25 “It was expected that the British Army would take its place on the 20th, but it arrived only on the 22nd. On the 20th, it was still far behind in the region of Le Nouvion–Wassigny–Le Cateau. If it had been in place on the 20th, the Allied Army would have found itself constituted at the very moment when the Germans entered Brussels.” This last phrase is at least singularly ambiguous: Von Bülow was not in Brussels, but only a day’s march from the Sambre, on the 20th. But, if the British had then been at Mons, the Allied Army would not have been “constituted,” for Lanrezac’s forces were far from being all in place on that day. “It is true,” said M. Hanotaux a little later, “that the French Army was not all in place on the 22nd, and that the Territorial divisions were in rather mediocre conditions as to armament and encadrement” (L’Enigme de Charleroi, p. 52). It is Bülow’s appearance on the Sambre a day before Lanrezac was ready that makes the French historian credit the enemy with “the principal advantage, the initiative.”

After the reference to Brussels, M. Hanotaux continues: “The rôle reserved to the British Army was to execute a turning movement of the left wing, advancing north of the Sambre toward Mons, in the direction of Soignies–Nivelles; it was thought it would be there before Kluck,” It was there a day before Kluck. “Unfortunately, as the Exposé de Six Mois de Guerre recognises, it did not arrive on the 20th, as the French Command expected.... In fact, it was only in line on the 23rd” (pp. 49–50). M. Hanotaux repeats himself with variations. The Allied Armies suffered, he says, not only from lateness and fatigue, but from lack of co-ordination in the High Command. “It is permissible to-day to say that the Belgian Command, in deciding to withdraw its army into the entrenched camp of Antwerp, obeyed a political and military conception which no longer conformed to the necessities of the moment. Again, the British Army appeared in the region only on the 23rd, although the battle had been engaged for two days and was already compromised between Namur and Charleroi. The rôle of turning wing which the British Army was to fulfil thus failed at the decisive hour” (pp. 53–4). M. Hanotaux mentions (p. 77) the receipt by Sir John French, at 5 p.m. on August 23, of “a telegraphic message qualified as ‘unexpected,’” announcing the weight of Kluck’s force and the French retirement, but omits to say that this message came from the French Generalissimo. He adds that the British commander gave the order to retreat at 5 p.m., Lanrezac only at 9 p.m., omitting to explain that the French retreat was, in fact, in operation at the former hour, while the British retreat only began at dawn on the 24th, after a night of fighting. “By 5 p.m., on Sunday the 23rd, when Joffre’s message was received at British Headquarters”—says Captain Gordon, on the authority of the British War Office (Mons and the Retreat)—“the French had been retiring for ten or twelve hours. The British Army was isolated. Standing forward a day’s march from the French on its right, faced by three German Corps with a fourth on its left, it seemed marked out for destruction.”

In strong contrast with M. Hanotaux’s comments—repeated, despite public correction, in his article of March 1919 cited above—are M. Engerand’s references to the part played by the British Expeditionary Force. First, to its “calm and tenacious defensive about Mons, a truly admirable defence that has not been made known among us, and that has perhaps not been understood as it should be. It was the first manifestation of the form the war was to take; the English, having nothing to unlearn, and instructed by their experiences in the South African war, had from the outset seized its character.... It shows us Frenchmen, to our grief, how we might have stopped the enemy if we had practised, instead of the infatuated offensive, this British defensive ‘borrowed from Brother Boer.’” Then as to the retreat: “The retreat of the British followed ours, and did not precede it. It is a duty of loyalty to say so, as also to recognise that, in these battles beyond the frontiers, the British Army, put by its chief on the defensive, was the only one, with the 1st French Army, which could contain the enemy.” M. Engerand, who is evidently well informed, and who strongly defends General Lanrezac, says that Sir John French told this officer on August 17, at Rethel, that he could hardly be ready to take part in the battle till August 24.

Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, while regretting that the British did not try to help Lanrezac on the 23rd, admits that an offensive from Mons would have been fruitless and might have been disastrous (pp. 216–8).

