* * * * * AGENERAL SKETCHOF THEEUROPEAN WAR BYHILAIRE BELLOC THE FIRST PHASE THOMAS NELSON & COMPANYLONDON, EDINBURGH, PARIS, AND NEW YORK _First published June 1, 1915__Reprinted June 1915_ CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION 7 PART I. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR. (1) THE GERMAN OBJECT 17 (2) CONFLICT PRODUCED BY THE CONTRAST OF THIS GERMAN ATTITUDE OR WILL WITH THE WILLS OF OTHER NATIONS 23 (3) PRUSSIA 27 (4) AUSTRIA 39 (5) THE PARTICULAR CAUSES OF THE WAR 50 (6) THE IMMEDIATE OCCASION OF THE WAR 64 PART II. THE FORCES OPPOSED. (1) THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE BELLIGERENTS 80 The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Germanic Body 86 The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Allies 121 (2) THE OPPOSING STRENGTHS 136 The Figures of the First Period, say to October 1-31, 1914 145 The Figures of the Second Period, say to April 15-June 1, 1915 151 (3) THE CONFLICTING THEORIES OF WAR 164 PART III. THE FIRST OPERATIONS. (1) THE BATTLE OF METZ 316 (2) LEMBERG 322 (3) TANNENBERG 345 (4) THE SPIRITS IN CONFLICT 365 INTRODUCTION. It is the object of this book, and those which will succeed it in thesame series, to put before the reader the main lines of the EuropeanWar as it proceeds. Each such part must necessarily be completed andissued some little time after the events to which it relates havepassed into history. The present first, or introductory volume, whichis a preface to the whole, covers no more than the outbreak ofhostilities, and is chiefly concerned with an examination of thehistorical causes which produced the conflict, an estimate of thecomparative strength of the various combatants, and a description ofthe first few days during which these combatants took up theirpositions and suffered the first great shocks of the campaigns in Eastand West. But in order to serve as an introduction to the remainder of theseries, it is necessary that the plan upon which these books are tobe constructed should be clearly explained. There is no intention of giving in detail and with numerous exact mapsthe progress of the campaigns. Still less does the writer propose toexamine disputed points of detail, or to enumerate the units employedover that vast field. His object is to make clear, as far as he isable, those great outlines of the business which too commonly escapethe general reader. This war is the largest and the weightiest historical incident whichEurope has known for many centuries. It will surely determine thefuture of Europe, and in particular the future of this country. Yetthe comprehension of its movements is difficult to any one notacquainted with the technical language and the special study ofmilitary history; and the reading of the telegrams day by day, eventhough it be accompanied by the criticisms of the military experts inthe newspapers, leaves the mass of men with a most confused conceptionof what happened and why it happened. Now, it is possible, by greatly simplifying maps, by furthersimplifying these into clear diagrams, still more by emphasizing whatis essential and by deliberately omitting a crowd of details--byshowing first the framework, as it were, of any principal movement, and then completing that framework with the necessary furniture ofanalysed record--to give any one a conception both of what happenedand of how it happened. It is even possible, where the writer has seen the ground over whichthe battles have been fought (and much of it is familiar to the authorof this), so to describe such ground to the reader that he will insome sort be able to see for himself the air and the view in which thethings were done: thus more than through any other method will thethings be made real to him. The aim, therefore, of these pages, and ofthose that will succeed them, is to give such a general idea of thecampaigns as a whole as will permit whoever has grasped it a securecomprehension of the forces at work, and of the results of thoseforces. It is desired, for example, that the reader of these pagesshall be able to say to himself: "The Germanic body expected towin--and no wonder, for it had such and such advantages in number andin equipment. .. . The first two battles before Warsaw failed, and I cansee why. It was because the difficulties in Russian supply were met bya contraction of the Russian line. .. . The 1st German Army wascompelled to retreat before Paris, and I can now see why that was so:as it turned to envelop the Allied line, a great reserve within thefortified zone of Paris threatened it, and forced it back. " These main lines, and these only, are attempted in the present book, and in those that are to follow it in this series. The disadvantage of such a method is, of course, that the reader mustlook elsewhere for details, for the notices of a particular action, and the records of particular regiments. He must look for these to thelarge histories of the war, which will amply supply his curiosity ingood time. But the advantage of the method consists in that itprovides, as I hope, a foundation upon which all this bewilderingmultitude of detailed reading can repose. I set out, then, to give, as it were, the alphabet of the campaign, and I begin in this volume with the preliminaries to it--that is, itsgreat political causes, deep rooted in the past; the particular andimmediate causes which led to the outbreak of war; an estimate of theforces engaged; and the inception of hostilities. PLAN OF THIS BOOK. This first volume will cover three parts. In Part I. I shall write ofThe Causes of the War. In Part II. I shall Contrast the ForcesOpposed. In Part III. (the briefest) I shall describe the First Shock. In Part I. , where I deal first with the general or historical causesof the war, later with the particulars, I shall:-- 1. Define the German object which led up to it. 2. Show how this object conflicted with the wills of other nations. 3. Briefly sketch the rise of Prussia and of her domination over NorthGermany. 4. Define the position of Austria-Hungary in the matter, and thusclose the general clauses. 5. The particular causes of the war will next be dealt with; thecurious challenge thrown down to Great Britain by the German Fleet_before_ the German Empire had made secure its position on theContinent; the French advance upon Morocco; the coalition of theBalkan States against the remainder of the Turkish Empire in Europe. 6. Lastly, in this First Part, I shall describe the immediate occasionof the war and its surroundings: the ultimatum issued by theAustro-Hungarian Government to the little kingdom of Servia. In Part II. I will attempt to present the forces opposed at theoutbreak of war. First, the contrast in the geographical position of the GermanicAllies with their enemies, the French, the English, and the Russians. Secondly, the numbers of trained men prepared and the numbers ofreserves available in at least the first year to the various numbersin conflict. Thirdly, the way in which the various enemies had thoughtof the coming war (which was largely a matter of theory in the lack ofexperience); in what either party has been right, and in what wrong, as events proved; and with what measure of foresight the variouscombatants entered the field. In Part III, I will very briefly describe the original armeddispositions for combat at the outbreak of war, the German aim uponthe West, and the German orders to the Austrians upon the East; theoverrunning of Belgium, and the German success upon the Sambre; thenthe pursuit of the Franco-British forces to the line Paris-Verdun, upto the eve of the successful counter-offensive undertaken by them inthe first week of September. I will end by describing what were thecontemporary events in the Eastern field: in its northern part theoverrunning of East Prussia by the Russians, and the heavy blow whichthe Germans there administered to the invader; in its southern theAustrian opposition to the Russians on the Galician borders, and thebreakdown of that opposition at Lemberg. My terminal date for this sketch will be the 5th of September. A GENERAL SKETCH OF THE EUROPEAN WAR. PART I. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR. War is the attempt of two human groups each to impose its will uponthe other by force of arms. This definition holds of the mostrighteous war fought in self-defence as much as it does of the mostiniquitous war of mere aggression. The aggressor, for instance, proposes to take the goods of his victim without the pretence of aclaim. He is attempting to impose his will upon that victim. Thevictim, in resisting by force of arms, is no less attempting to imposehis will upon the aggressor; and if he is victorious does effectuallyimpose that will: for it is his will to prevent the robbery. Every war, then, arises from some conflict of wills between two humangroups, each intent upon some political or civic purpose, conflictingwith that of his opponent. War and all military action is but a means to a non-military end, tobe achieved and realized in peace. Although arguable differences invariably exist as to the right orwrong of either party in any war, yet the conflicting wills of the twoparties, the irreconcilable political objects which each has putbefore itself and the opposition between which has led to conflict, can easily be defined. They fall into two classes:-- 1. The general objects at which the combatants have long been aiming. 2. The particular objects apparent just before, and actuallyprovoking, the conflict. In the case of the present enormous series of campaigns, which occupythe energies of nearly all Europe, the general causes can be easilydefined, and that without serious fear of contradiction by thepartisans of either side. On the one hand, the Germanic peoples, especially that great majorityof them now organized as the German Empire under the hegemony ofPrussia, had for fully a lifetime and more been possessed of a certainconception of themselves which may be not unjustly put into the formof the following declaration. It is a declaration consonant with mostthat has been written from the German standpoint during more than ageneration, and many of its phrases are taken directly from theprincipal exponents of the German idea. (I) THE GERMAN OBJECT. "We the Germans are in spirit one nation. But we are a nation theunity of which has been constantly forbidden for centuries by a numberof accidents. None the less that unity has always been an idealunderlying our lives. Once or twice in the remote past it has beennearly achieved, especially under the great German emperors of theMiddle Ages. Whenever it has thus been nearly achieved, we Germanshave easily proved ourselves the masters of other societies around us. Most unfortunately our very strength has proved our ruin time andagain by leading us into adventures, particularly adventures inItaly, which took the place of our national ideal for unity anddisturbed and swamped it. The reason we have been thus supremewhenever we were united or even nearly united lay in the fact, whichmust be patent to every observer, that our mental, moral, andphysical characteristics render us superior to all rivals. The Germanor Teutonic race can everywhere achieve, other things being equal, more than can any other race. Witness the conquest of the Roman Empireby German tribes; the political genius, commercial success, and finalcolonial expansion of the English, a Teutonic people; and the peculiarstrength of the German races resident within their old homes on theRhine, the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, whenever they were notfatally disunited by domestic quarrel or unwise foreign ideals. It waswe who revivified the declining society of Roman Gaul, and made itinto the vigorous mediæval France that was ruled from the North. Itwas we who made and conquered the heathen Slavs threatening Europefrom the East, and who civilized them so far as they could becivilized. We are, in a word, and that patently not only to ourselvesbut to all others, the superior and leading race of mankind; and youhave but to contrast us with the unstable Celt--who has never produceda State--the corrupt and now hopelessly mongrel Mediterranean or'Latin' stock, the barbarous and disorderly Slav, to perceive at oncethe truth of all we say. [Illustration: Sketch 1. ] "It so happens that the various accidents which interrupted ourstrivings for unity permitted other national groups, inferior morallyand physically to our own, to play a greater part than such aninferiority warranted; and the same accidents permitted men ofTeutonic stock, not inhabiting the ancient homes of the Teutons, butemigrated therefrom and politically separated from the German Empire, to obtain advantages in which we ourselves should have had a share, but which we missed. Thus England, a Teutonic country, obtained hervast colonial empire while we had not a ship upon the sea. "France, a nation then healthier than it is now, but still of muchbaser stock than our own, played for centuries the leading part inWestern Europe; she is even to-day 'over-capitalized, ' as it were, possessing a far greater hold over the modern world than her realstrength warrants. Even the savage Slavs have profited by our formerdisunion, and the Russian autocracy not only rules millions ofGerman-speaking subjects, but threatens our frontiers with its greatnumbers of barbarians, and exercises over the Balkan Peninsula, andtherefore over the all-important position of Constantinople, a powervery dangerous to European culture as a whole, and particularly to ourown culture--which is, of course, by far the highest culture of all. "Some fifty years ago, acting upon the impulse of a group of greatwriters and thinkers, our statesmen at last achieved that German unitywhich had been the unrealized ideal of so many centuries. In a seriesof wars we accomplished that unity, and we amply manifested oursuperiority when we were once united by defeating with the greatestease and in the most fundamental fashion the French, whom the rest ofEurope then conceived to be the chief military power. "From that moment we have incontestably stood in the sight of all asthe strongest people in the world, and yet because other and lessernations had the start of us, our actual international position, ourforeign possessions, the security that should be due to so supreme anachievement, did not correspond to our real strength and abilities. England had vast dependencies, and had staked out the unoccupied worldas her colonies. We had no colonies and no dependencies. France, though decadent, was a menace to our peace upon the West. We couldhave achieved the thorough conquest and dismemberment of France at anytime in the last forty years, and yet during the whole of that timeFrance was adding to her foreign possessions in Tunis, Madagascar, andTonkin, latterly in Morocco, while we were obtaining nothing. Thebarbarous Russians were increasing constantly in numbers, and somewhatperfecting their insufficient military machine without anyinterference from us, grave as was the menace from them upon ourEastern frontier. "It was evident that such a state of things could not endure. A nationso united and so immensely strong could not remain in a position ofartificial inferiority while lesser nations possessed advantages in noway corresponding to their real strength. The whole equilibrium ofEurope was unstable through this contrast between what Germany mightbe and what she was, and a struggle to make her what she might befrom what she was could not be avoided. "Germany must, in fulfilment of a duty to herself, obtain colonialpossessions at the expense of France, obtain both colonial possessionsand sea-power at the expense of England, and put an end, by campaignsperhaps defensive, but at any rate vigorous, to the menace of Slavbarbarism upon the East. She was potentially, by her strength and herculture, the mistress of the modern world, the chief influence in it, and the rightful determinant of its destinies. She must by war passfrom a potential position of this kind to an actual position ofdomination. " Such was the German mood, such was the fatuous illusion which producedthis war. It had at its service, as we shall see later, _numbers_, and, backed by this superiority of numbers, it counted on victory. (2) CONFLICT PRODUCED BY THE CONTRAST OF THIS GERMAN ATTITUDE ORWILL WITH THE WILLS OF OTHER NATIONS. When we have clearly grasped the German attitude, as it may thus benot unfairly expressed, we shall not find it difficult to conceivewhy a conflict between such a will and other wills around it brokeout. We need waste no time in proving the absurdity of the Germanassumptions, the bad history they involve, and the perverse andtwisted perspective so much vanity presupposes. War can never beprevented by discovering the moral errors of an opponent. It comesinto being because that opponent does not believe them to be moralerrors; and in the attempt to understand this war and its causes, weshould only confuse ourselves if we lost time over argument uponpretensions even as crassly unreal as these. It must be enough for the purposes of this to accept the German willso stated, and to see how it necessarily conflicts with the Englishwill, the French will, the Russian will, and sooner or later, for thatmatter, with every other national will in Europe. In the matter of sea-power England would answer: "Unless we areall-powerful at sea, our very existence is imperilled. " In the matterof her colonies and dependencies England would answer: "We may be aTeutonic people or we may not. All that kind of thing is pleasant talkfor the academies. But if you ask whether we will allow any part ofour colonies to become German or any part of our great dependencies tofall under German rule, the answer is in the negative. " The French would answer: "We do not happen to think that we are eitherdecadent or corrupt, nor do we plead guilty to any other of your vagueand very pedantic charges; but quite apart from that, on the concretepoint of whether we propose to be subjugated by a foreign Power, German or other, the answer is in the negative. Our will is here inconflict with yours. And before you can proceed to any act of masteryover us, you will have to fight. Moreover, we shall not put aside theduty of ultimately fighting you so long as a population of twomillions, who feel themselves to be French (though most of them areGerman-speaking) and who detest your rule, are arbitrarily kept insubjection by you in Alsace-Lorraine. " The Russians would reply: "We cannot help being numerically strongerthan you, and we do not propose to diminish our numbers even if wecould. We do not think we are barbaric; and as to our leadership ofthe Slav people in the Balkans, that seems as right and natural to us, particularly on religious grounds, as any such bond could be. It mayinterfere with your ambitions; but if you propose that we shouldabandon so obvious an attitude of leadership among the Slavs, theanswer is in the negative. " There is here, therefore, again a conflictof wills. In general, what the German peoples desired, based upon what theybelieved themselves to be, was sharply at issue with what the Englishpeople, what the French people, what the Russian people respectivelydesired. Their desires were also based upon what _they_ believedthemselves to be, and they thought themselves to be very differentfrom what Germany thought them to be. The English did not believe thatthey had sneaked their empire; the French did not believe that theywere moribund; the Russians did not believe that they were savages. It was impossible that the German will should impose itself withoutcoming at once into conflict with these other national wills. It wasimpossible that the German ideal should seek to realize itself withoutcoming into conflict with the mere desire to live, let alone theself-respect, of everybody else. And the consequence of such a conflict in ideals and wills translatedinto practice was this war. * * * * * But the war would not have come nor would it have taken the shape thatit did, but for two other factors in the problem which we must nextconsider. These two other factors are, first, the position andtradition of Prussia among the German States; secondly, the peculiarauthority exercised by the Imperial House of Hapsburg-Lorraine atVienna over its singularly heterogeneous subjects. (3) PRUSSIA. The Germans have always been, during their long history, a raceinclined to perpetual division and sub-division, accompanied by warand lesser forms of disagreement between the various sections. Theirfriends have called this a love of freedom, their enemies politicalincompetence; but, without giving it a good or a bad name, the plainfact has been, century after century, that the various German tribeswould not coalesce. Any one of them was always willing to take servicewith the Roman Empire, in the early Roman days, against any one of theothers, and though there have been for short periods more or lesssuccessful attempts to form one nation of them all in imitation of themore civilized States to the west and south, these attempts have neversucceeded for very long. But it so happens that about two hundred years ago, or a little more, there appeared one body of German-speaking men rather different fromthe rest, and capable ultimately of leading the rest, or at least amajority of the rest. [Illustration: Sketch 2. ] I use the words "German-speaking" and "rather different" because thisparticular group of men, though speaking German, were of less pureGerman blood than almost any other of the peoples that spoke thattongue. They were the product of a conquest undertaken late in theMiddle Ages by German knights over a mixed Pagan population, Lithuanian and Slavonic, which inhabited the heaths and forests alongthe Baltic Sea. These German knights succeeded in their task, andcompelled the subject population to accept Christianity, just as theGermans themselves had been compelled to accept it by their morepowerful and civilized neighbours the French hundreds of years before. The two populations of this East Baltic district, the large majoritywhich was Slavonic and Lithuanian, and the minority which was reallyGerman, mixed and produced a third thing, which we now know as the_Prussian_. The cradle of this Prussian race was, then, all that flatcountry of which Königsberg and Danzig are the capitals, butespecially Königsberg--"King's Town"--where the monarchs of thisremote people were crowned. By an historical accident, which we neednot consider, the same dynasty was, after it had lost all claim toseparate kingship, merged in the rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg, asomewhat more German but still mixed district lying also in the Balticplain, but more towards the west, and the official title of thePrussian ruler somewhat more than two hundred years ago was theElector of Brandenburg. These rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg were afamily bearing the title of Hohenzollern, a castle in South Germany, by which name they are still distinguished. The palace of theseHohenzollerns was henceforward at Berlin. Now, much at the same time that the civil wars were being fought inEngland--that is, not quite three hundred years ago--the Reformationhad produced in Germany also very violent quarrels. Vienna, which wasthe seat of the Imperial House, stood for the Catholic or traditionalcause, and most Germans adhered to that cause. But certain of theNorthern German principalities and counties took up the side of theReformation. A terrible war, known as the Thirty Years' War, wasfought between the two factions. It enormously reduced the totalpopulation of Germany. In the absence of exact figures we only havewild guesses, such as a loss of half or three-quarters. At any rate, both from losses from the adherence of many princes to the