Belgian Ardennes, and the remainder
was thrown across the Meuse and the open plain of Flanders, toward
the French capital. This unprecedented enlargement of the offensive
front, the outstanding feature of the plan, secured the most rapid
deployment of the maximum forces; it alone could yield the great
element of surprise; it alone provided the opportunity of envelopment
dear to the German military mind. Its boldness, aided by terrorism in
the invaded regions, astounded the world, and so seemed to favour the
scheme of conquest. It might ultimately provoke a full development of
British power; even in case of failure, it would cripple France and
Belgium for many years. Its immediate weakness arose from the wide
extension of forces not larger, except at certain points, allowing
no general reserve and no large reinforcement, and from the necessity
of great speed. The plan ignored many possibilities, from the Alps to
Lille; once in motion, however, it could not be considerably or rapidly
changed. Berlin, confident in the superiority of the war-machine to
which it had devoted its best resources and thought, believed there
would be no delay and no need of change.
France had been inevitably handicapped by the need of renouncing any
initiative that could throw doubt upon her moral position, by the
independence of her British and Belgian Allies, and by uncertainty as
to Italy. This last doubt was, however, quickly removed; the Belgian
Army delayed the invasion by a full week; and our “Old Contemptibles”
gave most precious aid. A united Command at that time might have done
little more than strengthen the instrument and confirm the doctrine
whose imperfections we have traced. The instrument was inferior not
only in effective strength, not only in some vital elements of arms
and organisation, but in the system and spirit of its direction. The
doctrine of the offensive, general, continuous, and unrestrained, had
become an established orthodoxy during the previous decade, when the
Russian alliance and the British Entente were fixed, when service was
extended to three years, the 75 mm. gun was perfected, and a new method
of railway mobilisation promised that the armies would be brought into
action at least as rapidly as those of the enemy. Before a shot was
fired, it had prejudiced the military information services——whence
the scepticism of the Staff as to a large German movement west of the
Meuse, and as to the German use of army corps of reserve in the first
line; whence the ignorance of the German use of aeroplanes and wired
entrenchment. No answer was prepared to the German heavy artillery.
While unable to create the means to a successful general offensive, the
French Command had discounted, if not positively discredited, modern
methods of defence and delaying manœuvre, methods peculiarly indicated
in this case, since France had the same reasons for postponing a
decision as Germany had for hastening it. The only hope of the Allies
at the outset lay in a combination of defence and manœuvre: there was
no adequate defence, and no considerable manœuvre, but only a general
headlong attack on a continuous line. Of the consequences of this
lamentable beginning, an accomplished and sober French officer says:
“It is just to speak of the Battle of the Frontiers as calamitous,
for this battle not only doomed to total or partial ruin nine of our
richest departments: insufficiently repaired by the fine recovery on
the Marne, it weighed heavily upon the whole course of the war. It
paralysed our strategy. From September 1914, our High Command was
necessarily absorbed in the task, first, of limiting, then of reducing,
the enormous pocket cut in our territory. Ever obsessed by the fear
of abandoning to devastation a new band of country, we were condemned
for nearly four years to a hideous trench warfare for which we were
infinitely less prepared and less apt than the invader, and that we
were able to sustain only by force of heroism.”[79] Any one of the
errors that have been indicated would have been grave; in combination,
they are accountable for the heavy losses of the three abortive inroads
into Alsace, Lorraine, and the Ardennes, and for the dispositions
which necessitated the long retreat from the north. That the German
armies suffered in these operations is, of course, to be remembered;
but for France it was more urgent to economise her strength. In
strategy infatuated, in tactics reckless, in preparation unequal to the
accomplishment of its own designs, the then French Command must be held
responsible in large measure for the collapse of the national forces in
the first actions of the campaign.
Joffre, who had been named Generalissimo designate three years before,
almost by accident, who was an organiser rather than a strategist,
had inherited, with the imperfect instrument, the imprudent doctrine
and plan. There was not the time, and he was hardly the man, to
attempt radically to change them; nor has he yet recognised in words
that there was any large strategical error to correct. But the facts
speak clearly enough: from the evening of August 23, when the general
retreat from the north was ordered, we enter upon a profoundly changed
situation, in which the native shrewdness and solid character of the
French Commander-in-Chief are the dominant factor. The defence that
should have been prepared could not be extemporised. The armies must be
disengaged and re-formed. A large sacrifice of territory was therefore
unavoidable. To delay the critical encounter till the balance of
forces should be rectified was the first requirement. On August 24,
Headquarters issued a series of tactical admonitions, prelude to a
clean sweep of no less than thirty-three generals and many subordinate
officers. Next day followed the “General Instruction” in which will be
found the germ of the ultimate victory. The rule of blind, universal,
unceasing offensive disappeared, without honour or ceremony; arose
that of manœuvre; informed, elastic, resourceful, prudent but energetic.
At once there was precipitated a conception which governed not only the
battle of the Marne, but the whole after-development of the war. There
must be no more rash adventures on the east; from Belfort to Verdun,
the front would be held defensively, with a minimum of strength, to
fulfil the purpose for which its fortifications were built, and to
protect the main forces, which would operate henceforth in the centre
and west. The importance of the north-west coast, and the fact that
Kluck was not approaching it, plainly suggested the creation of a
new mass of manœuvre on this side to menace the German flank: this
new body was Maunoury’s 6th Army. These two features of the Allied
riposte——defence on the east, offence from the west——were to be
permanent. The French centre must be strengthened to bear the impact of
Bülow, the Saxons, and the Duke of Würtemberg. Foch’s Army, created to
this end, to come in between those of d’Espérey (Lanrezac’s successor)
and de Langle, had the further effect of preserving the full offensive
strength of the 5th Army. For these purposes, large numbers of men
had to be transferred from the east to the west and centre. Joffre at
first hoped to stand on the Somme, and then on the Oise. But the new
forces were not ready; the defence of the east was not secured; the
British Army was momentarily out of action; Kluck threatened the Allied
communications; the line was a hazardous zigzag. The Generalissimo
would not again err on the side of premature attack.
The pursuit was not an unbroken course of victory for the invaders.
Before the Gap of Charmes, on August 24–26, Castlenau and Dubail
administered the first great German set-back of the war. At the same
time, the Prince Imperial received a severe check at Etain; and,
although Smith-Dorrien’s stand at Le Cateau on August 26 disabled
the British Force for some days, it did much to save the Allied
left wing. On August 28, the German IV Army was sharply arrested at
Novion Porcien; and next day took place the combats of Proyart and
Dun-sur-Meuse, and the battle of Guise. In these and many lesser
actions, the spirit of the armies was prepared for the hour when the
issue should be fairly joined.
The Fabian strategy was soon and progressively justified. Weaknesses
inherent in the German plan began to appear. Every day of their
unsuccessful chase aggravated the problem of supplying the armies,
removed them from their heavy artillery, stretched and thinned their
infantry lines, weakened their liaison, bred weariness and doubt
(which were too often drowned in drink), while the French, on the
contrary, were shortening their communications, and generally pulling
themselves together. “It is the old phenomenon of the wearing down
of forces in case of an offensive which we here encounter anew,”
says Freytag-Loringhoven. Two or three corps had to be left behind
to mask Antwerp and to besiege Maubeuge; the Grand Staff could not
altogether resist the Russian scare. There was increasing dislocation:
in particular, Kluck had got dangerously out of touch with Bülow.
And there was something worse than “wearing down” and dislocation.