M. Hanotaux’ faulty account of the matter appears to be inspired by a desire to redistribute responsibilities, and to prove that, if the British had attacked Bülow’s right flank, the whole battle would have been won. This idea will not bear serious examination. The French Command cannot have entertained this design on August 20, for it must have known that the British force was two days behind the necessary positions. When it came into line before Mons, on the evening of the 22nd, it was certainly too late for so small a body of troops to make an offensive movement north-eastward with any prospect of success. Had it been possible at either date, the manœuvre which M. Hanotaux favours might conceivably have helped Lanrezac against Bülow; but it would have left Kluck free to encircle the Allies on the west, and so prejudiced, at least, the withdrawal and the subsequent successful reaction. It might well have created a second and greater Sedan.

In dealing with these events, M. Hanotaux, by adding the strength of Lanrezac’s Army, d’Amade’s Territorial divisions, the British Army, and the garrisons of Namur (General Michel, 25,000 men), Maubeuge (General Fournier, 35,000 men), and Lille (General Herment, 18,000 men), arrives at the remarkable conclusion that “the Allied armies, between August 22 and 25, opposed to the 545,000 men of the German armies a total figure of 536,000 men.” This figure is deceptive, and useless except to emphasise the elements of Allied weakness other than numbers. So far as the later date is intended, it has no relation to the battle of Charleroi–Mons. At both these dates, and later, when the Allies were in full retreat, and both sides had suffered heavy losses, the Allied units named were so widely scattered and so disparate in quality that it is impossible to regard them as a single force “opposed” to the three compact masses of Kluck, Bülow, and Hausen. The deduction that General Joffre had on the Sambre “Allied forces sufficient to keep the mastery of the operations” is, therefore, most questionable.

The actual opposition of forces on the morning of August 23 was as follows: Lanrezac’s Army and the Namur garrison, amounting to an equivalent of five army corps, or about 200,000 men, had upon their front and flank six corps of Bülow and two corps of Hausen, about 320,000 men. The little British Army, of 2½ corps, had immediately before it three of Kluck’s corps, with two more behind these.

General Lanrezac published in the New York Herald (Paris edition) of May 17 and 18, and in L’Oeuvre of May 18 and 22, 1919, dignified replies to certain statements of Field-Marshal French. To the latter’s remark that the B.E.F. at Mons found itself in “an advanced position,” he answers that the battle shifted from east to west, and “on the evening of the 23rd, the 5th Army had been fighting for forty-eight hours, while the British were scarcely engaged.” Doubtless owing to Lord Kitchener’s original instruction that it would not be reinforced, the B.E.F. kept, during the later part of the retreat, “two days’ march ahead of the 5th Army, and obstinately maintained this distance, stopping only on the Seine.” “It was rather French who uncovered my left than I who uncovered his right.” General Lanrezac disowns any critical intent in saying this: “In my opinion, in the tragic period from August 22 to September 4, 1914, the British did all they could, and showed a magnificent heroism. It was not their fault if the strategic situation forbade our doing more.”

In regard to the original French plan of campaign, General Lanrezac refused to put himself in the position of being both judge and party, but added: “The Commander-in-Chief had a plan; he had elaborated it with the collaboration of officers of his Staff, men incontestibly intelligent and instructed, General Berthelot among others. Nevertheless, this plan, as I came to know it in course of events, appeared to me to present a fundamental error. It counted too much on the French centre, 3rd and 4th Armies, launched into Belgian Luxembourg and Ardennes, scoring a prompt and decisive victory which would make us masters of the situation on the rest of the front.” “So it was that General Berthelot, on August 19, told M. Messimy that, if the Germans went in large numbers west of the Meuse, it was so much the better, as it would be easier to beat them on the east.”

26 Four years passed ere a detailed account of the defence and fall of Maubeuge was published (La Verité sur le Siège de Maubeuge, by Commandant Paul Cassou, of the 4th Zouaves. Paris: Berger-Levrault). There are, in the case of this fortress, points of likeness to and of difference from that of Lille. In June 1910 the Ministry of War had decided that Maubeuge should be regarded as only a position of arrest, not capable of sustaining a long siege; and in 1913 the Superior War Council decreed that it should be considered only as a support to a neighbouring field army. It then consisted of an enceinte dating from Vauban, dominated by an outer belt of six main forts and six intermediate works about twenty years old, furnished with 335 cannon, none of which carried more than 6 miles. The garrison consisted of an infantry regiment, three reserve and six Territorial regiments. In the three weeks before the siege began, 30,000 men were engaged in digging trenches, laying down barbed wire, and making other defences.