Protestantcause and from the support lent to that cause for political reasons byCatholic France, this great civil war in Germany left the Protestantpart more nearly equal in numbers to the Catholic part, and, amongother things, it began to make the Elector of Brandenburg with hisPrussians particularly prominent as the champion of the Protestantcause. For, of all the warring towns, counties, principalities, andthe rest, Prussia had in particular shown military aptitude. From that day to this the advance of Prussia as, first, the champion, then the leader, and at last the master of Northern Germany as a whole(including many Catholic parts in the centre and the south), has beenconsistent and almost uninterrupted. The "Great Elector" (as he wascalled) formed an admirable army some two hundred years ago. Hisgrandson Frederick formed a still better one, and by his greatcapacities as a general, as well as by the excellence of his troops, gave Prussia a military reputation in the middle of the eighteenthcentury which has occasionally been eclipsed, but has never beenextinguished. Frederick the Great did more than this. He codified and gaveexpression, as it were, to the Prussian spirit, and the manifestationof that spirit in international affairs is generally called the"Frederician Tradition. " This "Frederician Tradition" must be closely noted by the reader, because it is the principal moral cause of the present war. It may bebriefly and honestly put in the following terms:-- "The King of Prussia shall do all that may seem to advantage thekingdom of Prussia among the nations, notwithstanding any Europeanconventions or any traditions of Christendom, or even any of thosewider and more general conventions which govern the internationalconduct of other Christian peoples. " For instance, if a convention of international morals has arisen--asit did arise very strongly, and was kept until recent times--thathostilities should not begin without a formal declaration of war, the"Frederician Tradition" would go counter to this, and would say: "Ifultimately it would be to the advantage of Prussia to attack withoutdeclaration of war, then this convention may be neglected. " Or, again, treaties solemnly ratified between two Governments aregenerally regarded as binding. And certainly a nation that never keptsuch a treaty for more than a week would find itself in a positionwhere it was impossible to make any treaties at all. Still, if upon avague calculation of men's memories, the acuteness of thecircumstance, the advantage ultimately to follow, and so on, it be tothe advantage of Prussia to break such solemn treaty, then such atreaty should be broken. It will be apparent that what is called the "Frederician Tradition, "which is the soul of Prussia in her international relations, is not anunprincipled thing. It has a principle, and that principle is apatriotic desire to strengthen Prussia, which particular appetiteoverweighs all general human morals and far outweighs all specialChristian or European morals. This doctrine of the "Frederician Tradition" does not mean that thePrussian statesmen wantonly do wrong, whether in acts of cruelty or inacts of treason and bad faith. What it means is that, wherever theyare met by the dilemma, "Shall I do _this_, which is to the advantageof my country but opposed to European and common morals, or _that_, which is consonant with those morals but to the disadvantage of mycountry?" they choose the former and not the latter course. Prussia, endowed with this doctrine and possessed of a most excellentmilitary organization and tradition, stood out as the first militarypower in Europe until the French Revolution. The wars of the FrenchRevolution and of Napoleon upset this prestige, and in the battle ofJena (1806) seemed to have destroyed it. But it was too strong to bedestroyed. The Prussian Government was the first of Napoleon's alliesto betray Napoleon _after_ the Russians had broken his power (1812). They took part with the other Allies in finishing off Napoleon afterthe Russian campaign (1813-14); they were present with decisive effectupon the final field of Waterloo (1815), and remained for fifty yearsafterwards the great military power they had always been. They hadfurther added to their dominions such great areas in NorthernGermany, beyond the original areas inhabited by the true Prussianstock, that they were something like half of the whole Northern Germanpeople when, in 1864, they entered into the last phase of theirdominion. They began by asking Austria to help them in taking fromDenmark, a small and weak country, not only those provinces of herswhich spoke German, but certain districts which were Danish as well. France and England were inclined to interfere, but they did not yetunderstand the menace Prussia might be in the future, and theyneglected to act. Two years later Prussia suddenly turned uponAustria, her ally, defeated her in a very short campaign, and insistedupon Austria's relinquishing for the future all claims over any partof the German-speaking peoples, save some ten millions in the valleyof the Middle Danube and of the Upper Elbe. Four years later again, in1870, Prussia having arranged, after various political experimentswhich need not be here detailed, for the support of all the GermanStates except Austria, fought a war with France, in which she wasimmediately and entirely successful, and in the course of which therulers of the other German States consented (1) to give theHohenzollern-Prussian dynasty supreme military power for the futureover them, under the hereditary title of German Emperors; (2) to forma united nation under the more or less despotic power of theseemperors. This latter point, the national unity, though really highlycentralized at Berlin, especially on the military side, was softenedin its rigour by a number of very wise provisions. A great measure ofautonomy was left to the more important of the lesser States, particularly Catholic Bavaria; local customs were respected; and, above all, local dynasties were flattered, and maintained in all thetrappings of sovereign rank. From that date--that is, for the last forty-four years--there has beena complete _Northern_ Germany, one strong, centralized, and thoroughlyco-ordinated nation, in which the original Prussian domination is notonly numerically far the greatest element, but morally overshadows allthe rest. The spiritual influence ruling this state issues from Berlinand from the Prussian soul, although a large minority consist ofcontented but respectful Catholics, who, in all national matters, wholly sympathize with and take their cue from the Protestant North. So far one may clearly see what kind of power it is that has initiatedthe German theory of supremacy which we have described above, isprepared to lead it to battle, and is quite certain of leading it tovictory. But we note--the fatal mark in all German history--that the unity isnot complete. The ten millions of Austrian Germans were, when Prussiaachieved this her highest ambition, deliberately left outside the newGerman Empire. And this was done because, in Prussian eyes, aso-called "German unity" was but a means to an end, and that end theaggrandizement of the Hohenzollern dynasty. To include so manysouthern and Catholic Germans would have endangered the mastery ofBerlin. The fact that Austria ruled a number of non-German subjectsfar larger than her Austrian population would further have endangeredthe Hohenzollern position had Austria been admitted to the new GermanEmpire, and had the consolidation of all Germans into one true statebeen really and loyally attempted. Lastly, it would have beenimpossible to destroy the historic claims to leadership of theImperial Hapsburgs, and that, more than anything else, was the rivalrythe Hohenzollerns dreaded. Once more had the Germans proved themselvesincapable of, and unwilling to submit to, the discipline of unity. What part, then, was Austria, thus left out, to play in theinternational activity of Prussia in the future? What part especiallywas she to play when Prussia, at the head of Northern Germany, shouldgo out to impose the will of that Germany and of herself upon the restof the world? That is the next question we must answer before we canhope to understand the causes of the present war in their entirety. (4) AUSTRIA. Austria, or, more strictly speaking, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, means no more than the congeries of States governed each separatelyand all in combination by the head of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine. Of these various States only one is German-speaking as a whole, andthat is the Austrian State proper, the "Eastern States" (for that iswhat the word "Austria" originally meant) which Christendom erectedround the Roman and Christian frontier town of Vienna to withstand thepressure of the heathen Slavs and Mongol Magyars surging against itupon this frontier. The complexity of the various sections which make up the realm of thepresent Emperor Francis Joseph, the present head of the House ofHapsburg-Lorraine, would be only confusing if it were detailed in sogeneral a description as this. We must be content with the broad linesof the thing, which are as follows:-- [Illustration: Sketch 3. ] From the Upper Danube and its valley--all the basin of it, one maysay, down to a point about twenty miles below Vienna--is the originalAustrian State; German-speaking as a whole, and the historic centre ofthe entire agglomeration. East of this is the far larger state ofHungary, and Hungary is the valley of the river Danube, from where theGerman-speaking boundary cuts it, just below Vienna down to the IronGates, up to the crest of the Carpathians. These two great units ofAustria proper and of Hungary have round them certain frills or edges. On the north are two great bodies, Slav in origin, Bohemia andGalicia; on the south another Slav body, separated from the rest forcenturies by the eruption of the Magyars from Asia in the Dark Ages, and these Slav bodies are represented by Croatia, by much of Dalmatia, and latterly by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have been governed byAustria for a generation, and formally annexed by her with the consentof Europe seven years ago. Finally, there is a strip, or, to be moreaccurate, there are patches of Italian-speaking people, all along thecoasts of the Adriatic, and occupying the ports governed by Austriaalong the eastern and northern coast of that sea. There is also a beltof Alpine territory of Italian speech--the Trentino--still in Austrianhands. This very general description gives, however, far too rough an idea ofthe extraordinarily complicated territories of the House of Hapsburg. Thus, there are considerable German-speaking colonies in Hungary, andthese, oddly enough, are more frequent in the east than in the westof that State. Again, the whole western slope of the Carpathians is, so far as the mass of the population is concerned, Roumanian intongue, custom, and race. Bohemia, though Slavonic in origin, isregularly enframed along its four sides by belts of German-speakingpeople, and was mainly German-speaking until a comparatively recentrevival of its native Slavonic tongue, the Czech. Again, though theMagyar language is Mongolian, like the Turkish, centuries of Christianand European admixture have left very little trace of the originalrace. Lastly, in all the north-eastern corner of this vast andheterogeneous territory, something like a quarter of the population isJewish. The Western student, faced with so extraordinary a puzzle of race andlanguage, may well wonder what principle of unity there is lyingbehind it, and, indeed, this principle of unity is not easy to find. Some have sought it in religion, pointing out that the overwhelmingmajority of these various populations are Catholic, in communion withRome; and, indeed, this Catholic tincture or colour has a great dealto do with the Austro-Hungarian unity; and of late years the chiefdirecting policy of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine has been to pose asthe leader of the Catholic Slavs against the Slavs belonging to theGreek Church. But this principle of unity is not the true one, for two reasons:first, that the motive leading the House of Hapsburg to the difficulttask of so complicated a government is not a religious motive; and, secondly, because this religious unity is subject to profoundmodification. Hungary, though Catholic in its majority, contains, andis largely governed by, powerful Protestant families, who aresupported by considerable bodies of Protestant population. The GreekChurch is the religious profession of great numbers along the LowerDanube valley and to the south of the river Save. There are in Bosniaa considerable number of Mahomedans even, and I have already mentionedthe numerous Jewish population of the north-east, particularly inGalicia. The true principle of unity in what has hitherto been theAustro-Hungarian Empire is twofold. It consists, first, in thereigning family, considerable personal attachment to which is felt inevery section of its dominions, utterly different as these are onefrom another; and, secondly (a more important point), in thehistorical development of the State. It is this last matter which explains all, and which can make usunderstand why a realm so astonishingly ill constructed was broughtinto the present struggle as one force, and that force a force alliedto, and in a military sense identical with, modern Prussian Germany. For the historical root of Austria-Hungary is German. Of itspopulation (some fifty-one millions) you may say that only about aquarter are German-speaking (less than another quarter areMagyar-speaking, most of the rest Slavonic in speech, together withsome proportion of Roumanian and Italian). But it is from this German _quarter_ and from the emperor at theirhead that the historical growth of the State depends, because thisGerman _quarter_ was the original Christian nucleus and the civilizedcentre, which had for its mission the reduction of Slavonic and Magyarbarbarism. The Slavs of the Bohemian quadrilateral were subjected, not indeed by conquest, but by a process of culture, to Vienna. Thecrown of Hungary, when it fell by marriage to the Hapsburgs, continuedthat tradition; and when the Empress Maria-Theresa, in the lastcentury, participated in the abominable crime of Frederick the Greatof Prussia, and took her share of the dismembered body of Poland (nowcalled the Austrian province of Galicia), that enormous blunder was, in its turn, a German blunder undertaken under the example of NorthernGermany, and as part of a movement German in spirit and origin. Thesame is true even of the very latest of the Austrian developments, theannexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The act was that of Vienna, butthe spirit behind it, perhaps the suggestion of it, and the supportthat made it possible came from Berlin. In a word, if you could interrogate the Genius of the Hapsburgs andask it for what their dominion stood, it would tell you that foruninterrupted centuries they had stood for the German effort torepress or to overcome pressure upon the German peoples from theEast. And that is still their rôle. They have come into this war, forinstance, as the servants of Prussia, not because Prussia threatenedor overawed them, but because they felt they had, in common withPrussia, the mission of withstanding the Slav, or of tolerating theSlav only as a subject; because, that is, they feared, and weredetermined to resist, Russia, and the smaller Slavonic States, notablyServia to the south, which are in the retinue of Russia. * * * * * We may sum up, then, and say that the fundamental conflict of wills inEurope, which has produced this general war, is a conflict between theGerman will, organized by Prussia to overthrow the ancient Christiantradition of Europe (to _her_ advantage directly; and indirectly, asshe proposes, to the advantage of a supposedly necessary Germangovernance of the world under Prussian organization), and the will ofthe more ancient and better founded Western and Latin tradition towhich the sanctity of separate national units profoundly appeals, anda great deal more which is, in their eyes, civilization. In thisconflict, Prussia has called upon and received the support of not onlythe German Empire, which she controls, but also the Hapsburg monarchy, controlling the organized forces of Austria-Hungary; while there hasappeared against this strange Prussian claim all that values theChristian tradition of Europe, and in particular the doctrine ofnational freedom, with very much else--which very much else are thethings by which we of the civilized West and South, who have hithertoproved the creators of the European world, live and have our being. Allied with us, by the accident that this same German claim threatensthem also, is the young new world of the Slavs. It is at this final point of our examination that we may see theimmensity of the issues upon which the war turns. The two parties arereally fighting for their lives; that in Europe which is arrayedagainst the Germanic alliance would not care to live if it should failto maintain itself against the threat of that alliance. It is for themlife and death. On the other side, the Germans having propounded thistheory of theirs, or rather the Prussians having propounded it forthem, there is no rest possible until they shall either have "madegood" to our destruction, or shall have been so crushed that arecurrence of the menace from them will for the future be impossible. There is here no possibility of such a "draw" or "stalemate" as wasthe result, for instance, of the reduction of Louis XIV. 's ambition, or of the great revolutionary effort throughout Europe which endedwith the fall of Napoleon. Louis XIV. 's ambition cast over Europe, which received it favourably, the colour of French culture. TheRevolutionary Wars were fought for a principle which, if it did notappeal universally to men, appealed at least to all those millionswhose instincts were democratic in every country. But in this warthere is no such common term. No one outside the districts led byPrussia desires a Prussian life, and perhaps most, certainly many, ofthose whom Prussia now leads are in different degrees unwilling tocontinue a Prussian life. The fight, in a word, is not like a fightwith a man who, if he beats you, may make you sign away some property, or make you acknowledge some principle to which you are already halfinclined; it is like a fight with a man who says, "So long as I havelife left in me, I will make it my business to kill you. " And fightsof that kind can never reach a term less absolute than the destructionof offensive power in one side or the other. A peace not affirmingcomplete victory in this great struggle could, of its nature, be nomore than a truce. * * * * * So much for the really important and the chief thing which we have tounderstand--the general causes of the war. Now let us turn to the particular causes. We shall find these to be, not like the general causes, great spiritual attitudes, but, as theyalways are, a sequence of restricted and recent _events_. (5) THE PARTICULAR CAUSES OF THE WAR. After the great victories of Prussia a generation ago (the spoliationof Denmark in 1864, the supremacy established over Austria in 1866, the crushing defeat of France and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, with two millions of people in 1870-1), Europe gradually drifted intobeing an armed camp, the great forces of which were more or less inequilibrium. Prussia had, for the moment at least, achieved all thatshe desired. The French were for quite twenty years ardently desirousof recovering what they had lost; but Europe would not allow the warto be renewed, and Prussia, now at the head of a newly constitutedGerman Empire, made an arrangement with Austria and with Italy to curbthe French desire for recovery. The French, obviously inferior beforethis triple alliance, gradually persuaded the Russians to supportthem; but the Russians would not support the French in provokinganother great war, and with the French themselves the old feelinggradually deadened. It did not disappear--any incident might haverevived it--but the anxious desire for immediate war when theopportunity should come got less and less, and at the end of theprocess, say towards 1904, when a new generation had grown up in allthe countries concerned, there was a sort of deadlock, every one veryheavily armed, the principal antagonists, France and Germany, armedto their utmost, but the European States, as a whole, unwilling toallow any one of them to break the peace. It was about this moment that Prussia committed what the futurehistorian will regard, very probably, as the capital blunder in herlong career of success. She began to build a great fleet. Here thereader should note two very important consequences of the greatPrussian victories which had taken place a generation before. Thefirst was the immense expansion of German industrialism. Germany, froman agricultural State, became a State largely occupied in mining, smelting, spinning, and shipbuilding; and there went with thisrevolution, as there always goes with modern industrialism, a largeand unhealthy increase of population. The German Empire, after its warwith France, was roughly equal to the population of the French; butthe German Empire, after this successful industrial experiment, theresult of its victories, was much more than half as large again inpopulation as the French (68 to 39). Secondly, the German Empire developed a new and very large maritimecommerce. This second thing did not follow, as some have imagined itdoes, from the first. Germany might have exported largely withoutexporting in her own ships. The creation of Germany's new mercantilemarine was a deliberate part of the general Prussian policy ofexpansion. It was heavily subsidized, especially directed into theform of great international passenger lines, and carefullyco-ordinated with the rest of the Prussian scheme throughout theworld. At a date determined by the same general policy, and somewhatsubsequent to the first creation of this mercantile marine, came thedecision to build a great fleet. Now, it so happens that Great Britainalone among the Powers of Europe depends for her existence uponsupremacy at sea, and particularly upon naval superiority in theNarrow Seas to the east and the south of the British islands. Such a necessity is, of course, a challenge to the rest of the world, and it would be ridiculous to expect the rest of the world to acceptthat challenge without protest. But a necessity this naval policy ofGreat Britain remains none the less. The moment some rival or groupof rivals can overcome her fleet, her mere physical livelihood is inperil. She cannot be certain of getting her food. She cannot becertain of getting those foreign materials the making up of whichenables her to purchase her food. Further, her dominions are scatteredoversea, and supremacy at sea is her only guarantee of retaining thevarious provinces of her dominion. It is a case which has happened more than once before in the historyof the world. Great commercial seafaring States have arisen; they havealways had the same method of government by a small, wealthy class, the same ardent patriotism, the same scattered empire, and the sameinexorable necessity of maintaining supremacy at sea. Only one Powerhad hitherto rendered this country anxious for the Narrow Seas: thatPower was France, and it only controlled one-half of the two branchesof the Narrow Seas, the North Sea and the Channel. It had been forgenerations a cardinal piece of English policy that the French Fleetshould be watched, the English Fleet maintained overwhelminglysuperior to it, and all opportunities for keeping France engaged