“Perhaps our programme would not have collapsed,” the historian
Meinecke imagines,[80] “if we had carried through our original
strategical idea with perfect strictness, keeping our main forces
firmly together, and, for the time, abandoning East Prussia.” This
cannot be admitted. So far from being pursued more strictly, the
original German idea soon could not be pursued at all. Its boldest
feature had become inapplicable to circumstances more and more subject
to another will. On September 1, when the Somme had been passed, and
while Joffre was ordering the extension of the retreat to the Seine and
the Aube, Moltke was engaged in changing radically the direction of the
marching wing of the invasion, Kluck’s I Army. Failing successively on
the Sambre, the Somme, the Oise, and finally stultified by the superior
courage that staked the capital itself upon the chance of a victorious
recoil farther south, the greatest of all essays in envelopment ended
in a recognised fiasco.
With the appearance on the southern horizon of the fortress of Verdun
and the city of Paris, and the entry of the Allied armies between them
as into a corridor, the whole problem, in fact, was transformed. The
German Command suddenly found itself in face of a fatal dilemma. As
Paris obstructed the way of Kluck, so Verdun challenged the Prussian
Crown Prince. To enter the corridor without first reducing these two
unknown quantities would be to risk serious trouble on both flanks; to
stay to reduce them would involve delay, or dispersal of force, either
of which would be disastrous. The course of argument by which the Grand
Staff decided this deadly question has not been revealed. They chose
the first alternative. Kluck was ordered to pass south-eastward of
the one “entrenched camp,” the Imperial Crown Prince south-westward of
the other, both, and the three armies between them, to overtake the
Allies and force them to a frontal encounter, while a fresh effort was
made to break through the eastern defences. A heavy price must be paid
for such large re-establishments and changes of plan in face of an
alert enemy. Kluck has been too much blamed for what followed. He may
have been guilty of recklessness, over-reaching ambition, and specific
disobedience. But here, as in the Battle of the Frontiers, it is the
authors, not the executants, of the offensive operation who must be
held chiefly responsible for consequences that are in the logic of the
case.
Joffre’s hour had come. He had laboured to win three elements of an
equal struggle lacking in the north: (_a_) a more favourable balance
of numbers and armament——this was gained by the “wearing down” of the
enemy, and the reinforcement of the Allied line, in course of the
retreat, so that the battle of the Marne commenced with something more
than an equality, and ended with a distinct Allied superiority in the
area of decision; (_b_) a favourable terrain——this was reached on the
classic ground between the capital and the middle Meuse, under cover
of the eastern armies, and subject to the dilemma of Paris–Verdun;
(_c_) a sound strategic initiative. For this, the 6th Army had been
prepared, and the 5th kept at full strength. The failure of the
enveloping movement and the change of the German plan provided the
opportunity. To reduce the distended front of the invasion, at one
time no less than 140 miles (Amiens to Dun-sur-Meuse), to one of 100
miles (Crécy-en-Brie to Revigny), Kluck had boldly crossed the face
of the 6th Army, and on the evening of September 5 presented a moving
flank of more than 40 miles long to Maunoury, French, and d’Espérey’s
left. Joffre seems to have hesitated for a moment as to whether it were
best to continue the retreat, as arranged, to the Seine, and then to
have given way to Gallieni’s importunity. “We cannot count on better
conditions for our offensive,” he told the Government.
The order of battle was issued on the evening of September 4.
“Advantage must be taken of the adventurous situation of the I German
Army (right wing),” it started: this was to be the factor of surprise.
Positions would be taken on the 5th in order that the general movement
might begin at dawn on the following day. The 6th Army and the British
were to strike east on either side of the Marne, toward Château-Thierry
and Montmirail respectively, while the 5th Army attacked due northward:
thus, it was hoped, Kluck would be taken in flank and front, and
crushed by superior force. The central armies (9th and 4th) would
move north against Bülow, the Saxons, and the Duke of Würtemberg; and
Sarrail would break westward from Verdun against the exposed flank
of the Crown Prince. The function of Foch’s, the smallest of the
French armies concerned, and of de Langle’s, the next smallest, must
be regarded as primarily defensive, the chief offensive rôle being
entrusted to d’Espérey’s, by far the strongest, and Maunoury’s, with
the small British force linking them. Sarrail had not the means to
exploit his advantage of position. The essence of the plan lay in the
rectangular attack of the left.
[Illustration: The CRISIS of the BATTLE
Mid-day, Sept. 9.]
The design was perfect: Kluck’s columns, stretched out from the Ourcq
to near Esternay, should have been smashed in, the western part
of the German communications overwhelmed, the other armies put to
flight. These results were not obtained; the whole battle was, indeed,
compromised, before it was well begun, by the unreadiness of the
Allied left and the precipitancy of General Gallieni. When Lamaze’s
reservists stumbled upon Schwerin’s outposts north of Meaux, at midday
on September 5——eighteen hours before the offensive was timed to
open——Maunoury had only three divisions in line, and on the following
day he had only two more. Kluck had instantly taken alarm; his II
Corps was actually on its way back to the Ourcq while the main body of
the Allied armies was commencing their grand operation. The benefit
of surprise was thus sacrificed; and Kluck was able to move one after
another of his corps to meet Maunoury’s reinforcements as they arrived
upon the field. Certain French partizans of the then Governor of Paris
have attempted to shift the responsibility for this miscarriage to the
shoulders of the British Commander-in-Chief. The Expeditionary Force
deserves more scrupulous justice. It had retired and was re-forming
behind the Forest of Crécy, at the request of General Joffre, when the
order of September 4 arrived. The positions therein named to be reached
on the following day (Changis–Coulommiers) were unattainable, being too
far away, and solidly held by the enemy. The instructions for Marshal
French were to attack eastward toward Montmirail on the 6th; neither to
him nor to the French Staff was it known till the afternoon of that
day that Kluck was withdrawing across the Marne. No need appeared of
helping Maunoury until September 7. By that time the Field-Marshal had
again changed his direction at Joffre’s request, facing north beside
d’Espérey, instead of east beside Maunoury; and, from the moment when
Kluck’s withdrawal was discovered, rapid progress was made.
The German Staff now seems to have completely lost control of its two
chief Commanders. The fatal fault is plainly exhibited in Bülow’s
“Bericht zur Marneschlacht”——significantly, withheld from publication
for five years. Though weakened by a premature start, unreadiness, and
imperfect co-ordination, the French attack on the Ourcq necessarily
produced not merely a local shock, but a disturbance reverberating
eastward by what has been called its “effect of suction.” To double
this with the strain of Bülow’s continued offensive——disastrously
successful in the surprise of Fère Champènoise——was the most reckless
gambling. With the I Army pulling north-west, the II Army pulling
south-east, and 60 miles between the points where they were seeking a
decision, how could anything more than a pretence of liaison be kept
up? But it was precisely before this interval that Joffre had aligned a
full third of the strength of the French crescent——the 20 divisions of
the French 5th and British armies. In the separation of the two masses
of the German right, and the entry between them of this powerful body,
lies the governing cause of the victory.
All the rest is a prodigy of endurance. The battle of the Ourcq was no
sooner joined than it resolved itself into a race of reinforcements,
and a stubborn, swaying combat over a few miles of open farmland,
with little of manœuvre, save reciprocal attempts at envelopment by
the north. The story of the battle of the Marshes of St. Gond is the
epic of Foch’s obstinacy, of Humbert’s defence of the pivot on the
Sézanne plateau, the loss of the swampy barrier and Mont Août, the
agonising breakdown about Fère Champènoise on September 8, and the
devices of the following day to close the breach. Between these points
of strangulation, the real offensive arm of the Allies progressed
with comparative ease. On the night of September 8, when d’Espérey’s
3rd Corps entered Montmirail, it was exactly midway between them. On
the morning of the 9th, when the British 1st and 2nd Corps passed
the Marne, Kluck and Bülow were more definitely divided. At noon,
Smith-Dorrien and Haig were on the Lizy–Château-Thierry road; and in
the evening d’Espérey’s 18th Corps held Château-Thierry. No last-moment
success of the enemy on the Ourcq or in Champagne could have greatly
affected the course of this development. The necessity of a retreat
of the three Western armies was probably accepted by the German Grand
Staff in the morning of September 9; but it may be that a considerable
success by either or both of the Crown Princes on that day would have
modified the decision as regards the rest of the front. At 11 a.m.