The siege was begun by the VII Reserve Corps, a cavalry brigade, and a division from another corps, about 60,000 men, on August 25. On that and two following days effective sorties were made. On the 29th the bombardment began. One by one the forts were smashed by heavy guns and mortars, including 420 mm. pieces throwing shells of nearly a ton weight, firing from the safe distance of 9 or 10 miles. On September 1, all the troops available made a sortie, and a regular battle was fought. Some detachments reached within 250 yards of the German batteries, only to be mown down by machine-gun fire. After this two German attacks were repulsed. On September 5, however, the enemy got within the French lines, and on the 7th the place had become indefensible. At 6 p.m. the capitulation was signified, and on September 8, at noon, the garrison surrendered, General von Zwehl saying to General Fournier: “You have defended the place with a rare vigour and much resolution, but the war has turned against you.” The German Command afterward claimed to have taken at Maubeuge 40,000 prisoners, 400 guns, and a large quantity of war material.

27 Statement of M. Messimy before the Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy, May 30, 1919, reported in the Paris Press the following day. In his evidence, M. Messimy blamed Joffre for not having been willing, in August 1914, to recognise the danger on the side of Belgium. Undoubtedly, he added, it was a fault of the French Command in 1912 and 1913 not to contemplate the prompt use of reserves, and to fall back on the Three Years’ Service law, “which no one would defend to-day.” M. Messimy argued that the doctrine of the offensive à outrance was common to the French and German Armies, and was at that time universal in military circles.

Joffre, Première Crise du Commandement, by Mermeix (Paris: Ollendorff. 1919), is a careful and unprejudiced study of the changes, ideas, and personal antagonisms in the French Army Commands during the first period of the war. It concludes with a section in which “Attacks upon Joffre” and “Explanations collected at the G.Q.G.,” are set forth on opposite pages.

28 See note at top of p. 249.

29 G. Blanchon, Le General Joffre, Pages Actuelles, 1914–5, No. 11 (Paris: Bloud et Gay).

30 M. Arthur Huc, editor of the Dépêche de Toulouse, in which journal the interview was printed, March 1915.

31 Statement by General Messimy at the Commission of Inquiry on Metallurgy, April 28, 1919.

32 For details, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” Rev. des Deux Mondes, November 15, 1916; Engerand, loc. cit.; a vindication of General Dubail, by “Cdt. G. V.”: “La 1re Armée et la Bataille de la Trouée de Charmes,” La Revue, January 1, 1917; Barrés: “Comment la Lorraine fut Sauvée,” Echo de Paris, September 1917.

33 See p. 34. The mismanagement of this battle was the subject of evidence at the Metallurgical Commission of Inquiry on May 15, 1919.

34 Miles, Le General Maunoury, Pages Actuelles, No. 49.

35 French, 1914, ch. iv. The Hon. J. W. Fortescue (Quarterly Review, Oct. 1919), defending Smith-Dorrien, charges Lord French with “clumsy and ludicrous misstatements,” and questions the figures in the text.

36 Meine Bericht zur Marneschlacht (Berlin: Scherl), notes, written in December 1914, on the operations of the II Army to the end of the battle of the Aisne. Bülow charges Kluck with not having informed German G.H.Q. of the gathering of Maunoury’s forces and the action of Proyart.

For the battle of Guise, see Hanotaux, “La Bataille de Guise–St. Quentin,” Rev. des Deux Mondes, September 1, 1918.

37 For his report of a stormy interview with Lord Kitchener at the Embassy in Paris on September 1, see 1914, ch. v. This account has, however, been strongly questioned by Mr. Asquith (speech at Newcastle, May 16, 1919), who says that Lord Kitchener did but convey the conclusions of the Cabinet, which had been “seriously disquieted” by Sir John French’s communications.

38 See Foch, by Réné Puaux, and, above all, Foch’s own works, De la Conduite de la Guerre (3rd ed., 1915), Les Principes de la Guerre, 4th ed., 1917 (Paris: Berger-Levrault).

39 “I see no inconvenience,” Joffre replied, “in your turning back to-morrow, 28th, in order to affirm your success, and to show that the retreat is purely strategic; but on the 29th every one must be in retreat.”