withother rivals used to the advantage of this country. On this accountEnglish policy leant, on the whole, towards the German side, duringall the generation of rivalry between France and Germany whichfollowed the war of 1870. But when the Germans began to build their fleet, things changed. TheGermans had openly given Europe to understand that they regardedHolland and Belgium, and particularly the port of Antwerp, asultimately destined to fall under their rule or into their system. Their fleet was specifically designed for meeting the British Fleet;it corresponded to no existing considerable colonial empire, andthough the development of German maritime commerce was an excuse forit, it was only an excuse. Indeed, the object of obtaining supremacyat sea was put forward fairly clearly by the promoters of the wholescheme. Great Britain was therefore constrained to transfer the weightof her support to Russia and to France, and to count on the whole as aforce opposed, for the first time in hundreds of years, to NorthGermany in the international politics of Europe. Similarity ofreligion (which is a great bond) and a supposed identity (and partlyreal similarity) of race were of no effect compared with thissentiment of necessity. Here it is important to note that the transference of British supportfrom one continental group to another neither produced aggression byGreat Britain nor pointed to any intention of aggression. It is aplain matter of fact, which all future history will note, that thevery necessity in English eyes of English supremacy at sea, and theknowledge that such a supremacy was inevitably a provocation toothers, led to the greatest discretion in the use of British navalstrength, and, in general, to a purely defensive and peaceful policyupon the part of the chief maritime power. It would, indeed, have beenfolly to have acted otherwise, for there was nothing to prevent thegreat nations, our rivals, if they had been directly menaced by theBritish superiority at sea, from beginning to build great fleets, equal or superior to our own. Germany alone pursued this policy, withno excuse save an obvious determination to undo the claim of theBritish Fleet. I have called this a blunder, and, from the point of view of theGerman policy, it was a blunder. For if the Prussian dynasty set out, as it did, to make itself the chief power in the world, its obviouspolicy was to deal with its enemies in detail. It ought not, at anycost, to have quarrelled with Russia until it had finally disposed ofFrance. If it was incapable, through lack of subtlety, to prevent theFranco-Russian group from forming, it should at least have made itselfthe master of that group before gratuitously provoking the rivalry ofGreat Britain. But "passion will have all now, " and the supposedlycold and calculating nature of Prussian effort has about it somethingvery crudely emotional, as the event has shown. From about ten yearsago Prussian Germany had managed to array against itself not only theold Franco-Russian group but Great Britain as well. This arrangement would not, however, have led to war. Equilibrium wasstill perfectly maintained, and the very strong feeling throughout allthe great States of Europe that a disturbance of the peace would meansome terrible catastrophe, to be avoided at all costs, was aspowerful as ever. The true origin of disturbance, the first overt act upon which you canput your finger and say, "Here the chain of particular causes leadingto the great war begins, " was the revolution in Turkey. Thisrevolution took place in the year 1908, and put more or lesspermanently into power at Constantinople a group of men based uponMasonic influence, largely Western in training, largely composed ofJewish elements, known as the "Young Turks. " The first result of this revolution, followed as it inevitably was bythe temporary weakening in international power which accompanies allcivil war at its outset, was the declaration by Austria that she wouldregard the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina--hitherto onlyadministrated by her and nominally still Turkish--as her ownterritory. It was but a formal act, but it proved of vast consequence. It was anopen declaration by a Germanic Power that the hopes of the Servians, the main population of the district and a Slav nation closely boundto Russia in feeling, were at an end; that Servia must content herselfwith such free territory as she had, and give up all hope of acompletely independent State uniting all Servians within its borders. It was as though Austria had said, "I intend in future to be the greatEuropean Power in the Balkans, Slav though the Balkans are, and Ichallenge Russia to prevent me. " The Russian Government, thuschallenged, would perhaps have taken the occasion to make war had notthe French given it to be understood that they would not imperilEuropean peace for such an object. The Prussian Government of theGerman Empire had, in all this crisis, acted perhaps as the leader, certainly as the protector and supporter of Austria; and when Francethus refused to fight, and Russia in turn gave way, the whole thingwas regarded, not only in Germany but throughout the world, asequivalent to an armed victory. Observers whose judgment and criticismare of weight, even in the eyes of trained international agents, proclaimed what had happened to be as much a Prussian success asthough the Prussian and Austrian armies had met in the field and haddefeated the Russian and the French forces. The next step in this series was a challenge advanced by Germanyagainst that arrangement whereby Morocco, joining as it did to FrenchNorth Africa, should be abandoned to French influence, so far asEngland was concerned, in exchange for the French giving up certainrights of interference they had in the English administration ofEgypt, and one or two other minor points. Germany, advancing from avictorious position acquired over the Bosnian business, affirmed (inthe year 1911) her right to be consulted over the Moroccan settlement. Nor were the French permitted to occupy Morocco until they had cededto Germany a portion of their African colony of the Congo. Thistransaction was confused by many side issues. German patriots did notregard it as a sufficient success, though French patriots certainlyregarded it as a grave humiliation. But perhaps the chief consequenceof the whole affair was the recrudescence in the French people as awhole of a temper, half forgotten, which provoked them to withstandthe now greatly increased power of the German Empire and of its ally, and to determine that if such challenges were to continue uncheckedduring the coming years, the national position of France would beforfeited. Following upon this crisis came, in the next year--still a consequenceof the Turkish Revolution--the sudden determination of the BalkanStates, including Greece, to attack Turkey. It was the King ofMontenegro (a small Slav State which had always maintained itsindependence) who fired the first shot upon the 8th of October, 1912, with his own hand. In the course of that autumn the Balkan Allies wereuniversally successful, failed only in taking Constantinople itself, reduced Turkey in Europe to an insignificant strip of territory nearthe capital itself, and proceeded to settle the conquered territoryaccording to an agreement made by them before the outbreak ofhostilities. But here the Germanic Powers again intervened. The defeated TurkishArmy had been trained by German officers upon a German system; theexpansion of German and Austrian political military influencethroughout the Near East was a cardinal part of the German creed andpolicy. Through Austria the Balkans were to be dominated at last, andAustria, at this critical moment, vetoed the rational settlement whichthe allied Balkan States had agreed to among themselves. She would notallow the Servians to annex those territories inhabited by men oftheir race, and to reach their natural outlet to the sea upon theshores of the Adriatic. She proposed the creation of a novel State ofAlbania under a German prince, to block Servia's way to the sea. Shefurther proposed to Servia compensation by way of Servia's annexingthe territory round Monastir, which had a Bulgarian population, and toBulgaria the insufficient compensation of taking over, farther to theeast, territory that was not Bulgarian at all, but mixed Greek andTurkish. The whole thing was characteristically German in type, ignoring anddespising national feeling and national right, creating artificialboundaries, and flagrantly sinning against the European sense ofpatriotism. A furious conflict between the various members of theformer Balkan Alliance followed; but the settlement which Austria hadvirtually imposed remained firm, and the third of the great Germanicsteps affirming the growing Germanic scheme in Europe had been taken. But it had been taken at the expense of further and very gravelyshaking the already unstable armed equilibrium of Europe. The German Empire foresaw the coming strain; a law was passedimmediately increasing the numbers of men to be trained to arms withinits boundaries, and ultimately increasing that number so largely as togive to Germany alone a very heavy preponderance--a preponderance ofsomething like thirty per cent. --over the corresponding number trainedin France. To this move France could not reply by increasing her armed forces, because she already took every available man. She did the onlypossible thing under the circumstances. She increased by fifty percent. The term during which her young men must serve in the army, changing that term from two years to three. The heavy burden thus suddenly imposed upon the French led to veryconsiderable political disputes in that country, especially as theparliamentary form of government there established is exceedinglyunpopular, and the politicians who live by it generally despised. When, therefore, the elections of last year were at hand, it seemed asthough this French increase of military power would be in jeopardy. Luckily it was maintained, in spite of the opposition of fairly honestbut uncritical men like Jaurés, and of far less reputable professionalpoliticians. Whether this novel strain upon the French people could have been longcontinued we shall never know, for, in the heat of the debatesprovoked by this measure and its maintenance, came the last eventswhich determined the great catastrophe. (6) THE IMMEDIATE OCCASION OF THE WAR. We have seen how constantly and successfully Austria had supported thegeneral Prussian thesis in Europe, and, in particular, thepredominance of the German Powers over the Slav. We have seen how, in pursuit of this policy, the sharpest friction wasalways suffered at the danger-point of _Servia_. Servia was the SlavState millions of whose native population were governed against theirwill by Austro-Hungarian officials. Servia was the Slav State mortallywounded by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And Servia wasthe Slav State which Austria had in particular mortified by forbiddingher access to the Adriatic, and by imposing upon her an unnaturalboundary, even after her great victories of the Balkan War. The heir to the Hapsburgs--the man who, seeing the great age of hisuncle, might at any moment ascend the throne--was the ArchdukeFrancis. He had for years pursued one consistent policy for theaggrandizement of his House, which policy was the pitting of theCatholic Slavs against the Orthodox Slavs, thereby rendering himselfin person particularly odious to the Orthodox Serbs, so many of whosecompatriots and co-religionists were autocratically governed againsttheir will in the newly annexed provinces. To the capital of these provinces, Sarajevo, he proceeded in state inthe latter part of last June, and there, through the emissaries ofcertain secret societies (themselves Austrian subjects, but certainlyconnected with the population of independent Servia, and, as someclaimed, not unconnected with the Servian Government itself), he wasassassinated upon Saturday, the 28th of June, 1914. For exactly a month, the consequences of this event--the provocationwhich it implied to Austria, the opportunity which it gave theHapsburgs for a new and more formidable expression of Germanic poweragainst the Slavs--were kept wholly underground. _That is the mostremarkable of all the preliminaries to the war. _ There was a month ofsilence after so enormous a moment. Why? In order to give Germany andAustria a start in the conflict already long designed. Militarymeasures were being taken secretly, stores of ammunition overhauled, and all done that should be necessary for a war which was premeditatedin Berlin, half-feared, half-desired in Vienna, and dated for the endof July--after the harvest. The Government of Berlin was, during the whole of this period, actively engaged in forcing Austria forward in a path to which she wasnot unwilling; and, at last, upon the 23rd of July, Europe was amazedto read a note sent by the Imperial Governor at Vienna to the RoyalGovernment in the Servian capital of Belgrade, which note was of akind altogether unknown hitherto in the relations between ChristianStates. This note demanded not only the suppression of patriotic, andtherefore anti-Austrian, societies in Servia (the assassins of theCrown Prince had been, as I have said, not Servian but Austriansubjects), but the public humiliation of the Servian Government by anapology, and even an issue of the order of the day to the ServianArmy, so recently victorious, abasing that army to the worsthumiliation. The note insisted upon a specific pledge that the ServianGovernment should renounce all hope of freeing the Servian nation as awhole from foreign government, and in many another clause subjectedthis small nation to the most thorough degradation ever suggested by apowerful European people towards a lesser neighbour. So far, though an extreme hitherto unknown in European history hadbeen reached, the matter was one of degree. Things of the same sort, less drastic, had been known in the past. But what was novel in the note, and what undoubtedly proceeded fromthe suggestion of the Prussian Government (which was in all this thereal agent behind Austria), _was the claim of the Austrian Governmentto impose its own magistrates upon the Servian courts, and to condemnat will those subjects of the Servian king and those officers holdinghis commission whom Austria might select so to condemn, and that topenalties at the goodwill and pleasure of Austria alone_. In otherwords, Austria claimed full rights of sovereignty within the territoryof her small neighbour and enemy, and the acceptation of the note byServia meant not only the preponderance of Austria for the future overthe Slavs of the Balkans, but her continued and direct power over thatregion in the teeth of national and religious sentiment, and in cleandespite of Russia. So strong was the feeling still throughout Europe in favour ofmaintaining peace and of avoiding the awful crash of our wholeinternational system that Russia advised Servia to give way, and theGermanic Powers were on the eve of yet another great success, far moreimportant and enduring than anything they had yet achieved. The onlyreservation which Servia was permitted by the peaceful Powers ofEurope, and in particular by Russia, to make was that, upon threepoints which directly concerned her sovereignty, Austria should admitthe decision of a Court of Arbitration at the Hague. But thetime-limit imposed--which was the extraordinarily short one offorty-eight hours--was maintained by Austria, and upon the advice, aswe now know, of Berlin, no modification whatever in the demands wastolerated. Upon the 25th, therefore, the Austrian Minister leftBelgrade. There followed ten days, the exact sequence of events inwhich must be carefully noted if we are to obtain a clear view of theorigin of the war. Upon that same day, Saturday, July 25th, the English Foreign Office, through Sir Edward Grey, suggested a scheme whereby the approachingcataclysm (for Russia was apparently determined to support Servia)might be averted. He proposed that all operations should be suspendedwhile the Ambassadors of Germany, Italy, and France consulted with himin London. What happened upon the next day, Sunday, is exceedingly important. The German Government refused to accept the idea of such a conference, but at the same time the German Ambassador in London, PrinceLichnowski, was instructed to say that the principle of such aconference, or at least of mediation by the four Powers, was agreeableto Berlin. _The meaning of this double move was that the GermanGovernment would do everything it could to retard the entry into thebusiness of the Western Powers, but would do nothing to preventRussia, Servia, and the Slav civilization as a whole from sufferingfinal humiliation or war. _ That game was played by Germany clumsily enough for nearly a fullweek. Austria declared war upon Servia upon Monday the 27th; but wenow know that her intention of meeting Russia halfway, when she sawthat Russia would not retire, was stopped by the direct interventionof the Prussian Government. In public the German Foreign Office stillpretended that it was seeking some way out of the crisis. In privateit prevented Austria from giving way an inch from her extraordinarydemands. And all the while Germany was secretly making her firstpreparations for war. It might conceivably be argued by a special pleader that war was notthe only intention of Berlin, as most undoubtedly it had not been theonly intention of Vienna. Such a plea would be false, but one canimagine its being advanced. What is not capable even of discussion isthe fact that both the Germanic Powers, under the unquestionedsupremacy of Prussia, _were_ determined to push Russia into thedilemma between an impossible humiliation and defeat in the field. They allowed for the possibility that she would prefer humiliation, because they believed it barely possible (though all was ready for theinvasion of France at a moment already fixed) that the French wouldagain fail to support their ally. But war was fixed, and its date wasfixed, with Russia, or even with Russia and France, and the GermanicPowers arranged to be ready before their enemies. In order to effectthis it was necessary to deceive the West at least into believing thatwar could after all be avoided. One last incident betrays in the clearest manner how thoroughlyPrussia had determined on war, and on a war to break out at her ownchosen moment. It was as follows: As late as Thursday, the 30th of July, Austria was still willing tocontinue a discussion with Russia. The Austrian Government on that dayexpressed itself as willing to reopen negotiations with Russia. TheGerman Ambassador at Vienna got wind of this. He communicated it atonce to Berlin. _Germany immediately stopped any compromise, byframing that very night and presenting upon the next day, Friday the31st, an ultimatum to Russia and to France. _ Now, the form of these two ultimata and the events connected with themare again to be carefully noted, for they further illuminate us uponthe German plan. That to Russia, presented by the German AmbassadorPortales, had been prepared presupposing the just possible humiliationand giving way of Russia; and all those who observed this man'sattitude and manner upon discovering that Russia would indeed fightrather than suffer the proposed humiliation, agreed that it was theattitude and manner of an anxious man. The ultimatum to France had, upon the contrary, not the marks of coercion, but of unexpected andviolent haste. If Russia was really going to fight, what could Prussiabe sure of in the West? It was the second great and crude blunder ofPrussian diplomacy that, instead of making any efforts to detachFrance from Russia, it first took the abandonment of Russia by Francefor granted, and then, with extreme precipitancy, asked within theleast possible delay whether France would fight. That precipitancyalone lent to the demand a form which ensured the exact opposite ofwhat Prussia desired. This double misconception of the effect of her diplomatic actiondates, I say, from Friday, the 31st of July, and that day is the trueopening day of the great war. Upon Sunday, the 2nd of August, theGerman army violated the neutrality of Luxembourg, seizing the railwaypassing through that State into France, and pouring into its neutralterritory her covering troops. On the same day, the French generalmobilization was ordered; the French military authorities having lost, through the double action of Germany, about five days out of, say, eleven--nearly half the mobilization margin--by which space of timeGerman preparations were now ahead of theirs. There followed, before the action state of general European conflict, the third German blunder, perhaps the most momentous, and certainlythe most extraordinary: that by which Germany secured the hithertoexceedingly uncertain intervention of England against herself. Of all the great Powers involved, Great Britain had most doubtfully toconsider whether she should or should not enter the field. On the one hand, she was in moral agreement with Russia and France; onthe other hand, she was bound to them by no direct alliance, andsuccessive British Governments had, for ten years past, repeatedlyemphasized the fact that England was free to act or not to act withFrance according as circumstances might decide her. Many have criticized the hesitation, or long weighing of circumstance, which astonished us all in the politicians during these few days, butno one, whether friendly to or critical of a policy of neutrality, candoubt that such a policy was not only a possible but a probable one. The Parliamentarians were not unanimous, the opposition to the greatresponsibility of war was weighty, numerous, and strong. Thefinanciers, who are in many things the real masters of ourpoliticians, were all for standing out. In the face of such aposition, in the crisis of so tremendous an issue, Germany, instead ofacting as best she could to secure the neutrality of Great Britain, simply took that neutrality for granted! Upon one specific point a specific question was asked of herGovernment. To Great Britain, as we have seen in these pages, thekeeping from the North Sea coast of all great hostile Powers is avital thing. The navigable Scheldt, Antwerp, the approaches to theStraits of Dover, are, and have been since the rise of Britishsea-power, either in the hands of a small State or innocuous to usthrough treaty. Today they are the possession of Belgium, anindependent State erected by treaty after the great war, andneutralized by a further guarantee in 1839. This neutrality of Belgiumhad been guaranteed in a solemn treaty not only by France and England, but by Prussia herself; and the British Government put to the Frenchand to the Germans alike the question whether (now they were at war)that neutrality would be respected. The French replied in theaffirmative; the Germans, virtually, in the negative. But it must notbe said that this violation of international law and of her own wordby Germany automatically caused war with England. _The German Ambassador was not told that if Belgian territory wasviolated England would fight_; he was only told that if that territorywere violated England _might_ fight. The Sunday passed without a decision. On Monday the point was, as amatter of form, laid before Parliament, though the House of Commonshas no longer any real control over great national issues. In a speechwhich certainly inclined towards English participation in the warshould Germany invade Belgium, the Secretary for Foreign Affairssummed up the situation before a very full House. In the debate that followed many, and even passionate, speeches weredelivered opposing the presence of England in the field and claimingneutrality. Some of these speeches insisted