Betz was evacuated; and during the afternoon great convoys were seen
hurrying from the Ourcq to the Aisne. Bülow’s orders, inspired by
fear of flank attack by d’Espérey’s 10th and 1st Corps, rather than
by the 42nd Division, seem to have been given about 3 p.m. Fère
Champènoise was abandoned in the evening, and Foch’s anxiously prepared
manœuvre could not be carried out. The 6th and 9th Armies were too
much exhausted to attempt a serious pursuit till next morning; and the
German right reached the Aisne without inordinate losses.
Every part of the French line had contributed to this result, every
other army had been cut or kept down to serve the major opportunity.
And, if it stood relatively immobile, no less heroism and resource were
shown on the eastern than on the western wing of the Allied crescent.
Sarrail and de Langle were able to keep a rectangular disposition
like that of Maunoury and the B.E.F., forcing the Crown Prince to
fight on a double front; but they had not even a numerical equality
of force with which to exploit it. The 4th Army, in holding foot by
foot the Ornain-Saulx valley from Vitry to Sermaize, and the 3rd in
its defence of the long salient of the Meuse, were also weighed upon
by this peculiar anxiety: a comparatively small force might pierce
their frail river guard, or the wall of the Lorraine armies might
collapse beside them. They were helped to success by three errors of
omission on the part of the German armies concerned: (1) Verdun was not
directly attacked, the Crown Prince being confident that it would fall
automatically while his cavalry were reaching Dijon; (2) the attempt to
force the Meuse at Troyon was feeble and tardy; (3) the thinly-covered
gap on Langle’s left was not discovered until the 21st Corps had
been brought up. All along the line, the fighting was of a sustained
violence. The 15th Corps arrived from Lorraine on September 8 just in
time to save the junction of the 3rd and 4th Armies. It was, however,
not till noon on the 11th that the Duke of Würtemberg abandoned Vitry;
and only on the night of the 12th did the Prince Imperial order a
retreat which definitely relieved Verdun, and reopened the Châlons road
and railway.
In resting his plan upon a defence of the eastern pivot of the retreat
and the recoil, Joffre was accepting an accomplished fact. The great
attack upon the Couronné of Nancy began on the evening of September
4, thirty-six hours before the Allied offensive. It may be supposed,
therefore, that the German Staff had decided to get the Bavarian Army
into a position in which it could co-operate effectively with the
Imperial Crown Prince when he came up level on the west. Heeringen’s
push from the St. Dié region toward Epinal, and the attack on the
Mortagne, were probably intended to hide this design, and to pin down
Dubail’s forces. The promptitude with which Heeringen was sent off
to the Aisne, on the night of September 6, that is, as soon as the
danger of Kluck’s position was realised, is significant. In itself,
the presence of the Kaiser during the Bavarian attack on the Grand
Couronné proves nothing. His ceremonial entry into Nancy would have
grievously hurt French pride; but the sacrifice of the city had always
been contemplated, Toul being the real redoubt of the Moselle defences.
The prize was to be larger; the prestige of three royal personages was
to be satisfied. The Crown Princes of Prussia and Bavaria, ingeniously
linked, had been so directed that in the crisis they had the whole
Verdun–Toul system between them, and apparently at their mercy. The
assault of the Amezule defile and Mount Amance was reciprocal to the
adventure which Sarrail arrested 50 miles farther west.
For five days and nights the battle raged about the entrenched crescent
of the Nancy hills, with fiery wings outspread to Gerbéviller on the
south-east, and Rozières on the north-west. No more dreadful struggle
can be recorded. The German effort ceased on the night of September 9;
and on the 11th the general withdrawal to the old frontier began. Like
Foch, Langle, and Sarrail, Castlenau had won through by the narrowest
of margins; but his, pre-eminently, was a victory of foresight and
preparation. With all their power of heavy artillery (and here the
resources of Metz and Strasbourg were at hand), it is remarkable that
the German Staff never attempted to repeat in Lorraine the _coup_ of
Liège. As the French respected Metz, they respected Verdun; and the
manœuvre of the double approach to Toul, from east and west, proves
their fears. These were, as we now know, well justified. “It is
certain,” says Freytag-Loringhoven, “that the old-fashioned fortresses
are worthless, and, moreover, that the earlier notion, handed down
from the Middle Ages, that positions have to be secured by means of
fortresses, must be discarded.... But it will not be possible to
dispense with certain previously prepared fortified points at places
where only defensive tactics can be employed. The fortifications of the
French eastern frontier, above all Verdun and the Moselle defences,
have demonstrated how valuable these may be.... It is a question
of constructing not a continuous system of fortifications, but a
succession of central points of defence, and this not in the shape
of fortified towns, but of entrenchment of important areas” (pp.
64–6). And again: “The intention was to effect an envelopment from two
sides. The envelopment by the left wing was, however, brought to a
standstill before the fortifications of the French eastern frontier,
which, in view of the prompt successes in Belgium, it had been hoped
to overcome.... The defensive tactics of the chiefs of the French Army
were rendered very much easier by the support these fortifications
gave to their wing, as well as by the possibility of effecting
rapid transfers of troops afforded by a very convenient network of
railways, and a very large number of motor-wagons upon good roads (pp.
79–80)..... The war has proved that the assertion often made in time of
peace, that the spade digs the grave of the offensive, is not correct”
(p. 97).
* * * * *
One day, toward the end of the battle, I came upon a ring of peasants
digging a pit for the carcasses of two horses that lay near by. They
had already buried fourteen others, but seemed happy at their gruesome
task——just such sententious fellows as the master took for his models
in a famous scene. One of them guided me uphill to a small chalk-pit,
at the bottom of which a mound of fresh earth, surmounted by a couple
of sticks tied crosswise with string, marked the grave of two English
lads unnamed. A thicket shaded the hollow; but all around the sunshine
played over rolling stubble-fields. Ere the grave-diggers had finished,
a threshing-machine was working at the farm across the highway. Some
men were ploughing the upper ridge of the battlefield; and, as I
left, a procession of high-prowed carts, full of women and children
sitting atop their household goods, brought back home a first party
of refugees. The harvest of death seemed already to give way to the
harvest of life.
First of many still-born hopes. The Christmas that was to be the
festival of peace passed, and another, and another. Interminably,
the war prolonged itself through new scenes, more ingenious forms of
slaughter, new abysms of pain, till the armies had fallen into a temper
of iron endurance. But, even in such extremities, the heart will seek
its food. Month after month, by day and night, coming from beleaguered
Verdun or the gateways of Alsace to reach the Oise and Flanders, I
passed down the long sparkling valleys of the Marne; every turn grew
familiar, and their green folds whispered of the gain in loss and
the quiet within the storm. Like all religion, patriotism, for the
many, speaks in symbols; what symbol more eloquent than the strong
stream, endlessly renewed to cleanse, to nourish, and to heal? Through
those stony years, most of the convoys crossed the Marne at some
point——lumbering carts, succeeded by wagons white with a slime of dust
and petrol; fussy Staff cars and hurried ambulances; gun-trains, their
helmeted riders swaying spectrally in the misty air of dawn; columns
of heavy-packed infantry, dreaming of their loves left in trembling
cities far behind. In turn, all the armies of France, and some of those
of Britain, America, and Italy, came this way; and into their minds,
unconsciously, must have fallen something of the spirit of the Marne,
and of those frightened apprentices of the war who first saved France,
and dammed an infamous aggression.