40 For details of the last stages of the retreat and pursuit, see La Marche sur Paris de l’Aile Droite Allemande, by Count de Caix de Saint Aymour (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle); Gordon and Hamilton, op. cit.; and La Retraite de l’Armée Anglaise du 23 Août 1914, by Ernest Renauld, Renaissance, November 25, 1916.

On September 3, General Lanrezac was removed from the command of the French 5th Army—“because his views were contrary to a complete liaison with the British Army,” says M. Hanotaux (Rev. des Deux Mondes, March 1919); but this is a partial and inadequate statement. As we have seen, Lanrezac had been at issue with G.Q.G. from the beginning of the campaign.

M. Hanotaux quotes a note sent to the Minister of War, M. Millerand, on September 3, by General Joffre, who, “finding that the rapid recoil of the British Army, effected too soon and too quickly, had prevented Maunoury’s Army from coming into action in good conditions, and had compromised Lanrezac’s left flank,” described his intention thus: “To prepare a new offensive in liaison with the British and with the garrison of Paris, and to choose the battlefield in such a way that, by utilising on certain parts of the front prepared defensive organisations, a numerical superiority could be assured in the zone chosen for the principal effort.”

41 An anonymous writer, “ZZZ,” in the Revue de Paris, September 15, 1917, says that Field-Marshal French’s communication was made on September 1 to the French Government—probably it was a result of the Kitchener interview—and was transmitted to Joffre by the Minister of War, who, subject to the full liberty and responsibility of the Generalissimo, favoured the idea of resistance on the north and north-east of Paris.

42 Petit Parisien, June 16, 1916.

43 Le Livre du Souvenir, by Paul Ginisty and Arsène Alexandre, pp. 75–6.

44 Major-General Sir F. Maurice, in his brilliant study, Forty Days in 1914 (London: Constable. 1919), speaks, however, of the German Staff assuming “that Paris had only a moral and not a military value.” General Maurice refers to the city as being “at the mercy of the enemy,” and emphatically condemns Kluck for failing to occupy it, and so “sacrificing substantial gains in favour of a grandiose and ambitious scheme which, as events proved, could not be realised” (p. 139). Despite General Maurice’s great authority, I see no reason to change the conclusions in the text with regard to the points here discussed. There are several important factors which he does not mention, particularly the influence of the appearance of the new 9th Army, under Foch, at the French centre, and the equalisation at this time of the German and Allied forces. Kluck was the victim of necessity rather than of any grandiose ambition; and as for the Staffs, it was more Joffre’s strategy than “Prussian conceit and self-sufficiency” that “marred the execution of a well-laid plan.”

Says Mr. Joseph Reinach (La Guerre sur le Front Occidental, 1914–15, ch. v. sec. 7): “Bernhardi has classed the capitals of Europe in two categories: those whose capture has a decisive importance from the military point of view, like Paris and Vienna, and those whose importance is much smaller. To take Paris, what glory! to enter Paris, what a gage! But the same Bernhardi, the master of all the German generals, and before him all the greatest captains, all the oracles of the military art, Moltke, Jomini, insist that the aim of war must be fixed as high as possible, and this aim is the complete ruin of the enemy State by the destruction, the putting out of action, of its armies. Only an enemy completely disarmed will bow to the will of the conqueror.... The opinion that prevailed with the German Staff is that to attack Paris before having finished with the Allied Armies would be a fault entailing very serious consequences.... The event does not prove that this opinion was mistaken.”

45 This message, first published by Le Matin, February 27, 1918, was dispatched by Mr. Gerard, United States Ambassador in Berlin, on the morning of September 8, to his colleague in Paris, Mr. Myron Herrick, who received it late on the same evening. It read as follows: “Extremely urgent. September 8. The German General Staff recommends that all Americans leave Paris via Rouen and Le Havre. They will have to leave soon if they wish to go.—Gerard.” It is added that the message was sent on the pressing wish of the German Staff, and that it was doubled, one copy going via Switzerland, and the other via Rome.

When this document was penned, the struggle had been proceeding on the Ourcq for two days and a half; Kluck had withdrawn nearly all his forces from the Marne; and the British and d’Espérey’s Armies were advancing rapidly northward. How, in these circumstances, could the German General Staff imagine that they could arrange “soon” a triumphant entry into Paris? There is one, and only one, fact in the military situation that they could build upon. At 5 a.m. on September 8, the right wing of Foch’s Army had broken down, and was in full retreat toward Fère Champènoise. If they really accepted this as such a promise of victory as to justify the warning to the Americans of Paris, the German Staff must have been in an infatuated state of mind.