upon the admiration feltby the speaker for modern Germany and Prussia; others the ill judgmentof running the enormous risk involved in such a campaign. Theseprotests will be of interest to history, but the House of Commons as awhole had, of course, no power in the matter, and sat only to registerthe decisions of its superiors. There was in the Cabinet resignationof two members, in the Ministry the resignation of a third, thethreatened resignation of many more. Meanwhile, upon that same day, August 3rd, following withsuperstitious exactitude the very hour upon which, on the very sameday, the French frontier had been crossed in 1870, the Germans enteredBelgian territory. The Foreign Office's thesis underlying the declaration of itsspokesman, Sir Edward Grey, carried the day with the politicians inpower, and upon Tuesday, August 4th, Great Britain joined Russia andFrance, at war with the Prussian Power. There followed later theformal declaration of war by France as by England against Austria, andwith the first week in August the general European struggle hadopened. PART II. THE FORCES OPPOSED. Here, then, at the beginning of August 1914, are the five great Powersabout to engage in war. Russia, France, and Great Britain, whom we will call the Allies, areupon one side; the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, whom we willcall the Germanic Powers, are upon the other. We must at the outset, if we are to understand the war at all, see howthese two combatant groups stood in strength one against the otherwhen the war broke out. And to appreciate this contrast we must knowtwo things--their geographical situation, and their respective weightin arms. For before we can judge the chances of two opponents in war, we have to know how they stand physically one to the other upon thesurface of the earth, or we cannot judge how one will attack theother, or how each will defend itself against the other. And we mustfurther be able to judge the numbers engaged both at the beginning ofthe struggle and arriving in reinforcement as the struggle proceeds, because upon those numbers will mainly depend the final result. Having acquired these two fundamental pieces of information, we mustacquire a third, which is _the theories of war_ held upon either side, and some summary showing which of these theories turned out inpractice to be right, and which wrong. For, after a long peace, the fortune of the next war largely dependsupon which of various guesses as to the many changes that have takenplace in warfare and in weapons will be best supported by practice, and what way of using new weapons will prove the most effective. Untilthe test of war is applied, all this remains guess-work; but under theconditions of war it ceases to be guess-work, and becomes eithercorroborated by experience or exploded, as the case may be. And of twoopponents after a long peace, that one which has had the mostforesight and has guessed best what the effect of changes in armamentand the rest will effect in practice is that one who has the bestchance of victory. We are going, then, in this Second Part, of the little book, to see, first, the geographical position of the belligerents; secondly, theireffective numbers; and, thirdly, what theories of war each held, andhow far each was right or wrong. (1) THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE BELLIGERENTS. The position of the original belligerent countries (excluding Turkey)upon the map of Europe was that which will be seen upon theaccompanying sketch map. Of this belligerent area, which is surrounded by a thick black line, the part left white represents the territory of the Allies at theorigin of the war--Great Britain, France, Russia, and Servia. Thisreservation must, however, be made: that in the case of Russia onlythe effective part is shown, and only the European part at that;Arctic Russia and Siberia are omitted. The part lightly shaded withcross lines represents the Germanic body--to wit, the German Empireand Austria-Hungary. 1. The first thing that strikes the eye upon such a map is the greatsize of the Germanic body. [Illustration: Sketch 4. ] When one reads that "Germany" was being attacked by not only Franceand England, but also Russia; when one reads further that in the FarEast, in Asia, Japan was putting in work for the Allies; and when onegoes on to read that Belgium added her effort of resistance to the"German" invasion, one gets a false impression that one single nationwas fighting a vast coalition greatly superior to it. Most people hadan impression of that kind, in this country at least, at the outset ofthe war. It was this impression that led to the equally falseimpression that "Germany" must necessarily be beaten, and probablyquickly beaten. The truth was, of course, that we were fighting something very muchbigger than "Germany. " We set out to fight something more than twiceas big as Germany in area, and very nearly twice as big as the GermanEmpire in mere numbers. For what we set out to fight was not theGerman Empire, but the German Empire _plus_ the whole of the dominionsgoverned by the Hapsburg dynasty at Vienna. How weighty this Germanic body was geographically is still moreclearly seen if we remember that Russia north of St. Petersburg isalmost deserted of inhabitants, and that the true European areas ofpopulation which are in conflict--that is, the fairly well populatedareas--are more accurately represented by a modification of the mapon page 81 in some such form as that on page 84, where the comparativedensity of population is represented by the comparative distancesbetween the parallel cross-lines. 2. The next thing that strikes one is the position of the neutralcountries. Supposing Belgium to have remained neutral, or, rather, tohave allowed German armies to pass over her soil without activelyresisting, the Germanic body would have been free to trade withneutral countries, and to receive support from their commerce, and toget goods through them over the whole of their western front, with theexception of the tiny section which stands for the frontier common toFrance and Germany. On the north, supposing the Baltic to be open, theGermanic body had a vast open frontier of hundreds of miles, andthough Russia closed most of the eastern side, all the Roumanianfrontier was open, and so was the frontier of the Adriatic, right awayfrom the Italian border to Cattaro. So was the Swiss frontier and theItalian. [Illustration: Sketch 5. ] Indeed, if we draw the Germanic body by itself surrounded by afrontier of dots, as in the accompanying sketch, and mark in a thickline upon that frontier those parts which touched on enemy'sterritory, and were therefore closed to supply, we shall beimmediately arrested by the comparatively small proportion of thatfrontier which is thus closed. [Illustration: Sketch 6. ] It is well to carry this in mind during the remainder of our study ofthis war, because it has a great effect upon the fighting power ofGermany and Austria after a partial--but very partial--blockade isestablished by the Allied and especially by the British naval power. 3. The third thing that strikes one in such a map of the belligerentarea is the way in which the Germanic body stands in the middle facingits two groups of enemies East and West. _The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Germanic Body_. With this last point we can begin a comparison of the advantages anddisadvantages imposed by geographical conditions upon the twoopponents, and first of these we will consider the geographicaladvantages and disadvantages of the Germanic body--that is, of theAustrian and German Empires--passing next to the correspondingadvantages and disadvantages of the Allies. The advantages proceeding from geographical position to Germany inparticular, and to the Germanic body as a whole, gravely outweigh thedisadvantages. We will consider the disadvantages first. The chief disadvantage under which the Germanic body suffered in thisconnection was that, from the outset of hostilities, it had to fight, as the military phrase goes, upon two fronts. That is, the commandersof the German and Austrian armies had to consider two separatecampaigns, to keep them distinct in their minds, and to co-ordinatethem so that they should not, by wasting too many men on the East orthe West, weaken themselves too much on the other side of the field. To this disadvantage some have been inclined to add that the centralposition of Austria and Germany in Europe helped the British andAllied blockade (I repeat, a very partial, timid, and insufficientblockade) of their commerce. But this view is erroneous. The possibility of blockadingAustria-Hungary and Germany from imports across the ocean was due notto their central but to their continental position; to the fact thatthey were more remote from the ocean than France and Great Britain. Ithad nothing to do with their central position between the two groupsof the Allies. Supposing, for instance, that Germany and Austria-Hungary had stoodwhere Russia stands, and that Western Europe had been in allianceagainst them. Then they would have been in no way central; theirposition would have been an extreme position upon one side; and yet, so far as blockading goes, the blockade of them would have beeninfinitely easier. Conversely, if Germany and Austria had been in the west, where GreatBritain and France are, their enemies lying to the east of them couldnot have blockaded them at all. As things are the blockade that has been established exists but ispartial. As will be seen upon the following sketch map, the BritishFleet, being sufficiently powerful, can search vessels the cargoes ofwhich might reach the Germanic body directly through the Strait ofGibraltar (1), the Strait of Dover (2), or the North Sea betweenScotland and Norway (3). But it is unable to prevent supplies reachingthe Germanic body from Italy, whether by land or by sea (4), orthrough Switzerland (5), or through Holland (6), or through Denmark(7), or across the frontier of Roumania (8); or, so long as the GermanFleet is strongest in the Baltic, by way of Norway and Sweden acrossthe Baltic (9). [Illustration: Sketch 7. ] The blockading fleet is even embarrassed as to the imports theGermanic body receives indirectly through neutral countries--that is, imports not produced in the importing countries themselves, butprovided through the neutral countries as middlemen. It is embarrassed in three ways. (_a_) Because it does not want to offend the European neutralcountries, which count in the general European balance of power. (_b_) Because it does not wish to offend Powers outside Europe whichare neutral in this war, and particularly the United States. Suchgreat neutral Powers are very valuable not only for their moralsupport if it can be obtained, but on account of their great financialresources untouched by this prolonged struggle, and, what lies behindthese, their power of producing materials which the Allies need justas much as Austria and Germany do. (_c_) Because, even if you watch the supplies of contraband toneutrals, and propose to stop supplies obviously destined for Germanuse, you cannot prevent Germany from buying the same material "madeup" by the neutral: for example, an Italian firm can import copper orequite straightforwardly, smelt it, and offer the metal in the openmarket. There is nothing to prevent a German merchant entering thatmarket and purchasing, unless Italy forbids all export of copper, which it is perfectly free not to do. To leave this side question of blockade, and to return to the relativeadvantages and disadvantages of our enemy's central position, we mayrepeat as a summary of its disadvantages the single truth that itcompels our enemy to fight upon two fronts. All the rest is advantage. It is an advantage that Germany and Austria-Hungary, as a corollary totheir common central position, are in some part of similar race andaltogether of a common historical experience. For more than a hundredyears every part of the area dominated by the Germanic body--with theexception of Bosnia and Alsace-Lorraine--has had a fairly intimateacquaintance with the other part. The Magyars of Hungary, the Poles ofGalicia, of Posen, of Thorn, the Croats of the Adriatic border, theCzechs of Bohemia, have nothing in race or language in common withGerman-speaking Vienna or German-speaking Berlin. But they have theexperience of generations uniting them with Vienna and with Berlin. In administration, and to some extent in social life, a commonatmosphere spreads over this area, nearly all of which, as I havesaid, has had something in common for a hundred years, and much ofwhich has had something in common for a thousand. In a word, as compared with the Allies, the Germanic central body inEurope has a certain advantage of moral homogeneity, especially as thegoverning body throughout is German-speaking and German in feeling. That is the first point of advantage--a moral one. The second is more material. The Governments of the two countries, their means of communication and of supply, are all in touch one withanother. Those governments are working in one field within a ringfence, and working for a common object. They are not only spirituallyin touch; they are physically in touch. An administrator in Berlin cantake the night express after dinner and breakfast with hiscollaborator in Vienna the next morning. It so happens, also, that the communications of the two Germanicempires are exactly suited to their central position. There issufficient fast communication from north to south to serve all thepurposes necessary to the intellectual conduct of a war; there is amost admirable communication from east to west for the materialconduct of that war upon two fronts. Whenever it may be necessary tomove troops from the French frontier to the Russian, or from theRussian to the French, or for Germany to borrow Hungarian cavalry forthe Rhine, or for Austria to borrow German army corps to protectGalicia, all that is needed is three or four days in which to entrainand move these great masses of men. There is no area in Europe whichis better suited by nature for thus fighting upon two land frontiersthan is the area of the combined Austrian and German Empire. With these three points, then--the great area of our enemy in Europe, his advantage through neutral frontiers, and his advantage inhomogeneity of position between distant and morally dividedAllies--you have the chief marks of the geographical position heoccupies, in so far as this is the great central position ofcontinental Europe. But it so happens that the Germanic body in general, and the GermanEmpire in particular, suffer from grave geographical disadvantagesattached to their political character. And of these I will make mynext points. The Germanic body as a whole suffers by its geographical disposition, coupled with its political constitution, a grave disadvantage in itsstruggle against the Allies, particularly towards the East, becausejust that part of it which is thrust out and especially assailable byRussia happens to be the part most likely to be disaffected to thewhole interests of the Germanic body; and how this works I willproceed to explain. Here are two oblongs--A, left blank, and B, lightly shaded. Supposingthese two oblongs combined to represent the area of two countrieswhich are in alliance, and which are further so situated that B is theweaker Power to the alliance both (1) in his military strength, and(2) in his tenacity of purpose. Next grant that B is divided by thedotted line, CD, into two halves--B not being one homogeneous State, but two States, B1 and B2. Next let it be granted that while B1 is more likely to remain attachedin its alliance to A, B2 is more separate from the alliance in moraltendency, and is also materially the weaker half of B. Finally, letthe whole group, AB, be subject to the attack of enemies from theright and from the left (from the right along the arrows XX, and fromthe left along the arrows YY) by two groups of enemies represented bythe areas M and N respectively. [Illustration: Sketch 8. ] It is obvious that in such a situation, if A is the chief object ofattack, and is the Power which has both provoked the conflict and madeitself the chief object of assault by M and N, A is by thisarrangement in a position _politically_ weak. That is, the strategical position of A is gravely embarrassed by theway in which his ally, B, separated into the two halves, B1 and B2, stands with regard to himself. B2 is isolated and thrust outward. Theenemy, M, upon the right, attacking along the lines XX, may be able togive B2 a very bad time before he gets into the area of B1, and longbefore he gets into the area of the stronger Power, A. It is open to Mso to harass B2 that B2 is prepared to break with B1 and give up thewar; or, if the bond between B2 and B1 is strong enough, to persuadeB1 to give up the struggle at the same time that he does. And if B2 isthus harassed to the breaking-point, the whole alliance, A plus B, will lose the men and materials and wealth represented by B2, and_may_ lose the whole shaded area, B, leaving A to support singly forthe future the combined attacks of M and N along the lines of attack, XX and YY. Now, that diagram accurately represents the political embarrassment instrategy of the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance. B1 is Austria andBohemia; B2 is Hungary; A is the German Empire; M is the Russians; Nis the Allies in the West. With a geographical arrangement such asthat of the Germanic alliance, a comparatively small proportion of theRussian forces detached to harry the Hungarian plain can make theHungarians, who have little moral attachment to the Austrians and nonewhatever to the Germans, abandon the struggle to save themselves;while it is possible that this outlier, being thus detached, will dragwith it its fellow-half, the Austrian half of the dual monarchy, causethe Government of the dual monarchy to sue for peace, and leave theGerman Empire isolated to support the undivided attention of theRussians from the East and of the French from the West. It is clear that if a strong Power, A, allied with and dependent forlarge resources in men upon a weaker Power, B, is attacked from theleft and from the right, the ideal arrangement for the strong Power, A, would be something in the nature of the following diagram (Sketch9), where the weaker Power stands protected in the territory of thestronger Power, and where of the two halves of the weaker Power, B2, the less certain half, is especially protected from attack. [Illustration: Sketch 9. ] Were Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Rhineland, upon the onehand, the Hungarian plain, Russian Poland, and East Prussia, upon theother hand, united in one strong, patriotic, homogeneousGerman-speaking group with the Government of Berlin and the Balticplain, and were Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, Bohemia, toconstitute the weaker and less certain ally, while the least certainhalf of that uncertain ally lay in Eastern Bohemia and in what is nowLower Austria, well defended from attack upon the East, the conditionswould be exactly reversed, and the Austro-German alliance would begeographically and politically of the stronger sort. As it is, thecombined accidents of geography and political circumstance make itpeculiarly vulnerable. [Illustration: Sketch 10. ] Having already considered in a diagram the way in which thegeographical disposition of Austria-Hungary weakens Germany in theface of the Allies, let us translate that diagram into terms of actualpolitical geography. These two oblongs, with their separate parts, are, as a fact, as follows: Where A is the German Empire, the shadedportion, B, is Austria-Hungary, and this last divided into B1, themore certain Austrian part, and B2, the less certain exposedHungarian part, the latter of which is only protected from Russianassault by the Carpathian range of mountains, CCC, with its passes atDDD. M, the enemy on the right, Russia, is attacking the alliance, AB, along XX; while the enemy on the left, N, France and her Allies, isattacking along the lines YY. Hungary, B2, is not only geographically an outlier, but politically isthe weakest link in the chain of the Austro-Germanic alliance. Thearea of Hungary is almost denuded of men, for most of these have beencalled up to defend Germany, A, and in particular to prevent theinvasion of Germany's territory in Silesia at S. The one defenceHungary has against being raided and persuaded to an already temptingpeace is the barrier of the Carpathian mountains, CCC. When or if thepasses shall be in Russian possession and the Russian cavalry reappearupon the Hungarian side of the hills, the first great politicalembarrassment of the enemy will have begun--I mean the first greatpolitical embarrassment to his strategy. (_a_) Shall he try to defend those passes above all? Then he mustdetach German corps, and detach them very far from the areas which arevital to the core of the alliance--that is, to the German Empire, A. (_b_) Shall he use only Hungarian troops to defend Hungary? Then heemphasizes the peculiar moral isolation of Hungary, and leaves herinclined, if things go ill, to make a separate peace. (_c_) Shall he abandon Hungary? And let the Russians do what they willwith the passes over the Carpathians and raid the Hungarian plain atlarge? Then he loses a grave proportion of his next year's wheat, muchof his dwindling horse supply, his almost strangled sources of petrol. He tempts Roumania to come in (for a great sweep of Eastern Hungary isnationally Roumanian); and he loses the control in men and financialresources of one-half of his Allies if the danger and the distresspersuade Hungary to stand out. For the Hungarians have no quarrelexcept from their desire to dominate the southern Slavs; to fightAustria's battles means very little to them, and to fight Germany'sbattles means nothing at all. There is, of course, much more than this. If Hungary dropped out, could Austria remain? Would not the Government at Vienna, rather thanlose the dual monarchy, follow Hungary's lead? In that case, theGermanic alliance would lose at one stroke eleven-twenty-fifths of itsmen. It would lose more than half of its reserves of men, for theAustrian reserve is, paradoxically enough, larger than the Germanreserve, though not such good material. Admire how in every way this geographical and political problem ofHungary confuses the strategical plan of the German General Staff!They cannot here act upon pure strategics. They _cannot_ treat thearea of operations like a chessboard, and consider the unique objectof inflicting a military defeat upon the Russians. Their inability todo so proceeds from the fact that this great awkward salient, Hungarian territory, is not politically subject to Berlin, is not inspiritual union with Berlin; may be denuded of men to save Berlin, andis the most exposed of all our enemy's territory to attack. Throughoutthe war it will be found that this problem perpetually presents itselfto the Great General Staff of the Prussians: "How can we save Hungarywithout weakening our Eastern line? If we abandon Hungary, how are weto maintain our effectives?" Such, in detail, is the political embarrassment to German strategyproduced by the geographical situation and the political traditions ofHungary itself, and of Hungary's connection with the Hapsburgs atVienna. Let us now turn to the even more important embarrassmentcaused to German strategy by the corner positions of the fouressential areas of German territory. This last political weakness attached to geographical conditionconcerns the German Empire alone. Let us suppose a Power concerned to defend itself against invasion andsituated between two groups of enemies, from the left and from theright, we will again call that Power A, the enemy upon the right M, and the enemy upon the left N, the first attacking along the lines XX, and the second along the lines YY. Let us suppose that A has _political_ reasons for particularlydesiring to save from invasion four districts, the importance ofwhich I have indicated on Sketch 12 by shading, and which I havenumbered 1, 2, 3, 4. [Illustration: Sketch 11. ] Let us suppose that those four districts happen to lie at the fourexposed corners of the area which A has to defend. The Government of Aknows it to be essential to success in the war that his territoryshould not be invaded. Or, at least, if it is invaded, it must not, under peril of collapse, be invaded in the shaded areas. It is apparent upon the very face of such a diagram, that with theall-important shaded areas situated in the corners of hisquadrilateral, A is heavily embarrassed. He must disperse his forcesin order to protect all four. If wastage of men compels him toshorten his line on the right against M, he will be immediatelyanxious as to whether he can dare sacrifice 4 to save 2, or whether heshould run the dreadful risk of sacrificing 2 to save 4. [Illustration: Sketch 12. ] If wastage compels him to shorten his defensive line upon the left, heis in a similar quandary between 1 and 3. The whole situation is one in which he is quite certain that adefensive war, long before he is pushed to extremities, will compelhim to "scrap" one of the four corners, yet each one is, for somepolitical reason, especially dear to him and even perhaps necessary tohim. Each he desires, with alternating anxieties and indecisions, topreserve at all costs from invasion; yet he cannot, as he is forcedupon the defensive, preserve all four. Here, again, the ideal situation for him would be to possess againstthe invader some such arrangement as is suggested by Sketch 11. Inthis arrangement, if one were compelled unfortunately to consider fourspecial districts as more important than the mass of one's territory, one would have the advantage of knowing that they were clearlydistinguishable into less and more important, and the furtheradvantage of knowing that the more important the territory was, themore central it was and the better protected against invasion. Thus, in this diagram, the government of the general oblong, A, maydistinguish four special zones, the protection of which from invasionis important, but which vary in the degree of their importance. Theleast important is the outermost, 1; the more important is an innerone, 2; still more important is 3; and most important of all is theblack core of the whole. Some such arrangement has been the salvation of France time and timeagain, notably in the Spanish wars, and in the wars of Louis XIV. , andin the wars of the Revolution. To some extent you have seen the samething in the present war. To save Paris was exceedingly important, next came the zone outsideParis, and so on up to the frontier. But with the modern German Empire it is exactly the other way, and thesituation is that which we found in Sketch 12; the four externalcorners are the essentials which must be preserved from invasion, andif any one of them goes, the whole political situation is at once ingrave peril. The strategical position of modern Germany is embarrassed because eachof these four corners must be saved by the armies. 