So much the poilus knew; that comfort supported them. Most of the high
company of Joffre’s captains were still with them, winning fresh
laurels——Foch, Petain, and Haig, Castlenau, Humbert, Langle, Sarrail,
Franchet d’Espérey, Mangin, Guillaumat, Pulteney, Nivelle, Maud’huy,
Micheler, and many another. Soon the world at large understood that
this strange overturn of fortune was the base of all subsequent
victories in the same good cause. More than this——that a man had
conceived, designed, organised, and controlled it, and so earned
enduring fame——might be vaguely felt, but could not be certainly known
until the passage of time allowed it to be said that, as surely as
there were warts on Cromwell’s nose, there were shadows to the lights
of the record of victory. At length, a true picture is possible; and
instead of a play of blind forces, or a senseless “miracle,” we see a
supremely dramatic revolt of outraged reason, nobly led, and justly
triumphing.
The German conspiracy failed on the Marne not by any partial
fault or executive error, but by the logic of its most essential
characteristics. It was a masterpiece of diabolical preparation: it
failed, when the quickly-awakened French mind grappled with it, from
dependence upon a rigid mechanism, and the inability of its authors to
adjust it to unexpected circumstances. It was a wager on speed——for the
enveloping movement bore in it the germs of the ultimate disturbance;
that is to say, it presumed the stupidity or pusillanimity of the
Republican Command, and this presumption proved fatal. These faults
were aggravated by disunion among the army leaders and disillusion
among the men, while the Allies were inspired to an almost perfect
co-operation. Already delayed and weakened in Belgium, the invading
armies saw their surplus strength evaporating in the long pursuit,
their dislocated line caught in a sudden recoil, and to be saved from
being rent asunder only by closing the adventure. In the disastrous
moment when Kluck and Bülow turned in opposite directions, the proudest
war school in the world was beaten, and humiliated, by a stout burgess
of Rivesaltes. Long before the war itself became hateful, this thought
worked bitterly. Criminals do not make the best soldiers. Moltke was
cashiered, with him Kluck and Hausen, and we know not how many more. It
was the twilight of the heathen gods.
In the long run, mankind cherishes the reasonable, in faith or action;
and, of the barbarous trial of war, this is all that remains in the
memory of future ages. The Marne was a signal triumph for Right, won,
not by weight of force or by accident, but by superior intelligence
and will. That is its essential title to our attention, and its most
pregnant meaning for posterity. So immense a trial was it, and a
triumph so vitally necessary to civilisation, that all the heroic
episodes of our Western history pale before it, to serve henceforth for
little, faint, but comprehensible analogies; in the French mind even
the _epopée_ of the great Emperor is at last eclipsed. The combatants
themselves could not see it thus. Afterwards, the war and those doomed
to continue it became sophisticated——governments and the press told
them what to expect, and followed them with praise and some care.
In this first phase, there is a strange _naïveté_; it is nearly all
headlong extemporisation; masses of men constantly plunged from one
into another term of the unknown. The “front” was never fixed; there
were few of the features of combat later most characteristic——no
trenches or dugouts, no bombs or helmets, no poison-gas, no mines,
no Stokes guns, no swarm of buzzing ’planes across the sky, no field
railways, few hot meals, and fewer ambulance cars. The armies did not
come up to their tasks through zones devastated by the enemy, and then
reorganised by engineers into so many monstrous war-factories. The
forests they crossed were undisturbed, the orchards blossoming, the
towns intact. They knew nothing of “camouflage”: on the contrary, they
saw and sought the individual foe, and by him were seen individually.
Very often, and quickly, they came to bodily grips; commonly, the
conflict ceased, or slackened, at sunset. What would afterward have
seemed a moderate bombardment terrorised them, for it was worse than
anything they had heard of.
In sum, with less of horror and less of protection, they felt as
much as, and more freshly than, those who followed. War had not yet
become habitual——there was neither the half-sceptical stoicism nor
the profound comradeship of later days. Only a month had passed since
this first million lads had left home. Every hour had brought some new
shock. Resentment was fresh and fierce in them. No romantic illusion
fed it; but deep offence called to the depths of dignity of an aged
nation for answer, and the answer came. There stood the Boche, arrogant
and formidable, polluting the soil of Brie and Champagne, the heart of
France——what argument could there be? They did not think of one spot
as more sacred than another, as, afterwards, thousands fell to hold
Ypres and Arras, Soissons, Rheims, and Verdun. Like the process, the
inspiration was simpler. The fields of the Marne were France, the land
that had nurtured them, its freedom and grace of life and thought, the
long Latin heritage, the virtues that a new Barbarism had dared to
dispute and outrage. For this great all, they gave straightway their
little all.
Rivers of blood, the old, rich Gallic blood that mingled Roman
experience and Mediterranean fire with the peasant vigour of the North,
tempered through centuries of labour and exaltation. The best must
needs suffer most; and France, historic guardian of ancient treasuries,
standard-bearer of European civilisation, must suffer in chief for the
weaknesses of the Western world. To those who knew her, there was ever
something of worship in their love, as in our regard for the fullest
type of womanhood. The earth thrilled with anger to see her so foully
stricken, and breathed freely only when her sons had shown the pure
nobility of their response. No frenzies of meliorism, no Carmagnoles
of murderous ambition, no Danton or Robespierre, no La Vendée and no
Buonaparte have marred the story of the defence of the Third Republic.
Democracy, Reason, slow-growing Law, are justified of their children.
Men raised by such achievement into an immortality of human gratitude,
the young limbs and hearts so swiftly girded up, so soon loosed upon
eternity, should evoke no common mourning.
“Knows he who tills this lonely field,
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield?”
Not their own soil only, they enriched with their blood, but the
universal mind. In saving the best in dream and reality that France
means to the world, they saved the whole future, as short reflection
upon the alternative will show. The victory of the Marne sealed the
brotherhood of France and England, and did much toward bringing America
and the Dominions into the comity of nations. It was the basis of the
completer victory to follow, and of the only possibilities of future
peace and liberal progress. For ever, this example will call to youth
everywhere——“that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion,
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have lived in
vain.” May there not again be need to pass through such a Gehenna; but
it is surer that the world will only be made “safe for democracy,”
or even for elementary order, by the vigilance and chivalry of each
oncoming generation. For these, for ever, ghostly bugles will blow
through the woods and hamlets of the Marne.
“_Ames des chevaliers, revenez-vous encor?
Est-ce vous qui parlez avec la voix du cor?
Roncevaux! Roncevaux! dans ta sombre vallée
L’ombre du grand Roland, n’est-elle pas consolée?_”
NOTES AND REFERENCES
[1] Many volumes of soldiers’ notes and recollections have been
published, and some of them have high literary merit. One of these is
_Ma Pièce, Souvenirs d’un Canonnier_ (Paris: Plon-Nourrit), by Sergeant
Paul Lintier, of the 44th Artillery, who shared in the defeat of
Ruffey’s Army near Virton, in the south-eastern corner of Belgium, 35
miles north of Verdun. It was almost his first sight of bloodshed, and
with an artist’s truthfulness he records all the confusion of his mind.
“The battle is lost,” he writes on August 23, “I know not how or why. I
have seen nothing. It is a sheer nightmare. We shall be massacred....
Anguish chokes me.... This boiling mass of animality and thought that
is my life is about to cease. My bleeding body will be stretched upon
the field. I see it. Across the sunny perspective of the future a great
curtain falls. I am only twenty-one years old.... What are we waiting
for? Why do not our guns fire? I perspire, I am afraid ... afraid.”