It is possible, however, that the message was only a reckless piece of propaganda on their part, intended, at a critical moment, to awe the neutrals of America, Switzerland, and Italy, and to frighten some good Americans out of Paris. In no case can a warning conveyed on September 8 countenance the idea that the entry into Paris was originally intended to occur before a decisive victory had been won.

46 In the Gaulois, “Une Cause de la Defaite Allemande sur la Marne.”

47 M. Reinach states this, adding: “There was, it seems, an exchange of messages between the Staff and Kluck. Finally, theory prevailed” (La Guerre, p. 145; Commentaires de Polybe, vol. iv. p. 198).

According to an article in the Renaissance, September 2, 1916, Kluck had previously favoured the advance on Paris, quoting a reply of Blücher to Schwartzenberg in 1814: “It is better to go to Paris; when one has Paris, one has France.” At a council held at German Headquarters after the battle of Guise and St. Quentin, says the writer, Kluck went over to the advice of Moltke.

48 M. Hanotaux (Histoire Illustrée, especially ch. xxxvii., and in the Rev. des Deux Mondes, March 1919) has his own picturesque theory of these events, supported by rather frail evidence. It is, briefly, that there was an antagonism between Kluck, who wished to complete his enveloping movement, and Bülow, who after Guise had persuaded the Grand Staff to renounce it in favour of a frontal action against the French centre in which he would be the chief actor. After Charleroi and after Guise, Bülow had had to call Kluck to his aid. They were natural antagonists, the junker and the popular soldier. Moltke and the Staff hesitated between them, and then decided for Bülow. Bülow was to lead the attack; Kluck was ordered to remain between the Oise and the Marne to watch the region of Paris. But he refused to be thus thwarted of his victory, and rode impetuously on toward Provins, overrunning Bülow’s slower approach. Maunoury’s attack caught him in flagrante delicto. All this is plausible enough except the statement that Kluck was ordered to remain north of the Marne. Had he done so, the same result would have been produced two or three days sooner.

M. Hanotaux also states that Marwitz’s three cavalry divisions had been ordered on September 1 to carry out a raid to the gates of Paris, destroying railways as they went, but that “Kluck had other views” (La Manœuvre de la Marne).

49 The author of Die Schlachten an der Marne says: “Kluck knew there were troops to the left of the British, but did not know their exact strength.”

In his book Comment fut sauvé Paris, M. P. H. Courrière cites the following order issued by General von Schwerin at dawn on September 5, and afterwards found on the battlefield: “The IV Reserve Corps continues to-day the forward march, and charges itself, north of the Marne, with the covering of the north front of Paris; the IV Cavalry Division will be added to it. The II Corps advances by the Grand Morin valley below Coulommiers, and directs itself against the east front of Paris.”

50 General von Freytag-Loringhoven says: “It was proved on the Marne that the age of armies numbering millions, with their improved armament and widely extended fronts, engenders very special conditions.... The envelopment of the whole host of the enemy is a very difficult matter” (Deductions, pp. 79–80).

51 M. Maurice Barrés, Echo de Paris, June 1, 1916. But General Maunoury had telegraphed at midnight on August 31 to General Joffre reporting that Kluck seemed to be leaving the direction of Paris.

52 General Cherfils describes the extent of Gallieni’s authority as being in a state; of “nebulous imprecision.” The position appears to have been this: The entrenched camp of Paris, under the old regulations, was under the control of the Minister of War, not the Generalissimo, who could claim the services of a part of the garrison if he left enough men to assure the safety of the city, subject to a protest by the Governor, but could not touch its munitions or supplies. On his appointment as Military Governor of Paris (August 26), Gallieni had asked that the garrison, then consisting of four divisions of Territorials, should be reinforced. The 6th Army was accordingly placed under his orders. On the same day, the entrenched camp was placed, by the Minister, M. Millerand, under the superior orders of General Joffre. There was thus a threefold command, Maunoury being under Gallieni, and Gallieni under Joffre.

General Bonnal (Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne, p. 56) says that it was “in virtue of his own initiative, based on the powers of the Governor of a place left to its own forces,” that Gallieni ordered Maunoury, on the morning of September 4, to prepare to take the offensive.