1 isBelgium--before the war indifferent to Germany, but now destined to bevital to her position--2 is East Prussia, 3 is Alsace-Lorraine, 4 isSilesia, and the German commanders, as well as the German Government, must remain to the last moment--if once they are thrown on thedefensive--in grave indecision as to which of the four can best bespared when invasion threatens; or else, as is more probable, theymust disperse their forces in the attempt to hold all four at once. Itis a situation which has but rarely occurred before in the history ofwar, and which has always proved disastrous. Germany then must--once she is in Belgium--hold on to Belgium, or sheis in peril; she must hold on to East Prussia, or she is in peril; shemust hold on to Alsace-Lorraine, or she is in peril; and she must holdon to Silesia, or it is all up with her. If there were some commonstrategical factor binding these four areas together, so that thedefence of one should involve and aid the defence of all, thedifficulties thus imposed upon German strategy would be greatlylessened. Though even then the mere having to defend four outlyingcorners instead of a centre would produce confusion and embarrassmentthe moment numerical inferiority had appeared upon the side of thedefence. But, as a fact, there is no such common factor. Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium, East Prussia and Silesia, standstrategically badly separated one from the other. Even the two on theEast and the two on the West, though apparently forming pairs upon themap, are not dependent on one system of communications, and are cutoff from each other by territory difficult or hostile, while betweenthe Eastern and the Western group there is a space of five hundredmiles. Let us, before discussing the political embarrassment to strategyproduced by these four widely distant and quite separate areas, translate the diagram in the terms of a sketch map. On the following sketch map, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia, and Silesia are shaded, as were the four corners of the diagram. No. 1is Belgium, 2 is East Prussia, 3 is Alsace-Lorraine, 4 is Silesia. Thearea occupied by the German Empire, including its present occupationof Belgium, is marked by the broad outline; and the areas shadedrepresent, not the exact limits of the four territories that are soimportant, but those portions of them which are essential: thenon-Polish portion of Silesia, the non-Polish portion of East Prussia, the plain of Belgium, and all Alsace-Lorraine. [Illustration: Sketch 13. ] Now the reason that each of these must at all costs be preserved frominvasion is, as I have said, different in each case, and we shall dowell to examine what those reasons are; for upon them depends thepolitical hesitation they inevitably, cause to arise in the plans ofthe Great General Staff. 1. _Belgium. _ The military annexation of Belgium has been a result ofthe war, and, from the German point of view, an unexpected result. Germany both hoped and expected that her armies would pass throughBelgium as they did, in fact, pass through Luxembourg. The resistanceof Belgium produced the military annexation of that country; the reignof terror exercised therein has immobilized about 100, 000 of theGerman troops who would otherwise be free for the front; the checkingof the advance into France has turned the German general politicalobjective against England, and, to put the matter in the vaguest butmost fundamental terms, the German mind has gradually come, sinceOctober, to regard the retention of Belgium as something quiteessential. And this because:--(_a_) It gives a most weighty asset inthe bargaining for peace. (_b_) It gives a seaboard against England. (_c_) It provides ample munition, house-room, and transport facility, without which the campaign in North-eastern France could hardly beprolonged. (_d_) It puts Holland at the mercy of Germany, for she can, by retaining Belgium, strangle Dutch trade, if she chooses to diverther carriage of goods through Belgian ports. (_e_) It is a specificconquest; the Government will be able to say to the German people, "Itis true we had to give up this or that, but Belgium is a definite newterritory, the occupation of which and the proposed annexation ofwhich is a proof of victory. " (_f_) The retention of Belgium has beenparticularly laid down as the cause of quarrel between Great Britainand Germany; to retain Belgium is to mark that score against what isnow the special enemy of Germany in the German mind. (_g_) Antwerp isthe natural port for all the centre of Europe in commerce westwardover the ocean. (_h_) With Belgium may go the Belgian colonies--thatis, the Congo--for the possession of which Germany has workedceaselessly year in and year out during the last fifteen years by asteady and highly subsidized propaganda against the Belgianadministration. She has done it through conscious and unconsciousagents; by playing upon the cupidity of French and BritishParliamentarians, of rum shippers, upon religious differences, andupon every agency to her hand. We may take it, then, that the retention of Belgium is in German eyesnow quite indispensable. "If I abandon Belgium, " she says, "it is muchmore than a strategic retreat; it is a political confession offailure, and the moral support behind me at home will break down. " If I were writing not of calculable considerations, but of other andstronger forces, I should add that to withdraw from Belgium, where somany women and children have been massacred, so many jewels of thepast befouled or destroyed, so wanton an attack upon Christ and HisChurch delivered, would be a loss of Pagan prestige intolerablystrong, and a triumph of all that against which Prussia set out towar. 2. _Alsace-Lorraine. _ But Alsace-Lorraine is also "indispensable. " Wehave seen on an earlier page what the retention of that territorymeans. Alsace-Lorraine is the symbol of the old victory. It is theGerman-speaking land which the amazingly unreal superstitions ofGerman academic pedantry discovered to be something sacredly necessaryto the unity of an ideal Germany, though the people inhabiting itdesired nothing better than the destruction of the Prussian name. Itis more than that. It is the bastion beyond the Rhine which keeps theRhine close covered; it is the two great historic fortresses ofStrassburg and Metz which are the challenge Germany has thrown downagainst European tradition and the civilization of the West; it issomething which has become knit up with the whole German soul, and toabandon it is like a man abandoning his title or his name, orsurrendering his sword. Through what must not the German mind passbefore its directors would consent to the sacrifice of such afundamentally symbolic possession? There is defeat in the verysuggestion; and the very suggestion, though it has already occurred tothe Great General Staff, and has already, I believe, been mentioned inone proposal for peace, would be intolerable to the mass of theenemy's opinion. 3. _East Prussia. _ East Prussia is sacred in another, but also anintense fashion. It is the very kernel of the Prussian monarchy. WhenBerlin was but a market town for the Electors of Brandenburg, thosesame Electors had contrived that East Prussia, which was outside theempire, should be recognized as a kingdom. Frederick the Great'sfather, while of Brandenburg an Elector, was in Prussia proper a king, a man who had emancipated that cradle of the Prussian power. Theprovince in all save its southern belt (which is Polish) is the veryessence of Prussian society: a mass of serfs, technically free, economically abject, governed by those squires who own them, theirgoods, and what might be their soil. The Russians wasted East Prussiain their first invasion, and they did well though they paid so heavy aprice, for to wound East Prussia was to wound the very soul of thatwhich now governs the German Empire. When the landed proprietors fledbefore the Russian invasion, and when there fled with them thetownsfolk, the serfs rose and looted the country houses. In a wayquite different from Belgium, quite different from Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia is essential. Forces will and must be sent periodicallyto defend that territory, however urgently they may be neededelsewhere, as the pressure upon Germany increases. The Germancommanders, if they forget East Prussia for a moment in theconsideration of the other essential points, will, the moment theireyes are turned upon East Prussia again, remember with violent emotionall that the province means to the reigning dynasty and itssupporters, and they will do anything rather than let that frontiergo. The memory of the first invasion is too acute, the terror of itsrepetition too poignant, to permit its abandonment. 4. _Silesia. _ Silesia, for quite other reasons (and remember thatthese different reasons for defending such various points are theessence of the embarrassment in which German strategy will finditself), must be saved. It has been insisted over and over again inthese pages what Silesia means. Its meaning is twofold. If Silesiagoes, the safest, the most remote from the sea, the most independentof imports of the German industrial regions, is gone. Silesia is, again, the country of the great proprietors. Amuse yourselves byremembering the names of Pless and of Lichnowsky. There are dozens ofothers. But, most important of all, Silesia is what Belgium is not, what Alsace-Lorraine is not, what East Prussia is not--it is thestrategic key. Who holds Silesia commands the twin divergent roads toBerlin northwards, to Vienna southwards. Who holds Silesia holds theMoravian Gate. Who holds Silesia turns the line of the Oder, andpasses behind the barrier fortresses which Germany has built upon herEastern front. Who holds Silesia strikes his wedge in between theGerman-speaking north and the German-speaking south, and joins handswith the Slavs of Bohemia. Not that we should exaggerate the Slavfactor, for religion and centuries of varying culture disturb itsunity. But it is something. The Russian forces are Slav; theresurrection of Poland has been promised; the Czechs are notsubmissive to the German claim of natural mastery, and whoever holdsSilesia throws a bridge between Slav and Slav if his aims are anextension of power in that race. For a hundred reasons Silesia must besaved. * * * * * Now put yourself in the position of the men who must make a decisionbetween these four outliers--Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia, and Silesia--and understand the hesitation such divergent aims imposeupon them. Hardly are they prepared to sacrifice one of the four whenthe defensive problem becomes acute, but its claims will be pressed inevery conceivable manner--by public sentiment, by economicconsiderations, by mere strategy, by a political tradition, by theinfluence of men powerful with the Prussian monarchy, whose homes andwealth are threatened. "If I am to hold Belgium, I must give upAlsace. How dare I do that? To save Silesia I must expose EastPrussia. How dare I? I am at bay, and the East must at all costs besaved. I will hold Prussia and Silesia, but to withdraw from Belgiumand from beyond the Rhine is defeat. " The whole thing is an embroglio. That conclusion is necessary and inexorable. It would not appear atall until, or if, numerical weakness imposed on the enemy a gradualconcentration of the defensive; but once that numerical weakness hascome, the fatal choices must be made. It may be that a strict, silent, and virile resolution, such as saved France this summer, apreparedness for particular sacrifices calculated beforehand, willdetermine first some one retirement and then another. It maybe--though it is not in the modern Prussian temperament--that adefensive as prolonged as possible will be attempted even withinferior numbers, and that, as circumstances may dictate, Alsace-Lorraine or Belgium, Silesia or East Prussia will be the firstto be deliberately sacrificed; but one must be, and, it would seem, another after, and in the difficulty of choice a wound to the Germanstrategy will come. The four corners are differently defensible--Alsace-Lorraine andBelgium only by artifice, and with great numbers of men; Silesia onlyso long as Austria (and Hungary) stand firm. East Prussia has hernatural arrangement of lakes to make invasion tedious, and to permitdefence with small numbers. Between the two groups, Eastern and Western, is all the space ofGermany--the space separating Aberdeen from London. Between each partof each pair, in spite of an excellent railway system, is the block inthe one case of the Ardennes and the Eifel, in the other of empty, ill-communicated Poland. But each is strategically a separate thing;the political value of each a separate thing; the embarrassmentbetween all four insuperable. Such is the situation imposed by the geography of the Europeancontinent upon our enemies, with the opportunities and the drawbackswhich that situation affords and imposes. I repeat, upon the balance, our enemies had geographical opportunitiesfar superior to our own. Our power of partial blockade (to which I will return in a moment) ismore than counterbalanced by the separation which Nature hasdetermined between the two groups of Allies. The ice of the North, theNarrows of the Dardanelles, establish this, as do the Narrows of theScandinavian Straits. The necessity of fighting upon two fronts, to which our enemies arecompelled, is more than compensated by that natural arrangement of theDanube valley and of the Baltic plain which adds to the advantage of acentral situation the power of rapid communication between East andWest; while the chief embarrassment of our enemies in theirgeographical arrangement, which is the outlying situation of Hungarycoupled with the presence of four vital regions at the four externalcorners of the German Empire, is rather political than geographical innature. I will now turn to the converse advantages and disadvantages affordedand imposed by geographical conditions upon the Allies. _The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Allies. _ It has been apparent from the above in what way the geographicalcircumstance of Germany and Austria-Hungary advantaged anddisadvantaged those two empires in the course of a war against Eastand West. Let us next see how the Allies were advantaged and disadvantaged bytheir position. 1. The first great disadvantage which the Allies most obviously sufferis their separation one from the other by the Germanic mass. The same central position which gives Germany and Austria-Hungarytheir power of close intercommunion, of exactly coordinating all theirmovements, of using their armies like one army, and of dealing withrapidity alternate blows eastward and westward, produces contraryeffects in the case of the Allies. Even if hourly communication werepossible by telegraph between the two main groups, French and Russian, that would not be at all the same thing as personal, sustained, andcontinuous contact such as is enjoyed by the group of their enemies. But, as a fact, even the very imperfect and indirect kind of contactwhich can be established by telegraphing over great distances islargely lacking. The French and the Russians are in touch. Thecommanders can and do pursue a combined plan. But the communication ofresults and the corresponding arrangement of new dispositions arenecessarily slow and gravely interrupted. Indeed, it is, as we shallsee in a moment, one of the main effects of geography upon thiscampaign that Russia must suffer during all its early stages a verysevere isolation. In general, the Allies as a whole suffer from the necessity underwhich they find themselves of working in two fields, remote the onefrom the other by a distance of some six hundred miles, not evenconnected by sea, and geographically most unfortunately independent. 2. A second geographical disadvantage of the Allies consists in thefact that one of them, Great Britain, is in the main a maritime Power. That this has great compensating advantages we shall also see, but forthe moment we are taking the disadvantages separately, and, socounting them one by one, we must recognize that England's being anisland (her social structure industrialized and free fromconscription, her interests not only those of Europe but those of sucha commercial scattered empire as is always characteristic of securemaritime Powers) produces, in several of its aspects, a geographicalweakness to the Allied position, and that for several reasons, which Iwill now tabulate:-- (_a_) The position of England in the past, her very security as anisland, has led her to reject the conception of universal service. Shecould only, at the outset of hostilities, provide a smallExpeditionary Force, the equivalent at the most of a thirtieth of theAllied forces. (_b_) Her reserves in men who could approach the continental field in, say, the first year, even under the most vigorous efforts, would neverreach anything like the numbers that could be afforded by a conscriptnation. The very maximum that can be or is hoped for by the mostsanguine is the putting into the field, after at least a year of war, of less than three-sixteenths of the total Allied forces, although herpopulation is larger than that of France, and more than a third thatof the enemy. (_c_) She is compelled to garrison and defend, and in places topolice, dependencies the population of which will in some casesfurnish no addition to the forces of the Allies, and in all casesfurnish but a small proportion. (_d_) The isolation of her territory by the sea, coupled with herlarge population and its industrial character, makes Britainpotentially the most vulnerable point in the alliance. So long as her fleet is certainly superior to that of the enemy, andhas only to meet oversea attack, this vulnerability is but littlefelt; but once let her position at sea be lost, or even leftundecided, or once let the indiscriminate destruction of commercialmarine be seriously begun, and she is at the mercy of that enemy. Forshe cannot feed herself save by supplies from without, and she cannottake part in the supplying of armies with men and munitions upon thecontinent. (_e_) She is open to fear aggression upon any one of her independentcolonies oversea, and yet she is not able to draw upon them for thewhole of their potential strength, or, indeed, for more than a verysmall proportion of it. In other words, the British Fleet guaranteessome fifteen million of European race beyond the seas from attack bythe enemy, but cannot draw from these fifteen million more than aninsignificant fraction of the million of men and more which, fullyarmed, they might furnish; nor has she any control over their finance, so as to be able to count upon the full weight of their wealth; norcan she claim their resources in goods and munitions. She can onlyobtain these by paying for them. There is here a very striking contrast between her position and thatof the Germanic Powers. (_f_) Her isolation and maritime supremacy, coupled with herindustrial character, make her during the strain of equipment theworkshop of the Allies. That this is a great advantage is evident; butthe disadvantage attaching to it is that very large proportions of hermanhood are necessarily withdrawn from the field for the purposes ofher shipbuilding, her communications, her manufactory of arms and allkinds of supplies, her seafaring work, both civil and military. Of the two other main Allies, the French disadvantage may be thussummarized, and it is slight:-- (_a_) The French political frontier, as established since the defeatof the French in 1871, is an open frontier. It has no natural featuresupon which the defensive can rely. In the lack of this the Frenchfortified at very heavy expense that portion of their frontier whichfaced their certain enemy, and established a line from Verdun toBelfort calculated to check the first movement of his offensive. Butall the two hundred miles to the north of this, the whole line betweenVerdun and the North Sea, was virtually open. There were, indeed, certain fortified places upon that line, but they formed noconsecutive system, and, as their armaments grew old, they were notbrought up to date. The truth is, that the defence of France upon thisfrontier was really left to the co-operation of Belgium. If, as wasbelieved to be almost certain, Prussian morals being what they are, the Prussian guarantee to respect Belgian neutrality would be torn upat the outbreak of war, then three great fortresses--Liége, Namur, andAntwerp--would