This mood gradually passes away. A few days later he is trying to
explain the change: “One accustoms oneself to danger as to the
cruellest privations, or the uncertainty of the morrow. I used to
wonder, before the war, how the aged could live in quietude before
the immanence of death. Now I understand. For ourselves, the risk of
death has become an element of daily existence. One counts with it; it
no longer astonishes, and frightens us less. And, besides, every day
trains us to courage. The conscious and continuous effort to master
oneself succeeds at length. This is the whole of military bravery. One
is not born brave; one becomes so.” And this stoicism is softened and
spiritualised by a new sense of what the loss of France would mean.
Another notable narrative of this period of the war is _Ce qu’a vu
un Officier de Chasseurs-à-Pied_ (Paris: Plon-Nourrit), by Henri
Libermann, The writer was engaged on the Belgian frontier farther west,
near where the Semoy falls out of the Ardennes into the Meuse, the
region where the Saxons and the IV Army joined hands on the one side,
and, on the other, the 5th French Army, Lanrezac’s, touched all too
lightly the 4th, that of de Langle de Cary. Some French officers have
quartered themselves in an old convent, picturesquely set upon a wooded
hill. They do not know it, but, in fact, the cause is already lost
from Dinant to Neufchâteau. All they know is that a part of the 9th
Corps is in action a few miles to the north. The guns can be heard; the
villagers are flying in panic; the flames of burning buildings redden
the northern sky.
“In the convent parlour, the table is laid with a fine white cloth,
decorated with flowers, bottles covered with venerable dust,
cakes whose golden crust gladdens the eyes. A brilliant Staff,
the Commandant, a few chasseur officers. The Sisters hurry about,
carrying dishes. ‘A little more fowl, my dear Commandant,’ says the
Brigadier; ‘really, it is delicious. And this wine——Pontet-Canet of
’74, if you please!’ All of us are grateful to the good Sisters, who
are such delicate cooks. At dessert, as though embarrassed by an
unhappy impression shared by all the guests, the General speaks: ‘Rest
tranquil, gentlemen. Our attack to-morrow morning will be overwhelming.
Debouching between hills 832 and 725, it will take in flank the German
Corps which is stopping our brave 9th, and will determine the victory.”
Hardly has the toast of the morrow’s triumph been drunk than a heavy
step is heard outside, the click of spurs, and then a knock on the
door. A captain enters, in helmet and breastplate, a bloody bandage
across his forehead, dust thick upon his uniform, perspiration rolling
down his face. He has ridden from Dinant with news of the defeat, and
secret instructions. The Uhlans are near. Nevertheless, the officers
go to bed. During the night they are aroused by an increasing clamour
of flying peasants outside the convent. There are soldiers among
them, wildly crying: “The Prussians are coming, _sauve qui peut_!” An
infantry regiment had camped, the previous evening, in the village
of Willerzie. “They arrived late, tired out. No thought but of rest,
no scouts or outposts. On the verge of the neighbouring forest,
grey-coated horsemen appeared. The sentinels fired a few shots, and
they retired into the wood. The regiment then went to sleep in its
false security. About 11 p.m., however, three searchlights flashed
along the village streets. ‘_Schnell, schnell!_ _Vorwärts, vorwärts!_’
A terrible fusillade broke out around the houses; and, as our
infantrymen, hurriedly wakened, ran to arms, a thick rain of bullets
fell upon them. In a few instants, terror was transformed into panic,
panic into rout. At this moment the regiment was flying, dispersed in
all directions, pursued by the ‘hurrahs’ of the victorious Germans.”
THE GERMAN OBJECTIVE
[2] The question whether the Eastern thrust was integral in the
original plan cannot be absolutely determined on the present
information; but it is significant that at the outset the German forces
on the East were inferior to the French.
M. Gabriel Hanotaux (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, November 15, 1916) thinks
that the German right, centre, and left were aiming at the region of
Troyes, Kluck from the north-west, Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria from the
east, and the Imperial Crown Prince from the north. “The direction of
the Prince of Bavaria appears from an order seized on the enemy giving
as objective Rozelieures, that is to say, the Gap of Charmes; the
direction of the Crown Prince is revealed by an order of September 6
giving Dijon as objective for his cavalry.”
Lt.-General von Freytag-Loringhoven (_Deductions from the World
War_. London: Constable. 1918) says: “The intention was to effect
an envelopment from two sides. Envelopment by the left wing of the
[German] Army was, however, brought to a standstill before the
fortifications of the French eastern frontier.”
A German brochure on the battle of the Marne——_Die Schlachten an der
Marne_ (Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. 1916), by a “German Staff Officer”
who was evidently an eye-witness, and probably a member of the staff
either of General von Kluck, or of General von Moltke, chief of the
Grand Staff from the beginning of the war till after the battle, says
the plan was to rest on the defensive from the Swiss frontier to the
Donon, while the mass of the armies rolled the French up south of the
Seine, and Reserve and Landwehr Corps advanced to the coast to stop the
landing of British troops. “By all human provisions, this plan might
have been carried out by the end of September 1914.”
A French translation of this interesting booklet (_Une Version
Allemande de la Marne_. Brussels et Paris: G. Van Oest et Cie. 1917)
includes also a critical study by M. Joseph Reinach, a part of which
is given to the results of an examination of the maps taken on German
dead, wounded, and prisoners in the beginning of the war. These
Staff maps fall into four categories, of which three date from the
mobilisation or earlier, and so throw light on the original plan of
campaign, while one set was distributed at a later date. The former
are: (1) sets of maps of Belgium——the whole country——in seventy
sheets, reproducing the Belgian “60,000th” Staff map, and dated 1906,
another evidence of premeditation. (2) The north-east of France, from
the French “80,000” map, with names in French, but explanations in
Italian, dated 1910. These had evidently been printed for the use of
Italian troops, but, when Italy declared itself neutral, had been
distributed to German officers from motives of economy. (3) The north
and north-east of France in 87 sheets, _not including Paris_, dated
from 1905 to 1908, and distributed to German officers on the eve of
the mobilisation. These are based upon the French “80,000” map, with
some variations and special markings. They include the whole of the
eastern and northern frontiers from Belfort to Dunkirk; the significant
thing is their limits on the west and south. On the west they include
the regions of Dunkirk, St. Omer, Arras, Amiens, Montdidier and
Beauvais, but not those of Calais, Boulogne, Abbeville, and Rouen.
At 30 or 40 miles north of Paris, they turn eastward, including the
sectors of Soissons and Rheims, but excluding those of Paris and Meaux.
They then turn south again, including the Chalôns, Arcis, and Troyes
sheets; and the southern limit is the regions of Troyes, Chaumont,
and Mirécourt, (4) Finally, there is a set of 41 sheets supplementary
to the last named, printed in 1914, and either distributed at a later
date, or intended for armies other than those of the first invasion.
These included Calais and the Channel coast, Rouen, Paris, Meaux, to
the south thereof the regions of the Orleanais, Berry, the Nivernais,
including the great manufacturing centre of Le Creusot, the north of
Burgundy, Franche Comté, the Jura, and the Swiss frontier from Bâle to
near the Lake of Geneva.
In his _L’Enigme de Charleroi_ (Paris: L’Edition Française Illustrée,
20 Rue de Provence. 1917), M. Hanotaux expresses the belief that, at
the outset, the German Command, regarding England as the chief enemy,
intended its armies to cross northern Belgium, “straight to the west
and the sea, with Dunkirk and Calais as immediate objective,” and
that the French resistance diverted them from the coastal region. The
evidence of the maps appears to the present writer more convincing than
the reasoning of M. Hanotaux.
THE OPPOSED FORCES
[3] It is not necessary here to state the evidence in detail; but these
figures may be accepted as substantially correct. I am indebted to a
British authority for criticism and information. Besides the 4 Landwehr
Divisions in course of formation during the last days of August, there
were a number of Landwehr Brigades, which, however, had no artillery
and were not organised for the field. By the first week of September,
the XI Corps and Guard Reserve Corps had gone to the Russian front;
but the 4 Landwehr Divisions named above had come in as effective. The
“Metz Army Detachment” may be counted as adding a division.