For particulars of Gallieni’s communications with General Joffre and Sir John French, see the work named, the same author’s long article in the Renaissance, September 4, 1915, and an article in that review on September 2, 1916. According to the last named, it was at 2.50 p.m. on September 4 that the Commander-in-Chief authorised the advance of Maunoury’s Army; and Gallieni’s orders were that it was to bring its front up to Meaux on the next day, and to “attack” on the morning of the 6th.

Gallieni’s control over Maunoury’s Army ceased when, by the development of the battle of the Ourcq, it passed out of the region of the entrenched camp of Paris. In August 1915, the old rules on the “Service de Place” were altered to give the French Commander-in-Chief absolute authority over fortresses and their governors, and full power to dispose of their resources.

53 “La Bataille de l’Ourcq”; Paul H. Courrière, in the Renaissance, September 1, 1917.

54 In his dispatch of September 17, 1914, Sir John French does not mention any visit or message from General Gallieni, and only speaks of receiving General Joffre’s request to turn about, made during their interview on Saturday, September 5. In his volume 1914, he does mention the visit, but attributes to Gallieni the statement that Maunoury would move east toward the Ourcq “on Sunday the 6th.” This suggests that the move actually made on the 5th was not at the time known at British Headquarters.

55 Die Schlachten an der Marne (p. 107 of French edition).

56 Avec Charles Péguy de la Lorraine à la Marne, by Victor Boudon (Paris: Hachette). Péguy, a sort of mystical Tory-Socialist, or, as M. Lavisse says, “Catholic-Anarchist,” was author-editor of Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine.

57 M. Hanotaux (p. 126) says that Gallieni’s order of September 4 was “an order for deployment, not for the offensive,” and he adds that the Governor intended that the cavalry should feel the way. There is no evidence of cavalry activity on the 5th; and it is manifest that the encounter before St. Soupplets was a complete surprise for the 6th Army.

58 Sir John French, in his dispatch, says: “I should conceive it to have been about noon on the 6th September, after the British Forces had changed their front to the right, and occupied the line Jouy le Chatel–Faremoutiers–Villeneuve le Comte, ... that the enemy realised the powerful threat that was being made against the flank of his columns moving south-east, and began the great retreat which opened the battle.” This is a significant mistake. We now know that Bülow sent a first warning of an Allied concentration towards the west on the afternoon of September 5 to Kluck, who by then had his own information from the IV Reserve Corps. A few hours later Kluck was fully aware of his danger; and, as he has since stated to an interviewer, decided “in five minutes” how to meet it.

Field-Marshal French (1914, ch. 5), wrongly, I think, considers that Kluck “manifested considerable hesitation and want of energy.”

59 Several French volumes hint the first criticism, and it is expressed very definitely by General Bonnal in the article already referred to on the battle of the Ourcq in La Renaissance of September 4, 1915. The substance of General Bonnal’s charge is as follows:

“Unfortunately, the British Army, rather hesitant after its checks at Le Cateau, Landrecies, and Compiègne, lost time in displacements dictated by prudence, and did not give the 6th Army in time all the help desirable.” Maunoury had asked for it at noon on Sept. 4; and the Generalissimo’s directions of that night anticipated the British being at Coulommiers and Changis on the evening of the 5th. But, on the afternoon of the 4th, the head of Sir John French’s Staff had announced to Gallieni for that night “an order of movement the result of which was to distance the British Army at once from the 6th and the 5th Armies.” (If this movement was not the further retirement asked for by General Joffre, we do not know what is meant.) “Marshal French occupied during the 5th positions north and south of Rozoy, facing east. But this disposition placed the British Army much to the rear, to the west, of the line first fixed, and permitted the German II Corps, reported in the morning at Coulommiers, to repass the Marne and escape to the north-west. Fearing its appearance on the Ourcq, General Gallieni wrote on the 6th to Marshal French praying him at once to advance in accordance with the orders of General Joffre. On his side, the latter telegraphed to General Maunoury, on the 6th, asking him constantly to support the British left. In consequence, the chief of the 6th Army sent to Meaux the same evening the 8th Division (4th Corps), which had just detrained at Paris.” (This division actually came in on the morning of the 6th.) “If the presence of the 8th Division on his left did not determine Marshal French immediately to take the offensive” (what this means we do not know, for the British offensive had commenced on the morning of the 6th), “it was because at this moment he was much concerned as to the pretty considerable interval between his right and the left of the 5th Army. Yet this interval was watched by the Cavalry Corps of General Conneau.”