hold up the enemy's advance in this quarter, andperform the function of delay which the obsolete armament of thenorth-eastern French frontier could not perform. We shall see, when wecome to the conflicting theories of warfare held by the variousbelligerents, what a grievous miscalculation this was, and how largelyit accounted for the first disasters of the war. But, at any rate, letus remember, as our first point, the absence of any natural line ofdefence in France as against a German invasion, remembering, also, that the French would necessarily, at the beginning of any war, beupon the defensive on account of their inferior numbers. Had France, for instance, had along her frontiers, and just within them, such aline as Germany possesses in the Rhine, she would have fallen back atthe outset upon that line. But she has no such advantage. (_b_) The second disadvantage of the French geographically is oneimmixed with political considerations. The French have for centuriesproduced, and have for two thousand years believed in, centralgovernment. For at least three hundred years all the life of thenation has centred upon Paris; all the railways and all the greatsystem of roads and most of the waterways of the north similarly haveParis for their nucleus. Now, this central ganglion of the wholeFrench organism is but 120 miles from the frontier, ten days' easymarching. An enemy coming in from the north-east not only finds nonatural obstacle in his way, but has Paris as nearly within his graspas, say, Cologne is within the grasp of a French invasion of NorthGermany. This feature has had the most important consequences upon thewhole of French history. It was particularly the determining point of1870. To meet the handicap, the French of our generation have combined twopolicies. First, they have fortified the whole region of Paris so thoroughlythat it has sometimes been called "a fortified province;" an area ofnearly thirty miles across at its narrowest, and of something likefrom seven to eight hundred square miles, is comprised within thisplan. The weakness of this in the face of modern fire will again be dealtwith when we come to the conflicting theories upon war establishedduring the long peace. Secondly, the French established a policy whereby, if Paris weremenaced in a future campaign, the Government should abandon thatcentral point, and, in spite of the grave inconvenience proceedingfrom the way in which all material communications centred upon thecapital and all established offices were grouped there, would withdrawthe whole central system of government to Bordeaux, and leave Paris todefend itself, precisely as though it were of no more importance thanany other fortified point. They would recognize the strategic valuesof the district; they would deliberately sacrifice its political andsentimental value. They would never again run the risk of losing acampaign because one particular area of the national soil happened tobe occupied. The plans of their armies and the instructions of theirStaff particularly warned commanders against disturbing any defensivescheme by too great an anxiety to save Paris. If this were the disadvantage geographically of France, what was thatof Russia? Russia's geographical disadvantage was twofold. First, she had nooutlet to an open sea in Europe save through the arctic port ofArchangel. This port was naturally closed for nearly half the year, and how long it might be artificially kept partially open byice-breakers it remained for the war to prove. But even if it werekept open the whole year in this precarious fashion, it lay on thefarther side of hundreds of miles of waste and deserted land connectedonly with the active centre of Russia by one narrow-gauge line ofrailway with very little rolling stock. The great eastern port ofVladivostok was nearly as heavily handicapped, and its immensedistance from the scene of operations in the West, with which it wasonly connected by a line six thousand miles long, was anotherdrawback. Russia might, indeed, by the favour of neutrals or ofAllies, use warm water ports. If the Turks should remain neutral andpermit supply to reach her through the Dardanelles, the Black Seaports were open all the year round, and Port Arthur (nearly as far offas Vladivostok) was also open in the Far East. But the Baltic, in awar with Germany, was closed to her. Certain goods from outside couldreach her from Scandinavia, round by land along the north of theBaltic, but very slowly and at great expense. It so happened alsothat, as the war proceeded, this question of supply becameunexpectedly important, because all parties found the expenditure ofheavy artillery high-explosive ammunition far larger than had beencalculated for, and Russia was particularly weak therein and dependentupon the West. This disadvantage under which Russia lay was largelythe cause of her embarrassment, and of the prolongation of hostilitiesin the winter that followed the declaration of war. The fact that Russia was ill supplied with railways, and hardlysupplied at all with hard roads (in a climate where the thaw turnedher deep soil into a mass of mud) is political rather thangeographical, but it must be remembered in connection with thisdifficulty of supply. If these, then, were the various disadvantages which geographicalconditions had imposed upon the Allies, what were the correspondingadvantages? They were considerable, and may be thus tabulated:-- 1. The western Allies stood between their enemies and the ocean. Ifthey could maintain superiority at sea through the great size andefficiency of the British Fleet, and through its additional power whencombined with the French, they could at the least embarrass, andperhaps ultimately starve out the enemy in certain essential materialsof war. They could not reduce the enemy to famine, for with care histerritories, so long as they were not ravaged, would be justself-supporting. The nitrates for his explosives the enemy could alsocommand, and, in unlimited quantity, iron and coal. But the rawmaterial of textiles for his clothing, cotton for his explosives, copper for his shell, cartridge cases, and electrical instruments, antimony for the hardening of the lead necessary to his small-armammunition, to some extent petrol for his aeroplanes and hismotor-cars, and india-rubber for his tyres and other parts ofmachinery, he must obtain from abroad. That he would be able in partto obtain these through the good offices of neutrals was probable; butthe Allied fleets in the West would certainly closely watch the extentof neutral imports, and attempt, with however much difficulty and withhowever partial success, to prevent those neutrals acting as a merehighroad by which such goods could pass into Germany and Austria. Theywould hardly allow, especially in the later phases of the war, Italyand Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia, to act as open avenues forthe supply of the Germanic body. Though they would have to go warily, and would find it essential to remain at peace with the nations whosecommerce they thus hampered and in some sense controlled, the Alliesin the West could in some measure, greater or less, embarrass theenemy in these matters. Conversely, they could supply themselves freely with tropical andneutral goods, and even with munitions of war obtained from across theocean, from Africa and from America. So long as North-western France and the ports of Great Britain werefree from the enemy this partial blockade would endure, and thisfreedom of supply for France and Britain from overseas would alsoendure. 2. The Allies had further the geographical advantage of marinetransport for their troops--an important advantage to the French, whohad a recruiting ground in North Africa, and to the British, who had arecruiting ground in their dominions oversea, and, above all, anadvantage in that it permitted the constant reinforcement of thecontinental armies by increasing contingents arriving from theseislands. * * * * * Of geographical advantages attaching to the position of Russia onlyone can be discovered, and it consists in the immense extent and unityof the Russian Empire. This permitted operations upon a western frontfrom the Baltic to the Carpathians, or rather to the Roumanian border, which vast line could never be firmly held against them by the enemywhen once the Russians had trained and equipped a superior number ofmen. The German forces were sufficient, as events proved, long tomaintain a strict cordon upon the shorter front between the Swissfrontiers and the sea, but upon the other side of the great field, between the Baltic and the Carpathians, they could never hope toestablish one continued wall of resistance. (2) THE OPPOSING STRENGTHS. When nations go to war their probable fortunes, other things beingequal, are to be measured in numbers. Other things being equal, the numbers one party can bring against theother in men, coupled with the numbers of weapons, munitions, andother material, will decide the issue. But in European civilization other things are more or less equal. Civilian historians are fond of explaining military results in manyother ways, particularly in terms of moral values that will flatterthe reader. But a military history, however elementary, is compelledto recognize the truth that normally modern war in Europe has followedthe course of numbers. Among the very first, therefore, of the tasks set us in examining thegreat struggle is a general appreciation of the numbers that wereabout to meet in battle, and of their respective preparation inmaterial. More than the most general numbers--more than brief, roundstatements--I shall not attempt. I shall not do more than state uponsuch grounds as I can discover proportions in the terms of singleunits--as, to say that one nation stood to another in its immediatearmed men as eight to five, or as two to twenty. Neither shall I givepositive numbers in less than the large fractions of a million. But, even with such large outlines alone before one, the task isextraordinarily difficult. It will almost certainly be found, when full details are availableafter the war, that the most careful estimates have been grievouslyerroneous in some particular. Almost every statement of fact in thisdepartment can be reasonably challenged, and the evidence upon matterswhich in civilian life are amply recorded and easily ascertainable is, in this department, everywhere purposely confused or falsified. To the difficulty provided by the desire for concealment necessary inall military organization, one must add the difficulty presented bythe cross categories peculiar to this calculation. You have toconsider not only the distinction between active and reserve, but alsobetween men and munitions, between munitions available according toone theory of war, and munitions available according to another. Youhave to modify statical conclusions by dynamic considerations (thusyou have to modify the original numbers by the rate of wastage, andthe whole calculus varies progressively with the lapse of time as thewar proceeds). In spite of these difficulties, I believe it to be possible to putbefore the general reader a clear and simple table of the numbers aknowledge of which any judgment of the war involves, and to be fairlycertain that this table will, when full details are available, bediscovered not too inaccurate. We must begin by distinguishing between the two sets of numbers withwhich we have to deal--the numbers of men, and the amount of munitionswhich these men have to use. The third essential element, equipment, we need not separatelyconsider, because, when one says "men" in talking of military affairs, one only means equipped, trained, and organized men, for no others canbe usefully present in the field. Let us start, then, with some estimate of the number of men who areabout to take part in battle; let us take for our limits theconvenient limits of a year, and let us divide that space of timearbitrarily into three parts or periods. There was a first period in which the nations opposed brought into thefield the men available in the first few weeks for immediate action. It is not possible to set a precise limit, and to say, "This periodcovers the first six" or "the first eight weeks;" but we can sayroughly that, when we are speaking of this first period, we mean thetime during which men for whom the equipment was all ready, whoseprogress and munitioning had all been organized, were being as rapidlyas possible brought into play. Such an estimate is not equivalent toan estimate of the very first numbers that met in the shock of battle;those numbers were far smaller, and differed according to the rate ofmobilization and the intention of the various parties. The estimate isonly that of the total number which the various parties could, andtherefore did, bring into play before men not hitherto trained assoldiers, or trained but not believed to be required in the course ofthe campaign--according as that campaign had been variously foreseenby various governments--came in to swell the figures. The conclusion of this first period would come, of course, graduallyin the case of every combatant, and would come more rapidly in thecase of some than in the case of others. But we are fairly safe if wetake the general turning-point from the first period to the second tobe the month of October 1914. The second period had begun forsome--notably for Germany--with the first days of that month; it hadalready appeared for all, especially for England, before the beginningof November. The second period is marked for all the combatants by the bringinginto play of such forces as, for various reasons, the Government ofeach had once hoped would not be required. The German Empire mighthave marked them as not required, in the reasonable hope that victorywould be quickly assured. The British Government might, from a verydifferent standpoint, have believed them not to be required, becauseit regarded the work of its continental Allies as sufficient to gainthe common object, etc. But in the case of all, however various themotives, the particular mark of this second period is the straining toput into the field newly trained and equipped bodies which in thefirst period were, it was imagined, neither needed nor perhapsavailable. This second period merges very gradually into the third, or final, period, which is that of the last effort possible to the belligerents. There comes a moment before the end of the first year when, in thecase of most of the belligerents, every man who is available at allhas been equipped, trained, and put forward, and after which there isnothing left but the successive batches of yearly recruits growing upfrom boyhood to manhood. Although Britain is in a peculiar position, and Russia, through hertardiness in equipment, in a peculiar position of another kind, yetone may fairly say that the vague margin between the second period ofgrowth and the third period of finality appears roughly somewhereround the month of June. It will fall earlier with Germany, a gooddeal earlier with France; but from the middle of May at earliest tothe end of June at latest may be said to mark the entry of thenumerical factor into its third and final phase. Let us take these three periods one by one. The first period is by far the most important to our judgment of thecampaign; a misapprehension of it has warped most political statementsmade in this country, and most contemporary judgments of the war as awhole. It is impossible to get our view of the great Europeanstruggle--of its nature in the bulk--other than fantastically wrong, if we misapprehend the opening numbers with which it was waged. There are three ways of getting at those numbers. The first and worst way is the consulting of general statisticspublished before the war broke out. Thus we may see in almanacs theFrench army put down as a little over four million, the German at thesame amount, the Russian at about five million, and so forth. These figures have no relation to reality, because they omit a hundredmodifying considerations--such as the age of the reserves, the degreeof training of the reserves, the organization prepared for theenrolment of untrained men, etc. The only element in them which is ofreal value is the statistics--when we can obtain them--of men actuallypresent with the colours before mobilization, to which one may add, perhaps--or at any rate in the case of France and Germany--the numbersof the _active_ reserve immediately behind the conscript army inpeace. The second method, which is better, but imperfect, is that which hasparticularly appealed to technical writers. It consists in numbering_units_; in noting the headquarters and the tale of army corps and ofindependent divisions. The fault of this method is twofold. First, that only actualexperience can tell one whether units are really being maintainedduring peace at full strength; and secondly, that only actualexperience discovers how many new units can and will be created whenwar is joined. In other words, the fault of this method (necessarythough it is as an adjunct to all military calculations) lies in itsdivorce from the reality of numbers. At the end of the retreat from Moscow each army corps of the GrandArmy still preserved its name, each regiment its nominal identity. Andthe roll was called by Ney, for instance, before the Beresina, division by division and regiment by regiment, and even in theregiments company by company; but in most of these last there was noone to answer, and there is a story of one regiment for which onesurviving man answered with regularity until he also died. What fightsis numbers of living men--not headings; and if five army corps arepresent, each having lost two-fifths of its men, three full army corpsare a match for them. The third method is that of commonsense. We must deduce from theresults obtained, from the fronts covered, from the energy remainingafter known losses, from the reports of intelligence, from the avenuesof communication available, what least and what largest numbers can bepresent. We must correct such conclusions by our previous knowledge ofthe way in which each service regards its strength, which most dependsupon reserves, how each uses his depots and drafts, what machinery ithas for training the untrained and for equipping them. Thiscomplicated survey taken, we can arrive at general figures. [1] Using that method, and applying it to the present campaign, I think weshall get something like the following. _The Figures of the First Period, say to October 1-31, 1914. _ Germany put across the Rhine in the first period (without counting acertain small proportion of Hungarian cavalry and Austrian artillery)rather more than two and a quarter million men. She put into theEastern field first a quarter of a million, which rapidly grew to halfa million, and before the end of October to nearly a million; abalance of rather more than another million she used for filling gapsand for keeping her strength at the full, and also in particularcases (as in her violent attempt to break out through Flanders, orrather the beginning of that attempt) for the immediate reinforcementof a fighting line. Say that Germany put into the field altogetherfive million men in the first period, and you are saying too much. Saythat she put into the field altogether in the first period four and aquarter million men, and you are saying probably somewhat too little. France met the very first shock with about a million men, whichgradually grew in the fighting line to about a million and a half. Here the limit of the French force immediately upon the front willprobably be set. The numbers continued to swell long before the end ofthe first period and well on into the second, but they were kept inreserve. Counting the men drafted in to supply losses and the reserve, it is not unwise to put at about two and a half million men theultimate French figure, of which one and a half million formed, beforethe end of the first period, the immediate fighting force. Austria was ordered by the Germans to put into the field, as aninitial body to check any Russian advance and to confuse the beginningof Russian concentration, about a million men; which in the firstperiod very rapidly grew to two million, and probably before the endof the first period to about two million and a half. Russia put into the field during the first weeks of the war somemillion and a quarter, which grew during the first period (that is, before the coming of winter had created a very serious handicap, towhich allusion will presently be made) to perhaps two million and ahalf at the very most. I put that number as an outside limit. Servia, of men actually present and able to fight, we may set down ata quarter of a million; and Belgium, if we like, at one hundredthousand--though the Belgian service being still in a state oftransition, and the degree of training very varied within it, thatminor point is disputable. Indeed it is better, in taking a generalsurvey, to consider only the five Great Powers concerned. Of these the fifth, Great Britain, though destined to exercise by seapower and by her recruiting field a very great ultimate effect uponthe war, could only provide, in this first period upon the Continent, an average of one hundred thousand men. To begin with, someseventy-five thousand, dwindling through losses to little more thanfifty thousand, replenished and increased to about one hundred andtwenty-five thousand, and approaching, as the end of the first periodwas reached, one hundred and fifty thousand men actually present uponthe front. We can now set down these figures in the shape of simple units, andsee how the numerical chances stood at the opening of the campaign. The enemy sets out with =32= men, of whom he bids =10= men against theRussians, and sends =22= against the French. The Russians meet the=10= men with about =12=, and the French meet the =22= with about=10=; but as they have not the whole =22= to meet in the first shock, they are struck rather in the proportion of =10= to =16= or =17=, while the presence of the British contingent makes them rather morethan =10½=. But these initial figures rapidly change with the growthof the armies, and before the first period is over the Germans have=22= in the West against =15= French and =1= British, making =16=;while in the East the Russian =12= has grown to, say, =24=, but theAustro-Germans in the East, against those =24=, have grown to be quite=32=. And there is the numerical situation of the first periodclearly, and I think accurately, put, _supposing the wastage to beequal in proportion throughout all the armies_. The importance ofappreciating these figures is that they permit us to understand whythe enemy was morally certain of winning, quite apart from his rightjudgment on certain disputed theories of war (to which I shall turn ina moment), and quite apart from his heavy secret munitioning, whichwas of such effect in the earlier part of the campaign. He was readywith forces which he knew would be overwhelming, and how superior hewas thus numerically in that first period can best be appreciated, Ithink, by a glance at the diagram on the next page. [Illustration: Sketch 14. ] It is no wonder that he made certain of a decisive success in theWest, and of the indefinite holding up or pushing back of the Russianforces in the East. It is no wonder that he confidently expected acomplete victory before the winter, and the signing of peace beforethe end of the year. To that end all his munitioning, and even thedetails of his tactics, were directed. _The Figures of the Second Period, say to April 15-June 1, 1915. _ The second period saw in the West, and, in the enemy's case, a verygreat change proceeding by a number of minute steps, but fairly rapidin character. The French numbers could not grow very rapidly, because the French hadarmed every