[4] The transport of “covering troops” began at 9 p.m. on July 31, and
ended at noon on August 3. On the Eastern Railway alone, 538 trains
were required. The “transports of concentration,” from August 5 to 18,
engaged 4300 trains, only a score of which were behind time. After
Charleroi, between August 26 and September 3, the removal of three
army corps, five infantry divisions, and three cavalry divisions from
Lorraine to the Central and Western fronts was effected by 740 trains,
while the railways were largely swamped by other military movements and
the civilian exodus.
[5] For fuller explanations on this point, see _Le Revers de 1914 et
ses Causes_, by Lt.-Col. de Thomasson (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1919).
Of the volumes published in France up to this date on the first period
of the war, this moderate and closely-reasoned essay by an accomplished
officer is one of the most valuable.
General Verraux (_L’Oeuvre_, June 1, 1919) refers to this weakness and
confirms my general conclusion: “Despite the inferior organisation
of reserves, with our 25 Active Corps, the 80 corps battalions of
reserves, the Belgians and the British, we had, if not a numerical
superiority, almost an equality with the German forces, deducting those
on the Russian front.”
M. Victor Giraud, a competent historical writer, in his _Histoire de
la Grande Guerre_ (Part I. ch. iii. Paris: Hachette. 1919) gives other
details, leading to the same conclusion.
[6] _Etudes et Impressions de Guerre_, vol. i, (Paris: Tallandier.
1917). General Malleterre, commanding the 46th Regiment, 3rd Army, was
seriously wounded in the battle of the Marne. Taking up the pen on his
recovery, he became one of the ablest French commentators on the war.
[7] “No enterprise, perhaps,” says a French military publication, “is
as purely French as the conquest of the air. The first free balloon,
the first dirigible, the first aeroplane all rose from our soil.”
However, “the war surprised our aviation in an almost complete state
of destitution. Our 200 pilots, almost all sportsmen, possessed
between them a total of two machine-guns. A few squadrillas, without
clearly-defined functions, sought their places on the front.” Aerial
artillery ranging, photography, and observation had been envisaged,
and, more generally, chasing and bombardment; but there was hardly a
beginning of preparation.
France had at the beginning of the war 24 squadrillas, each of five or
six machines, all scouts, of a speed from 50 to 70 miles an hour. M.
Engerand says that “Germany entered the campaign with 1500 aeroplanes;
we had on the front only 129.” Captive balloons had been abandoned
as incapable of following the armies in the war of movement then
almost exclusively contemplated. “Events proved our mistake,” says the
official publication already quoted. “Enemy balloons followed the rapid
advance of the armies of invasion. Ascending immediately behind the
lines, they rendered the adversary indubitable services at the battle
of the Marne. Then we hurriedly constituted balloon companies; and in
1915 we followed the German model of ‘sausage’ balloons.”
_Mons and the Retreat_, by Captain G. S. Gordon, a British Staff
officer (London: Constable. 1918), contains some information of the
Royal Flying Corps in August and September 1914. The Corps was founded
in April 1912. At the beginning of the war, it included six squadrons,
only four of which could be immediately mobilised, with a complement
of 109 officers and 66 aeroplanes. These, however, did excellent work
from the beginning. The writer says: “If we were better scouts and
fighters, the Germans were better observers for the guns. The perfect
understanding between the Taubes and the German gunners was one of the
first surprises of the war.”
DE BLOCH’S PROPHECY AND FRENCH’S CONFESSION
[8] De Bloch, who had been a large railway contractor in the
Russo-Turkish War, and a leading Polish banker, published the results
of his experiences and researches, in six volumes, under the general
title _La Guerre_, during the last years of the nineteenth century,
and afterwards established a “Museum of War and Peace” at Lucerne
to illustrate the subject. His chief thesis was that, owing to the
technical development of military instruments and other factors, an
aggressive war between States of nearly equal resources could not now
give the results aimed at; and there is no longer any doubt that he
foresaw the main track of military development as few soldiers did. The
following sentences from a sketch of the writings and conversations of
de Bloch, published by the present writer in 1902, will serve to show
that he anticipated some of the governing characteristics of the Great
War:
“The resisting power of an army standing on the defensive, equipped
with long-range, quick-firing rifles and guns, from ten to twenty
times more powerful than those of 1870 and 1877, expert in entrenching
and the use of barbed wire and other obstacles, and highly mobile,
is something quite different from that which Napoleon, or even later
aggressors, had to face. Not only is it a much larger force, the
manhood of a nation; it is also a body highly educated, an army
of engineers. Its infantry lines and battery positions will be
invisible. Reconnaissances will be easily prevented by protecting
bands of sharpshooters; and no object of attack will offer itself to
the invader till he has come within a zone of deadly fire. The most
heavy and powerful shells, which are alone of use against entrenched
positions, cannot be used in great number, or brought easily into
action. Artillery shares the advantage of a defensive position. If the
attackers have a local superiority, the defenders can delay them long
enough to allow of an orderly retirement to other entrenched positions.
The attacker will be forced to entrench himself, and so the science
of the spade reduces battle to sieges. Battle in the open would mean
annihilation; yet it is only by assault that entrenched positions can
be carried.
“Warfare will drag on more slowly than ever. While an invading army
is being decimated by sickness and wounds, and demoralised by the
heavy loss of officers and the delay of any glorious victory, the home
population will be sunk in misery by the growth of economic burdens,
the stoppage of trade and industry. The small, elastic, and manageable
army of the past could make quick marches, turning movements,
strategical demonstrations in the widest sense. Massed armies of
millions, like those of to-day, leaning on long-prepared defences, must
renounce all the more delicate manifestations of the military art.
Armies as they now stand cannot manœuvre, and must fight in directions
indicated in advance. The losses of to-day would be proportionately
greater than in past wars, if it were not for the tactical means
adopted to avoid them. But the consequence of distance and dispersion
is that victorious war——the obtaining of results by destroying the
enemy’s principal forces, and thus making him submit to the conqueror’s
will——can exist no more.”
With all its errors of detail, de Bloch’s picture, drawn when
the aeroplane and the petrol motor-wagon, “wireless” and the
field-telephone, poison-gas and barrage fire were unknown, was a true
prophecy, and all the belligerents paid dearly for neglecting it.
For somewhat similar prognostications by a French officer, see _Comment
on pouvait prévoir l’immobilisation des fronts dans la guerre moderne_
(Paris: Berger-Levrault), being a summary of the writings of Captain
Emile Mayer, whose first studies date from 1888.
[9] He adds: “and that if, in September, the Germans had learned their
lesson, the Allies would never have driven them back to the Aisne.”
This is a more disputable proposition. On the Sambre, the French were
immediately driven back; on the Ourcq, the Germans held out for four
days, and retired partly because their supply services had given out.
To a very large extent they had certainly learned their lesson; and for
nearly four years thereafter they bettered it on the Aisne hills.
The quotations are from the volume _1914_, by Field-Marshal Viscount
French of Ypres (London: Constable. 1919), an important body of
evidence, passages of which, however, must be read critically. Lord
French in his narrative repeatedly insists upon the slowness with
which the need of a “transformation of military ideas,” owing to the
factors named, was recognised. “It required the successive attempts of
Maunoury, de Castelnau, Foch, and myself to turn the German flanks in
the North in the old approved style, and the practical failure of these
attempts, to bring home to our minds the true nature of war as it is
to-day.”
Of the end of the battle of the Marne, he writes (ch. vii.): “We had
not even then grasped the true effect and bearing of the many new
elements which had entered into the practice of modern war. We fully
believed we were driving the Germans back to the Meuse, if not to the
Rhine; and all my communications with Joffre and the French generals
most closely associated with me breathed the same spirit.... We were
destined to undergo another terrible disappointment. The lessons of
war, as it is to-day, had to be rubbed in by another dearly-bought
experience, and in a hard and bitter school.”