“On the evening of the 6th, the British Army reached the line of the Grand Morin, in contact on its right with the 5th Army. Unfortunately this contact was so close that the British Army thought it necessary to march level with and on the same lines as the 5th, which had great difficulty in assuring its route, having to drive before it four corps of Von Bülow’s Army.”

General Bonnal concludes his criticism with a not very amiable homily on the insufficient training of the old British Army, and the inadequacy of its Staff work. Generals not trained as in France and Germany had, he says, a tendency “to practise the linear order,” to move their troops in deployed formation, supporting their flanks on neighbouring bodies, and taking a thousand precautions that lead to delay. That is why “the British Army, composed of officers and men full of strength, vigour, and energy, took more than two days to cover the 20 kilometres between the Grand Morin and the Marne, when, on the 6th, they ought to have marched on the nearest enemy.”

For similar comments, see “La Bataille de la Marne, Recit Succinct,” by General Canonge (Le Correspondant, September 25 and October 10, 1917), with details of the battle.

One sentence of M. Hanotaux is more to the point than all these criticisms and suppositions: “No doubt, if the encounter had not been produced, a little prematurely perhaps, in the region of St. Soupplets–Penchard, at noon on the 5th, the whole army of Von Kluck would have been south of the Marne in the evening; while Maunoury would have taken it in reverse on the north bank. Kluck would then have been closed in” (Histoire, ch. 38, p. 184).

An interesting attempt to justify Gallieni against Joffre, and to challenge the latter’s strategy at this time, will be found in La Genèse de la Bataille de la Marne, by General H. Le Gros (Paris: Payot). He quotes Joffre as complaining to the Government (on Sept. 4) that Gallieni was seeking to “push him into a premature offensive.”

60 Four days later, in the village inn at Pezarches, Madame, an upstanding woman of about thirty, told me of the following incident:

“On Sunday morning my mother had gone to church, and I remained at home with my father and my little boy. My father left us to get some tobacco. Going out for a moment with the child, I saw a group of horsemen in the street, and said to myself: ‘We are saved. It is the Belgians!’ When I returned, to my surprise, they were in the house, sitting in my room and in the café. An officer asked me to cook him a couple of eggs. I noticed that one of the men was wounded, and asked whether it was painful. He nodded, and I went to the kitchen. There I saw, on the window-sill, a spiked helmet. I nearly fainted! So they were Germans! I managed to take in the eggs. Then the officer asked me, very politely, to show him my left hand, and, pointing to the wedding-ring, said: ‘You are married?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, trembling. ‘Your husband is a soldier?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You have a child?’ ‘No, I have no children,’ I said, ‘But I saw him. You are hiding him because you have heard that the Germans cut off the hands of French children. That is false. We never hurt women or children. Bring your little boy.’ But, as I persisted that it was not my child, he said no more. He and the others paid in German money for what they had, and left. A quarter of an hour later the firing began.”

61 1914, ch. 4.

62 Le Petit Journal, September 9, 1917.

63 In Courtacon, I found eighteen of the two dozen small brick houses completely destroyed by fire, after having been sacked. The pretext given was that villagers had betrayed the German troops—part of the Guard Cavalry Division—to the Allies. The single room of the village school presented an unforgettable exhibition of malice. Dirty straw, remnants of meals, torn books, and broken cartridge cases littered the floor. Piles of half-burnt straw showed that a hurried attempt had been made to destroy the building; there were two such piles under the bookcase and the tiny school museum, which consisted of a few bottles of metal and chemical specimens. Amid this filthy chaos, the low forms, the master’s desk, and wall-charts inculcating “temperance, kindness, justice, and truth,” stood as they had done on the day before the summer holidays. As I turned to leave, I saw, written across the blackboard in bold, fine writing, evidently as the lesson of that day, the words: “À chaque jour suffit sa peine”—“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” as our English version has it. Under this motto, all unconscious of it, these brutes had slept and wakened to their incendiary work—men of a nation that boasted itself the pioneer in Europe of elementary schooling. Could any recording angel have conceived a more biting irony?

64 M. Madelin says that 7000 German corpses were found. The figure may be doubted.