available man. They could bring in a certain number ofvolunteers; but neither was it useful to equip the most of the oldermen, nor could they be spared from those duties behind the front linewhich the much larger population of the enemy entrusted to men who, for the most part, had received no regular training. The French did, however, in this second period, gradually grow to some two and a halfmillion men, behind which, ready to come in for the final period, wereabout a third of a million young recruits. Great Britain discovered a prodigious effort. She had already, comparatively early in the second period, put across the sea nearlyhalf a million men, and drafts were perpetually arriving as the secondperiod came to a close; while behind the army actually upon theContinent very large bodies--probably another million innumber--hastily trained indeed, and presented with a grave problem inthe matter of officering, but of excellent material and _moral_, wereready to appear, before the end of the second period or at its close, the moment their equipment should be furnished. Counting the Britisheffort and the French together, one may say that, without regard towastage, the Allies in the West grew in the second period from theoriginal 16 to over 30, and might grow even before the second periodwas over to 35 or even more. On the enemy's side (neglecting wastage for the moment) there were thesimplest elements of growth. Each Power had docketed every untrainedman, knew his medical condition, where to find him, where and how totrain him. The German Empire had during peace taken about one-half ofits young men for soldiers. It had in pure theory five millionuntrained men in the reserve, excluding the sick, and those notphysically efficient for service. In practice, however, a very large proportion of men, even of theefficients, must be kept behind for civilian work; and in anindustrial country such as Germany, mainly urban in population, thisproportion is particularly large. We are safe in saying that theGerman army would not be reinforced during the second period by morethan two and a half million men. These were trained in batches of some800, 000 each; the equipment had long been ready for them, and theyappeared mainly as drafts for filling gaps, but partly as newformations in groups--the first going in or before November, thesecond in or before February. A third and last group was expected tohave finished this rather elementary training somewhere about the endof April, so that May would complete the second period in the Germanforces. Austria-Hungary, by an easily appreciable paradox, possessed, thoughbut 80 per cent. Of the Germans in population, a larger availableuntrained reserve. This was because that empire trained a smallerproportion of its population by far than did the Germans. It isprobable that Austria-Hungary was able to train and put forward duringthe second period some three million men. It is a great error, into which most critics have fallen, tounderestimate or to neglect the Austro-Hungarian factor in the enemy'salliance. Without thus nearly doubling her numbers, Germany could nothave fought France and Russia at all, and a very striking feature ofall the earlier weeks of 1915 was the presence in the Carpathians ofincreasing Austro-Hungarian numbers, which checked for more than threemonths all the Russian efforts upon that front. Say that Austria-Hungary nearly doubled her effectives (apart fromwastage) in this second period, and you will not be far wrong. Russia, which upon paper could almost indefinitely increase during thesecond period her numbers in the field, suffered with the advent ofwinter an unexpected blow. Her equipment, and in particular hermunitioning (that is, her provision of missiles, and in especial ofheavy shell), must in the main come from abroad. Now the Germancommand of the Baltic created a complete blockade on the easternfrontier of Russia, save upon the short Roumanian frontier; and theentry of Turkey into the campaign on the side of the enemy, whichmarked the second period, completed that blockade upon the south, andshut upon Russia the gate of the Dardanelles. The port of Archangel inthe north was ice-bound, or with great difficulty kept partially openby ice-breakers, and was in any case only connected with Russia by onenarrow-gauge and lengthy line; while the only remaining port ofVladivostok was six thousand miles away, and closed also during a partof the winter. In this situation it was impossible for the great reserves of menwhich Russia counted on to be put into the field, and the Russiansremained throughout the whole of this second period but littlestronger than they had been at the end of the first. If we set themdown at perhaps somewhat over three millions (excluding wastage)towards the end of this second period, we shall be near to a justestimate. We can now sum up and say that, _apart from wastage_, the forcesarrayed against each other after this full development should havebeen about 120 men for the central powers of the enemy--35 (andperhaps ultimately 40) men against them upon the West, and, untilsufficient Russian equipment could at least be found, only some 30 menagainst them upon the East. Luckily such figures are wholly changed by the enormous rate of theenemy's wastage. The Russians had lost men almost as rapidly as theenemy, but the Russian losses could be and were made good. Thehandicap of the blockade under which Russia suffered permitted her tomaintain only a certain number at the front, but she could continuallydraft in support of those numbers; and though she lost in the firstseven months of the war quite four hundred thousand in prisoners, andperhaps three-quarters of a million in other casualties, her strengthof somewhat over three millions was maintained at the close of thefirst period. In the same way drafts had further maintained the British numbers. TheFrench had lost not more than one-fifth of a million in prisoners, andperhaps a third of a million or a little more in killed andpermanently disabled--that is, unable to return to the fighting line. In the case of both the French and the British sanitary conditionswere excellent. You have, then, quite 35 for your number in the West, and quite 33 foryour number in the East of the Allied forces at the end of the winter;but of your enemy forces you may safely deduct 45-50 might be a truerestimate; and it is remarkable that those who have watched the mattercarefully at the front are inclined to set the total enemy losseshigher than do the critics working at home. But call it only 45 (ofwhich 5 are prisoners), and you have against the 68 Allies in East andWest no more at the end of this second period than 75 of the enemy. The following diagram illustrates in graphic form the change that sixmonths have produced. [Illustration: Sketch 15. ] In other words, at the end of the winter and with the beginning of thespring, although the enemy still has a numerical preponderance, it isno longer the overwhelming thing it was when the war began, and thatchange in numbers explains the whole change in the campaign. The enemy was certain of winning mainly because he was fighting morethan equal in the East, and at first nearly two to one, later quitefour to three, in the West. Those are the conditions of the latesummer of 1914. 1915, before it was a third over, had seen the numbersnearly equalized. With the summer of 1915 we might hope to see thenumbers at last reversed, and, after so many perilous months, a total(not local) numerical majority at last appearing upon the side of theAllies. If ever this condition shall arrive before the enemy canaccomplish a decisive result in either field the tide will haveturned. The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future. Allwe can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerablefield of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase tothe French, it does offer another five units at least, and possiblyanother six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if theblockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather, coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel, permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase innumber--certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the unitswe were dealing with in the figures given above. So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates thewhole campaign. When we turn from this to the second factor--that of munitions--wediscover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but whichfollows very much the same line. The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an evengreater superiority in munitioning than in men. This superiority wasdue to two distinct causes. In the first place, as we shall see in afew pages, his theory upon a number of military details was wellfounded; in the second place, _he made war at his own chosen moment, after three years of determined and largely secret preparation_. As to the first point:-- We may take as a particular example of these theories of war theenemies' reliance upon heavy artillery--and in particular upon thepower of the modern high explosive and the big howitzer--to destroypermanent fortification rapidly, and to have an effect in the field, particularly in the preparation of an assault, which the militarytheories of the Allies had wrongly underestimated. It is but oneexample out of many. It must serve for the rest, and it will be dealtwith more fully in the next section. The Germans to some extent, andmuch more the Austrians, prepared an immensely greater provision ofheavy ammunition than their opponents, and entered the field withlarge pieces of a calibre and in number quite beyond anything thattheir opponents had at the outset of the campaign. As to the second point:-- No peaceful nations, no nations not designing a war at their own hour, lock up armament which may be rendered obsolete, or, in equipment moreextensive than the reasonable chances of a campaign may demand, thepublic resources which it can use on what it regards as more usefulthings. Such nations, to use a just metaphor, "insure" against war atwhat they think a reasonable rate. But if some one Government inEurope is anarchic in its morals, and proposes, while professingpeace, to declare war at an hour and a day chosen by itself, it willobviously have an overwhelming advantage in this respect. The energyand the money which it devotes to the single object of preparationcannot possibly be wasted; and, if its sudden aggression is not fixedtoo far ahead, will not run the risk of being sunk in obsoleteweapons. Now it is clearly demonstrable from the coincidence of dates, from theexact time required for a special effort of this kind, and from therate at which munitions and equipment were accumulated, that theGovernment at Berlin came to a decision in the month of July 1911 toforce war upon Russia and upon France immediately after the harvest of1914; and of a score of indications which all converge upon thesedates, not one fails to strike them exactly by more than a few weeksin the matter of preparation, by more than a few days in the date atwhich war was declared. Under those circumstances, Berlin with her ally at Vienna had theimmense numerical advantage over the French and the Russians when warwas suddenly forced upon those countries on the 31st of July lastyear. But, as in the case of men, the advantage would only be overwhelmingduring the first period. The very fact that the war had to be wonquickly involved an immense expenditure of heavy ammunition in theearlier part of it, and this expenditure, if it were not successful, would be a waste. It takes about five months to produce a heavy piece, and the rate ofproduction of heavy ammunition, though slow, is measurable. At themoment of writing this, towards the close of the second period, thebalance is not yet redressed, but it is in a fair way to be redressed. The imperfect and too tardy blockade to which the enemy is somewhattimidly subjected is a factor in aid of this; and we may be fairlyconfident that, if a third period is reached before the enemy shallhave the advantage of a decision, there will be a preponderance ofmunitioning upon the Allied side in the West and the East which willbe, if anything, of superior importance to the approachingpreponderance in numbers. Having thus briefly surveyed the opposing strength of eithercombatant, checked and measured as it varied with the progress of thewar, we will turn to the _moral_ opposition of military theorybetween the one party and the other, and show how here again that, _save in the most important matter of all, grand strategy_, the enemywas on the highroad to the victory which he confidently and, for thatmatter, reasonably expected. (3) THE CONFLICTING THEORIES OF WAR. The long peace which the most civilized parts of Europe had enjoyedfor now a generation left more and more uncertain the value oftheories upon the conduct of war, which theories had for the most partdeveloped as mere hypotheses untested by experience during thatconsiderable period. The South African and the Manchurian war hadindeed proved certain theories sound and others unsound, so far astheir experience went; but they were fought under conditions verydifferent from those of an European campaign, and the progress ofmaterial science was so rapid in the years just preceding the greatEuropean conflict that the mass of debated theories still remaineduntried at its outbreak. The war in its first six months thoroughly tested these theories, andproved, for the greater part of them, which were sound in practice andwhich unsound. I will tabulate them here, and beg the specialattention of the reader, because upon the accuracy of these forecaststhe first fortunes of the war depended. I. A German theory maintained that, with the organization of and theparticular type of discipline in the German service, attacks could bedelivered in much closer formation than either the French or theEnglish believed to be possible. The point is this: After a certain proportion of losses inflictedwithin a certain limit of time, troops break or are brought to astandstill. That was the universal experience of all past war. Whenthe troops that are attacking break or are brought to a standstill, the attack fails. But what you cannot determine until you test thematter in actual war is what numbers of losses in what time will thusdestroy an offensive movement. You cannot determine it, because thechief element in the calculation is the state of the soldier's mind, and that is not a measurable thing. One had only the lessons of thepast to help one. The advantages of attacking in close formation are threefold. (_a_) You launch your attack with the least possible delay. It isevident that spreading troops out from the column to the line takestime, and that the more extended your line the more time you consumebefore you can strike. [Illustration: Sketch 16. ] If I have here a hundred units advancing in a column towards the placewhere they are to attack (and to advance in column is necessary, because a broad line cannot long keep together), then it is evidentthat if I launched them to the attack thus:-- [Illustration: Sketch 17. ] packed close together, I get them into that formation much morequickly than if, before attacking, I have to spread them out thus:-- [Illustration: Sketch 18. ] (_b_) The blow which I deliver has also evidently more weight upon itat a given point. If I am attacking a hundred yards of front with ahundred units of man and missile power, I shall do that front moreharm in a given time than if I am attacking with only fifty suchunits. (_c_) In particular circumstances, where troops _have_ to advance on anarrow front, as in carrying a bridge or causeway or a street or anyother kind of defile, my troops, if they can stand close formation andthe corresponding punishment it entails, will be more likely tosucceed than troops not used to or not able to bear such closeformation. Now, such conditions are very numerous in war. Troops areoften compelled, if they are to succeed, to rush narrow gaps of thiskind, and their ability to do so is a great element in tacticalsuccess. I have here used the phrase "if they can stand close formation and thecorresponding punishment it entails, " and that is the whole point. There are circumstances--perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous ofall the various circumstances in war--in which close formation, if itcan be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evidentthat the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier thantheir losses in extended order. A group is a better target than anumber of dispersed, scattered points. Now, the Germans maintained in this connection not only, as I havesaid, that they could get their men to stand the punishment involvedin close formation, but also that:-- (_a_) The great rapidity of such attacks would make the _total_ and_final_ wastage less than was expected, and further:-- (_b_) That the heavy wastage, such as it was, was worth while, becauseit would lead to very rapid strategical decision as well as tactical. In other words, because once you had got your men to stand these heavy_local_ losses and to suffer heavy _initial_ wastage, you would winyour campaign in a short time, so that the high-rate wastage not beingprolonged need not be feared. Well, in the matter of this theory, the war conclusively proved thefollowing points:-- (_a_) The Germans were right and the Allies were wrong with regard tothe mere possibility of using close formations. The German temper, coupled with the type of discipline in the modern German service, didprove capable of compelling men to stand losses out of all proportionto what the Allies expected they could stand, and yet to continue toadvance neither broken nor brought to a standstill. But-- (_b_) The war also proved that, upon the whole, and taking theoperations in their entirety, such formations were an error. In caseafter case, a swarm of Germans advancing against inferior numbers gothome after a third, a half, or even more than a half of their men hadfallen in the first few minutes of the rush. But in many, many morecases this tactical experiment failed. Those who can speak aseye-witnesses tell us that, though the occasions on which such attacksactually broke were much rarer than was expected before the war began, yet the occasions on which the attack was thrown into hopelessconfusion, and in which the few members of it that got home had lostall power to do harm to the defenders, were so numerous that theexperiment must be regarded as, upon the whole, a failure. It may beone that no troops but Germans could employ. It is certainly not onewhich any troops, after the experience of this war, will copy. (_c_) Further, the war proved even more conclusively that the wastagewas not worth while. The immense expense in men only succeeded wherethere was an overwhelming superiority in number. The strategicalresult was not arrived at quickly (as the Germans had expected)through this tactical method, and after six months of war, the enemyhad thrown away more than twice and nearly three times as many men ashe need have sacrificed had he judged sanely the length of time overwhich operations might last. II. Another German theory had maintained that modern high explosivesfired from howitzers and the accuracy of their aim controlled byaircraft would rapidly and promptly dominate permanent fortification. This theory requires explanation. Its partial success in practice wasthe most startling discovery and the most unpleasant one to the Alliesof the early part of the war. In the old days, say up to ten years ago or less, permanentfortification mounting heavy guns was impregnable to direct assault ifit were properly held and properly munitioned. It could hold out formonths. Its heavy guns had a range superior to any movable guns thatcould be brought against it--indeed, so very heavily superior thatmovable guns, even if they were howitzers, would be smashed or theircrews destroyed long before the fortress was seriously damaged bythem. A howitzer is but a form of mortar, and all such pieces are designedto lob a projectile instead of throwing it. The advantage of usingthese instruments when you are besieging permanent works is that youcan hide them behind an obstacle, such as a hill, and that the heavygun in the fortress cannot get its shell on to them because that shellhas a flatter trajectory. The disadvantage is that the howitzer has avery much shorter range than the gun size for size. [Illustration: Sketch 19. ] Here is a diagram showing how necessarily true this is. The howitzer, lobbing its shell with a comparatively small charge, has the advantageof being able to hide behind a steep bit of ground, but on such atrajectory the range is short. The gun in the fortress does not lobits shell, but throws it. The course of the gun shell is much morestraight. It therefore can only hit the howitzer and its crewindirectly by exploding its shell just above them. Until recently, thegun was master of the howitzer for three reasons:-- First, because the largest howitzers capable of movement and of beingbrought up against any fortress and shifted from one place ofconcealment to another were so small that their range wasinsignificant. Therefore the circumference on which they could be usedwas also a small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequentlyreduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spottedfrom the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in thefortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them atleast. It is evident that the circumference αβγ offers far morechances of hiding than the circumference ABC, but a still morepowerful factor in favour of the new big howitzer is the practical onethat at very great ranges in our climate the chances of spotting aparticular place are extremely small. Secondly, because the explosivesused, even when they landed and during the short time that thehowitzer remained undiscovered and unheard, were not sufficientlypowerful nor, with the small howitzers then in existence, sufficientlylarge in amount in each shell to destroy permanent fortification. Thirdly, because the effect of the aim is always doubtful. You arefiring at something well above yourself, and you could not tell veryexactly where your howitzer shell had fallen. [Illustration: Sketch 20. ] What has modified all this in the last few years is-- First, the successful bringing into the field of very large howitzers, which, though they do lob their shells, lob them over a very greatdistance. The Austrians have produced howitzers of from 11 to 12inches in calibre, which, huge as they are, can be moved about in thefield and fired from any fairly steady ground; and the Germans haveprobably produced (though I cannot find actual proof that they haveused them with effect) howitzers of more than 16 inches calibre, to bemoved, presumably, only upon rails. But 11-inch was quite enough tochange all the old conditions. It must be remembered that a gun variesas the _cube_ of its calibre. A 12-inch piece is not twice as powerfulas a 6-inch. It is _eight times_ as powerful. The howitzer could nowfire from an immense distance. The circumference on which it workedwas very much larger; its opportunities for finding suitable steepcover far greater. Its opportunities for moving, if it was endangeredby being spotted, were also far greater; and the chances of the gun inthe fortress knocking it out were enormously diminished. Secondly, the high explosives of recent years, coupled with the vastsize of this new mobile howitzer shell, is capable, when the howitzershell strikes modern fortification, of doing grievous damage which, repeated over several days, turns the fort into a mass of ruins. Thirdly, the difficulty of