There is both courage and _naïveté_ in the following tardy profession
of the belief de Bloch had expounded fifteen years before: “Afterwards,
we witnessed the stupendous efforts of de Castelnau and Foch; but
all ended in the same trench! trench! trench! I finished my part in
the battle of the Aisne, however, unconverted, and it required the
further and more bitter lesson of my own failure in the North to pass
the Lys River, during the last days of October, to bring home to my
mind a principle in warfare of to-day which I have held ever since,
namely, that, given forces fairly equally matched, you can ‘bend,’ but
you cannot ‘break,’ your enemy’s trench line.... Everything which has
happened in the war has borne out the truth of this view; and, from
the moment I grasped this great truth, I never failed to proclaim it,
although eventually I suffered heavily for holding such opinions.”
CRITICISMS AND DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH STAFF
[10] M. Victor Giraud, in his _Histoire_, writes: “The French troops
were neither armed nor equipped as they should have been.... Neither
in the liaison of arms, nor in the rôle of the artillery, nor in
the possibilities of aviation or trenches, had the army very clear
ideas; it believed only in the offensive, the war of movement, which
precisely, to-day more than ever, calls for a superiority of armament,
if not also of effectives.... France could and should have remembered
that it was the country of Vauban and de Sère de Rivière.... There
was no longer any faith in permanent fortification, but only in the
offensive, which was confused with the offensive spirit.”
Pierre Dauzet, _Guerre de 1914_. _De Liège à la Marne_, p. 29 (Paris:
Charles Lavauzelle. 1916). “I shall not exaggerate much in saying that
in many regiments the recruits incorporated in October 1913 commenced
the war next August without ever having shifted a spadeful of earth or
dug the most modest trench” (Thomasson, p. 19).
[11] Two commanders of armies, 7 of corps, 20 infantry divisionaires, 4
commanders of cavalry divisions. In some army corps, the commander and
his two divisional generals were removed (Thomasson, p. 12).
[12] _Etudes_, p. 66, note. And again (p. 88): “The offensive idea had
become very clear and very formal in our minds. It had the place, so
to say, of an official war doctrine. The lesson of the Russo-Japanese
war and the Balkan wars seemed to have disturbed the teaching of the
War School and the governing ideas of our Staff. At the moment when
the war opened, there was a sharp discussion between the partisans of
the offensive _à outrance_ and those who, foreseeing the formidable
manœuvre of Germany, leaned to a more prudent, more reasoned method,
which they described _as defensive strategy and offensive tactic_.”
[13] In _“L’Erreur” de 1914_. _Réponse aux Critiques_ (Paris and
Brussels: G. van Oest. 1919), General Berthaut is reduced to the
suggestion that some of these phrases were intended “to stimulate the
ardour of the young officers,” but that “the Command was not at all
bound to take them literally.”
General Berthaut was sub-chief of the French General Staff, and
director of the geographical service, from 1903 to 1912; and his
defence of the ideas prevailing up to the eve of the war deserves
careful reading, unsatisfying as it may be found on many points. It
is mainly intended to justify the Eastward concentration, and to
controvert those who think the business of an army is to defend the
national territory foot by foot. The general appeals to the weight
of military authority (which, as we shall see, is less one-sided
than he suggests): “From 1875 to 1914, we had 40 Ministers of War;
we changed the Chief of Staff sixteen times; changes were still more
numerous among sub-chiefs of Staff, heads of bureaux and services.
Several hundred officers of all arms, returning periodically to their
regiments, contributed to the Staff work of the army. Yet the directive
idea of our defence never varied. Such as it was in 1876, so it was
revealed in 1914.” Throughout this time, concentration was foreseen
and prepared behind the upper courses of the Meuse and Moselle with a
view to positions being held in the upper valleys of the Marne, Aube,
and Seine. The idea that the French eastern frontier was infrangible,
General Berthaut considers “extremely exaggerated.” If it had not been
adequately held, the Germans would have turned thither from the north.
The violation of the neutrality either of Switzerland or Belgium was,
however, beyond doubt. To cover the whole frontier was impossible;
and, “incontestably,” the armies had to be turned in one mass toward
the east. Trenches are “an effect, not a cause, of the stabilisation
of fronts.” The general has a very poor opinion of fortresses, the
only one to which he attributes great importance being Metz! Liège was
“a practically useless sacrifice”; Maubeuge “stopped nothing.” These
opinions seem to the present writer untenable; and General Berthaut
admits that the reaction against fortification “went too far” (p.
182). He may be said to damn the three French offensives with faint
praise. The move into Alsace “could not be of any military interest,”
and was “a political affair.” The Lorraine offensive was “necessarily
limited,” as a distant objective could not be pursued between Metz and
Strasbourg. As to Charleroi, France was bound to make a demonstration
on behalf of Belgium and “to satisfy public opinion.” Much of General
Berthaut’s apologia is vitiated by his assumption that France had
necessarily to face a superiority of force.
One of the critics General Berthaut started out to controvert is M.
Fernand Engerand, deputy for Calvados, whose articles (particularly
in _Le Correspondant_, December 10, 1917, and subsequent numbers)
have been reprinted in a volume of 600 pages: _Le Secret de la
Frontière, 1815–1871–1914_. _Charleroi_ (Paris: Editions Bossard, 43
Rue Madame. 1918). The French plan of campaign, says M. Engerand,
was “humanly impossible. Nothing happened as our High Command had
foreseen; there was surprise all along the line, and, what is gravest,
surprise not only strategic but intellectual, the reversal of a
doctrine of war. After the magnificent recovery of the Marne, we may
without inconvenience avow that never has there been so complete a
self-deception. The error was absolute and, worse, deliberate, for
never was an attack more foreseen, more announced, more prophesied
than that of August 1914. Strategists of the old school had not only
predicted it for forty years, but had given us the means of parrying
it; their ideas were scouted and their work was destroyed.”
M. Engerand quotes, in particular, Lt.-Colonel Grouard on the
impossibility of an immediate French offensive beyond the frontiers
(see Grouard, _La Guerre Eventuelle_, 1913; and _L’Art de la Guerre
et le Colonel Grouard_, by C. de Bourcet, 1915). Grouard foresaw,
among other things, that “the army of the German right, marching by
the left bank of the Meuse, would pass the Sambre in the neighbourhood
of Charleroi, and direct itself toward the sources of the Oise.” M.
Engerand’s chapters contain a summary of the three French offensives.
His general comment is: “No unity of command, separate and dislocated
battles, no notion of information and safeguards before and during the
combat, systematic misconception of the ground and defensive means,
defective liaison between the corps and between artillery and infantry,
no manœuvre, but only the offensive, blind, systematic, frantic. If we
were defeated, is it an exaggeration to say that it was less by the
enemy than by a false doctrine?”
Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, on these points, quotes warning notes from
General Collin’s _Transformation de la Guerre_, written in 1911, and
refers to the case of Lt.-Col. Berrot, who, in 1902, had exposed “the
dangerous theories that had been deduced from the Napoleonic wars,” and
who “was disgraced pitilessly, and died while yet young.”
THE SURPRISE IN THE NORTH
[14] Early French writers on the war found it difficult to make up
their minds whether there had, or had not, been a surprise in the
North. See _Histoire de la Guerre de 1914_ (ch. “Septembre”), by
Gabriel Hanotaux. This work, the most ambitious of the kind yet
attempted, is being published in fortnightly sections and periodical
volumes, of which the first deals with the origins of the war, the
next three with the frontier battles, and the following ones with the
battles of the retreat and preliminaries of the battle of the Marne
(Paris: Gounouilhou, 30 Rue de Provence).
M. Hanotaux says: “The project prepared by the German Staff of an
offensive by Belgium was not a secret. All was public and confessed.
There was no surprise in the absolute sense of the word. But there
remained an unknown quantity: would the probable hypothesis be
realised?” Later, however, he says: “The long-prepared manœuvre
consisted in crushing us by the carefully veiled onslaught not of 12,
but of 25, army corps, so that the surprise was double for us: the
most eccentric movement and the most unexpected numbers.... It was
this combination of circumstances, foreseen and unforeseen, that the
French Command had to parry: political necessity, surprise, numbers,
preparation, munitions.” And, again: “The invasion of Belgium _by the
left bank of the Meuse_ certainly surprised the French High Command”
(“La Manœuvre de la Marne,” _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, March 15, 1919).
M. Reinach, usually so clear and positive, was also ambiguous on this
point (_La Guerre sur le Front Occidental_, vol. i.). It suffices he
says, to glance at the map: “Nature herself traced this path (Flanders
and the Oise). Innumerable armies have followed it, in both directions,
for centuries” (p. 30). Nevertheless, the French Staff, though it had
“followed for many years the German preparations for an offensive by
Belgium” (p. 57), remained in an “anguish of doubt.”
Much evidence with regard to the events of the first phase of the
war is contained in the reports of the French “Commission of Inquiry
on Metallurgy,” 1918–19, the special task of which was to consider
why the Briey coalfield was not defended. On May 14, 1919, General
Maunoury testified to disaccord existing between commanding officers
at the beginning of the campaign, failure to co-ordinate efforts, and
ignorance of some generals of the plan of concentration. On the same
day, General Michel said that, in 1911, when he was Vice-President
of the Superior War Council, that is, Generalissimo designate, he
submitted a plan of concentration based upon a certitude of the whole
German invasion passing by Belgium and of the need of the principal
French action being directed to the North. The plan was rejected, after
being examined by General Brun, M. Berteaux, and M. Messimy.
General Percin, at the same inquiry (May 24, 1919), spoke of
“intrigues” and a “real palace revolution” in 1911 to replace General
Michel, as future Commander-in-Chief, by General Pau, the offence of
the former being to have foretold that the Germans would advance by
the left bank of the Meuse, and that they would at once engage their
reserves. According to General Percin, in the spring of 1914 General de
Castelnau said: “If the Germans extend their fighting front as far as
Lille, they will thin it so much that we can cut it in two. We can wish
for nothing better.” There is other evidence of this idea prevailing
in the General Staff: apparently it arose from underestimates of the
effective strength of the invasion.
Marshal Joffre gave evidence before the Commission on July 5, 1919,
but his reported statements do not greatly help us. He defended the
concentration under “plan 17,” which, he said, was operated much more
to the north than in previous plans, nearly all of these foreseeing
concentration south of Verdun. The French Staff was chiefly concerned
to give battle only when it had its full forces in hand. The 3rd Army
had a quite particular function, that of investing Metz. The plan
made before the war was not absolute, but was a directive modifiable
according to events. Officially, it stopped short at Hirson; but the
Staff had foreseen variants to second the Belgian effort. In March
1914, the Staff had prepared a note in which it had foreseen the
invasion by Belgium——a plan providing for eventualities. It was,
therefore, absurd to pretend that it had never foreseen the invasion
by Belgium. The Briey district was under the cannon of Metz, and could
not be included in the region of concentration. The loss of the “battle
of the Frontiers” was due to the fact that the best units of the
German Army presented themselves on the feeble point of our front. On
the French side there were failings. Generals who had great qualities
in peace time failed under stress of war. He had had to take action
against some who were his best friends, but believed he had done his
duty. Asked by the chairman with how many rifles he commenced the war,
Marshal Joffre replied, “with 2,300,000.” Lille, he said, could not be
defended.
Field-Marshal French (_1914_, ch. i.) says: “Personally, I had always
thought that Germany would violate Belgian neutrality, and in no such
half-hearted measure as by a march through the Ardennes.”
[15] In an article on the second anniversary of the first battle of the
Yser, the _Temps_ (Oct. 30, 1916) said that, before the war, Belgium
was more suspicious of England and France than of Germany. “If our
Staffs had wished to prepare, for the defence of Belgium, a plan of
operations on her territory, these suspicions would have taken body
and open conflict occurred. Nothing was foreseen of what happened, and
nothing was prepared.”
Field-Marshal French says: “Belgium remained a ‘dark horse’ to the
last, and could never be persuaded to decide upon her attitude in
the event of a general war.... We were anxious she should assist and
co-operate in her own defence.” On August 21, he received a note from
the Belgian Government remarking that the Belgian field army had from
the commencement of hostilities “been standing by hoping for the active
co-operation of the Allied Army,” but was now retreating upon Antwerp.
M. Engerand (_Le Drame de Charleroi_) says that on July 29, General
Lanrezac had sent to General Joffre a report on the likelihood of an
enveloping movement by the left bank of the Meuse; that after the
German Chancellor’s defence, on August 4, of the violation of Belgian
neutrality, the Belgian Government asked France for aid; that the
French Minister of War had of his own initiative offered to send
five army corps, “but, on August 5, our Councillor of Embassy at
London, M. de Fleurian, informed the Belgian Minister that ‘the French
Generalissimo did not intend to change his strategic plan, and only the
non-co-operation of the British Army would oblige him to extend the
French left.’ The Sordêt Cavalry Corps, on and after August 6, reported
to the General Staff that 13 German Corps, in two armies, were intended
to operate west of the Meuse, and that ten others were ready to advance
on the east of the river. On August 7, Lanrezac addressed to the Grand
Quartier General another report on the danger to our left; and on the
14th he expressed his conviction that there would be a strong offensive
west of the Meuse directly to General Joffre, who did not credit it.”
Major Collon, French military attaché at Brussels, and afterwards
attached to French Headquarters, has published the following facts
in a letter to the Swiss Colonel Egli (_Temps_, September 19, 1918):
Although the Army of Hanover (Emmich’s Army of the Meuse) was mobilised
from July 21 and concentrated in Westphalia from July 26, it was not
till August 3, after the publication of the German ultimatum, that
France offered Belgium her eventual military aid. This was declined;
but on August 4, when the violation of the frontier occurred the offer
was accepted in principle. On August 5, General Joffre authorised the
Sordêt Cavalry Corps to move to the Semoy. It began its march on the
6th, and on that night Major Collon arrived at Belgian Headquarters
with a view to assuring the co-ordination of the French and Belgian
operations.
[16] “This plan was at once weak and supple. It was feeble because
General Joffre, who established it, ‘saw too many things,’ in the words
of the Napoleonic warning.... He knew as well as any one the feebleness
of his plan. It was imposed upon him. He sought at least to make it
supple” (Reinach, _op. cit._ pp. 58–9).
In an article reviewing this volume (_Petit Parisien_, June 16, 1916),
M. Millerand, who became Minister of War a few days after the events in
question, endorsed this opinion: The French Staff “had to foresee, did
foresee, the two hypotheses——that of Belgium, certainly, but also that
of Lorraine. Hence general dispositions whose suppleness did not escape
weakness, a concentration for two ends.” The word “Belgium” here
is ambiguous: it is clear that an attack by Western Belgium was not
foreseen. The vice of the concentration was not that it faced two ends,
“Belgium” and “Lorraine,” but that it essentially faced the end of a
Lorraine offensive, whereas what was essentially needed was a northern
defensive.
General Bonnal remarks: “The project of offensive operations conceived
by Bernhardi in 1911 in case of a war with France deserved close study
by us, which would probably have led to modifications in our plan of
concentration while there was yet time” (_Les Conditions de la Guerre
Moderne_, p. 115. Paris: De Boccard. 1916).