accurate aiming over such distances and oflocating your hits so that they destroy the comparative small area ofthe fort is got over by the use of aircraft, which fly above the fort, note the hits, and signal the results. Now, the Germans maintained that under these quite recently modifiedconditions not even the best handled and heaviest gunned permanentfort could hold out more than a few days. The French believed that itcould, and they trusted in the stopping power not only of individualworks (such as the fortress of Manonvilliers on the frontier), butmore especially of great rings of forts, such as surround Liége, Namur, Verdun, etc. , and enclose an area within the security of whichlarge bodies of troops can be held ready, armies which no one woulddare to leave behind them without having first reduced them tosurrender. The very first days of the war proved that the German theory was rightand the French wrong. The French theory, upon which such enormousfunds had been expended, had been perfectly right until within quiterecent years the conditions had changed. Port Arthur, for instance, only ten years ago, could hold out for months and months. In this warno individual fort has held out for more than eleven days. It might be imagined under such circumstances that the very existenceof fortresses was doomed; yet we note that Verdun continues to make abig bulge in the German line four months after the first shots fell onits forts, and that the Germans are actively restoring the greatBelgian rings they have captured at Liége, Antwerp, and Namur. Why is this? It is because another German theory has proved right inpractice. III. This German theory which has proved right in practice is what maybe called "the mobile defence of a fortress. " It proposes no longer todefend upon expensive permanent works precisely located upon the map, but upon a number of improvised batteries in which heavy guns can movesomewhat behind field-works concealed as much as possible, numerousand constructed rapidly under the conditions of the campaign. Suchworks dotted round the area you desire to defend are quite a differentthing to reduce from isolated, restricted, permanent forts. In thefirst place, the enemy does not know where they are; in the secondplace, you can make new ones at short notice; in the third place, if ahowitzer does spot your heavy gun, you can move it or its neighboursto a new position; in the fourth place, the circumference you aredefending is much larger, and the corresponding area that thebesiegers have to search with their fire more extended. Thus, in theold forts round Verdun, about a dozen permanent works absolutely fixedand ascertainable upon the map, and covering altogether but a fewacres, constituted the defence of the town. Before September was outthe heavy guns had been moved to trenches far advanced into the fieldto the north and east, temporary rails had been laid down to permittheir lateral movement--that is, to let them shift from a place wherethey had perhaps been spotted to a new place, under cover of darkness, and the sectors thus thrown out in front of the old fortifications inthis improvised mobile fashion were at least three times as long asthe line made by the ring of old forts, while the area that had to besearched was perhaps a hundred times as large. For in the place of thenarrowly restricted permanent fort, with, say, ten heavy guns, you hadthose same ten heavy guns dotted here and there in trenches rapidlyestablished in half a dozen separate, unknown, and concealed spots, along perhaps a mile of wooded hill, and free to operate when movedover perhaps double that front. IV. _In Grand Strategy a German general theory of strategics wasopposed to a French general theory of strategics, and upon which ofthe two should prove right depended, much more than on any of theprevious points, the ultimate issue of the campaign. _ This is far the most important point for the reader's consideration. It may be said with justice that no one can understand this war whohas not grasped the conflict between these two fundamental conceptionsof armed bodies in action, and the manner in which (by the narrowestand most fortunate margin!) events in the first phase of the warjustified the French as against the German school. I must therefore beg the reader's leave to go somewhat thoroughly intothe matter, for it is the foundation of all that will follow when wecome to the narration of events and the story of the Western battlewhich began in the retreat from the Sambre and ended in the Battle ofthe Marne. The first postulate in all military problems is that, other thingsbeing equal, numbers are the decisive factor in war. This does notmean that absolute superiority of numbers decides a campaignnecessarily in favour of the superior power. What it means is that _inany particular field_, if armament and discipline are more or lessequal on the two sides, the one that has been able to mass the greaternumber _in that field_ will have the victory. He will disperse orcapture his enemy, or at the least he will pin him and take away his_initiative_--of which word "initiative" more later. Now, this fieldin which one party has the superior numbers can only be a portion ofthe whole area of operations. But if it is what is called the decisiveportion, then he who has superior numbers _in the decisive time andplace_ will win not only there but everywhere. His local victoryinvolves consequent success along the whole of his line. For instance, supposing five men are acting against three. Five ismore than three; and if the forces bear upon each other equally, thefive will defeat the three. But if the five are so badly handled thatthey get arranged in groups of two, two, and one, and if the three areso well handled that they strike swiftly at the first isolated two anddefeat them, thus bringing up the next isolated two, who are in theirturn defeated, the three will, at the end of the struggle, have onlyone to deal with, and the five will have been beaten by the threebecause, although five is larger than three, yet _in the decisive timeand place_ the three never have more than two against them. It may bebroadly laid down that the whole art of strategics consists for theman with superior numbers in bringing all his numbers to bear, and forthe man with inferior numbers in attempting by his cunning to compelhis larger opponent to fight in separated portions, and to be defeatedin detail. As in every art, the developments of these elementary first principlesbecome, with variations of time and place, indefinitely numerous andvarious. Upon their variety depends all the interest of militaryhistory. And there is one method in particular whereby the lessernumber may hope to pin and destroy the power of the greater upon whichthe French tradition relied, and the value of which modern Germancriticism refused. Before going into that, however, we must appreciate the mentalqualities which led to the acceptance of the theory upon the one sideand its denial upon the other. The fundamental contrast between the modern German military temper andthe age-long traditions of the French service consists in this: Thatthe German theory is based upon a presumption of superiority, moral, material, and numerical. The theory of the French--as their nationaltemperament and their Roman tradition compel them--is based upon an_envisagement_ of inferiority: moral, material, and numerical. There pervades the whole of the modern German strategic school thisfeeling: "I shall win if I act and feel as though I was bound to win. "There pervades the whole French school this sentiment: "I have abetter chance of winning if I am always chiefly considering how Ishould act if I found myself inferior in numbers, in material, andeven in moral at any phase in the struggle, especially at its origins, but even also towards its close. " This contrast appears in everything, from tactical details to thelargest strategical conception, and from things so vague and generalas the tone of military writings, to things so particular as theinstruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. The German soldieris taught--or was--that victory was inevitable, and would be as swiftas it would be triumphant: the French soldier was taught that he hadbefore him a terrible and doubtful ordeal, one that would be long, onein which he ran a fearful risk of defeat, and one in which he might, even if victorious, have to wear down his enemy by the exercise of amost burdensome tenacity. In the practice of the field, the contrastappeared in the French use of a great reserve, and the German contemptfor such a precaution: in the elaborate thinking out of the use of areserve, which is the core of French military thought; in thesuperficial treatment of the same, which is perhaps the chief defectof Germany. It would be of no purpose to debate here which of these two mentalattitudes, with all their consequences, is either morally the betteror in practice the more successful. The French and Latin traditionseems to the German pusillanimous, and connected with that decadencewhich he perceives in every expression of civilization from Athens toParis. The modern German conception seems to the French theatrical, divorced from reality, and hence fundamentally weak. Either critic maybe right or either wrong. Our interest is to follow the particularschemes developing from that tone of mind. We shall see how, in thefirst phases of the war, the German conception strikingly justifieditself for more than ten days; how, after a fortnight, it wasembarrassed by its opponent; and how at the end of a month the Germaninitiative was lost under the success--only barely achieved afterdreadful risk--of the French plan. That plan, inherited from the strategy of Napoleon, and designed inparticular to achieve the success of a smaller against a largernumber, may be most accurately defined as _the open strategic square_, and its leading principle is "the method of detached reserves. " This strategic conception, which I shall now describe, and which (in adiagram it is put far too simply) underlies the whole of thecomplicated movements whereby the French staved off disaster in thefirst weeks of the war, is one whose whole object it is to permit theinferior number to bring up a _locally_ superior weight against a_generally_ superior enemy in the decisive time and at the decisiveplace. Let us suppose that a general commanding _twelve_ large units--say, twelve army corps--knows that he is in danger of being attacked by anenemy commanding no less than _sixteen_ similar units. Let us call the forces of the first or weaker general "White, " andthose of the second or stronger general "Black. " It is manifest that if White were merely to deploy his line and awaitthe advance of Black thus, [Illustration: Sketch 21. ] he would be outflanked and beaten; or, in the alternative, Black mightmass men against White's centre and pierce it, for Black is vastlysuperior to White in numbers. White, therefore, must adopt somespecial disposition in order to avoid immediate defeat. Of such special dispositions one among many is the French OpenStrategic Square. This disposition is as follows:-- White arranges his twelve units into four quarters of three each, andplaces one quarter at each corner of a square thus:-- [Illustration: Sketch 22. ] We will give them titles, and call them A, B, C, and D. If, as is most generally the case in a defensive campaign at itsopening, White cannot be certain from which exact direction the mainblow is coming, he may yet know that it is coming from some onegeneral direction, from one sector of the compass at least, and hearranges his square to face towards that sector. For instance, in the above diagram, he may not know whether the blowis coming from the precise direction 1, or 2, or 3, but he knows thatit is coming somewhere within the sector XY. Then he will draw up his square so that its various bodies all facetowards the average direction from which the blow may come. The SIZE of his square--which is of great importance to theresult--he makes as restricted as possible, _subject to two primeconditions_. These conditions are:-- First, that there shall be room for the troops composing each cornerto be deployed--that is, spread out for fighting. Secondly, that thereshall be room between any two corners (A and C, for instance) for athird corner (D, for instance) to move in between them and spread outfor fighting in support of them. He makes his square as close andrestricted as possible, because his success depends--as will be seenin a moment--upon the rapidity with which any one corner can come upin support of the others. But he leaves enough room for the fullnumbers to spread out for fighting, because otherwise he loses inefficiency; and he leaves room enough between any two squares for athird one to come in, because the whole point of the formation is theaid each corner can bring to the others. In this posture he awaits the enemy. That enemy will necessarily come on in a lengthy line, lengthy inproportion to the number of his units. For it is essential to thegeneral commanding _superior_ numbers to make the _whole_ of thesuperior numbers tell, and this can only be done if they march alongparallel roads, and these roads are sufficiently wide apart for thevarious columns to have plenty of room to deploy--that is, to spreadout into a fighting line--when the shock comes. [Illustration: Sketch 23. ] This extended line of Black marching thus against White strikes Whitefirst upon some one corner of his square. Suppose that corner to becorner A. Then the position when contact is established and the firstserious fighting begins is what you will observe in the above diagram. A is the corner (now spread out for fighting) which gets the firstshock. Note you (for this is the crucial point of the whole business) thatupon the exposed corner A will fall a very dangerous task indeed. Awill certainly be attacked by forces superior to itself. Normallyforces more than half as large again as A will be near enough to A toconcentrate upon him in the first shock. The odds will be at least asmuch as five to three, the Black units, 4, 5, and 6, will be right onA, and 3 and 7 will be near enough to come in as well in the first dayor two of the combat, while possibly 2 may have a look in as well. A, thus tackled, has become what may be called "the _operative corner_of the square. " It is his task "to retreat and hold the enemy" whileB, C, and D, "the masses of manoeuvre, " swing up. But under thatsimple phrase "operative corner" is hidden all the awful business of afighting retreat: it means leaving your wounded behind you, marchingnight and day, with your men under the impression of defeat; leavingyour disabled guns behind you, keeping up liaison between all yourhurrying, retreating units, with a vast force pressing forward to yourdestruction. A's entire force is deliberately imperilled in order toachieve the success of the plan as a whole, and upon A's tenacity, aswill be seen in what follows, the success of that plan entirelydepends. [Illustration: Sketch 24. ] Well, while A is thus retreating--say, from his old position at A_1 onthe foregoing diagram to such a position as A_2, with Black swarmingup to crush him--the other corners of the square, B, C, and D, receivethe order to "swing"--that is, to go forward inclining to the left orthe right according to the command given. Mark clearly that, until the order is given, the general commandingBlack cannot possibly tell whether the "swing" will be directed tothe left or to the right. Either B will close up against A, C spreadout farther to the left, and D come in between A and C (which is a"swing" to the left) as in Sketch 25, or C will close up against A, Bwill spread well out to the right, and D come up between A and B, asin Sketch 26 (which is a "swing" to the right). [Illustration: Sketch 25. ] Until the "swing" actually begins, Black, the enemy, cannot possiblytell whether it is his left-hand units (1 to 8) or his right-handunits (9 to 16) which will be affected. One of the two ends of hisline will have to meet White's concentrated effort; the other will beleft out in the cold. Black cannot make dispositions on the onehypothesis or on the other. Whichever he chose, White would, ofcourse, swing the other way and disconcert him. Black, therefore, has to keep his line even until he knows which wayWhite is going to swing. [Illustration: Sketch 26. ] Let us suppose that White swings to the left. Mark what follows. The distances which White's units have got to goare comparatively small. B will be up at A's side, and so will D in ashort time after the swing is over, and when the swing is completed, the position is after this fashion. Black's numbers, 1 to 9 inclusive, find themselves tackled by all Black's twelve. There is a superiorityof number against Black on his right, White's left, and the remainingpart of Black's line (10 to 16 inclusive), is out in the cold. If it were a tactical problem, and all this were taking place in asmall field, Black's left wing, 10-16, would, of course, come up atonce and redress the balance. But being a strategical problem, andinvolving very large numbers and very great distances, Black's leftwing, 10-16, can do nothing of the kind. For Black's left wing, 10-16, _cannot possibly get up in time_. Long before it has arrived on thescene, White's 12 will have broken Black's 9 along Black's right wing. [Illustration: Sketch 27. ] There are three elements which impose this delay upon Black's leftwing. First, to come round in aid of the right wing means the marchingforward of one unit after another, so that each shall overlap thelast, and so allow the whole lot to come up freely. This means thatthe last unit will have to go forward six places before turning, andthat means several days' marching. For with very large bodies, andwith a matter of 100 miles to come up, all in one column, it would bean endless business (Sketch 28). [Illustration: Sketch 28. ] Next you have the delay caused by the _conversion of direction_through a whole right angle. That cause of delay is serious. For whenyou are dealing with very large bodies of men, such as half a dozenarmy corps, to change suddenly from the direction S (see Sketch 29)for which your Staff work was planned, and to break off at a moment'snotice in direction E, while you are on the march towards S, isimpossible. You have to think out a whole new set of dispositions, and to re-order all your great body of men. White was under no suchcompulsion, for though he had to swing, the swing faced the samegeneral direction as his original dispositions. And the size of theunits and the distances to be traversed--the fact that the problem isstrategical and not tactical--is the essence of the whole thing. If, for instance, you have (as in Sketch 30) half a dozen, not army corps, but mere battalions of 1, 000 men, deployed over half a dozen miles ofground, AB, and advancing in the direction SS, and they are suddenlysent for in the direction E, it is simple enough. You form your 6, 000men into column; in a few hours' delay they go off in the directionE, and when they get to the place where they are wanted, the columncan spread out quickly again on the front CD, and soon begin to takepart in the action. But when you are dealing with half a dozen armycorps--240, 000 men--it is quite another matter. The turning of any oneof these great bodies through a whole right angle is a lengthybusiness. You cannot put a quarter of a million men into onecolumn--they would take ages to deploy--so you must, as we have seen, make each unit of them overlap the next before the turn can begin. [Illustration: Sketch 29. ] [Illustration: Sketch 30. ] Nor is that all the delay involved. It would never do for these sixseparate corps to come up in driblets and get defeated in detail; 10, 11, and 12 will have to wait until 13, 14, 15, and even 16, have gotup abreast of them--and that is the third cause of delay. Here are three causes of delay which, between them and accumulated, have disastrous effect; and in general we may be certain that wherevery large bodies and very extensive stretches of territory areconcerned, that wing of Black which has been left out in the cold cannever come up in time to retrieve the situation created by White'stwelve pinning Black's engaged wing of only nine. If the square has worked, and if the twelve White have pinned theright-hand wing of Black, 1 to 9 inclusive, there is nothing for Blackto do but to order his right wing, 1 to 9, to retreat as fast aspossible before superior numbers, and to order his left wing, 10 to16, to fall back at the same time and keep in line; and you then havethe singular spectacle of twelve men compelling the retreat of andpursuing sixteen. _That is exactly what happened in the first three weeks of activeoperations in the West. The operative corner A in the annexed diagramwas the Franco-British force upon the Sambre. The retirement of thatoperative corner and its holding of the enemy was what is called inthis country "The Retreat from Mons. " BB are the "masses of manoeuvre"behind A. The swinging up of these masses involving the retirement ofthe whole was the Battle of the Marne. _ [Illustration: Sketch 31. ] Now, it is evident that in all this everything depends upon thetenacity and military value of the operative corner, which is exposedand sacrificed that the whole scheme of the Open Square may work. If that operative corner is destroyed as a force--is overwhelmed ordispersed or surrounded--while it is fighting its great odds, thewhole square goes to pieces. Its centre is penetrated by the enemy, and the army is in a far worse plight than if recourse had never beenhad to the open strategic square at all. For if the operative corner, A, is out of existence before the various bodies forming the"manoeuvring mass" behind it have had time to "swing, " then the enemywill be right in their midst, and destroying, in overwhelming force, these remaining _separated_ bodies in detail. It was here that the German strategic theory contrasted so violentlywith the French. The Germans maintained that an ordeal which Napoleonmight have been able to live through with his veterans and afterfifteen years of successful war, a modern conscript army, most of itsmen just taken from civilian life and all of short service, wouldnever endure. They believed the operative corner would go to piecesand either be pounded to disintegration, or outflanked, turned, andcaught in the first days of the shock before the rest of the squarehad time to "work. " The French believed the operative corner wouldstand the shock, and, though losing heavily, would remain in being. They believed that the operative corner of the square would, evenunder modern short service and large quasi-civilian reserveconditions, remain an army. They staked their whole campaign upon thatthesis, and they turned out to be right. But they only just barely wonthrough, and by the very narrowest margin. Proving right as they did, however, the success of their strategical theory changed the wholecourse of the war. With this contrast of the great opposing theories considered, I cometo the conclusion of my Second Part, which examines the forcesopposed. I will now turn to the Third Part of my book, which concernsthe first actual operations from the Austrian note to the Battle ofthe Marne. FOOTNOTES: [1] Thus, after these lines were written, I had occasion in _Land andWater_ to estimate the garrison of Przemysl before the figures wereknown. The element wherewith to guide one's common sense was the knownperimeter to be defended; and arguing from this, I determined that aminimum of not less than 100, 000 men would capitulate. I furtherconceived that the total losses could hardly be less than 40, 000, andI arrived at an original force of between three and four corps. [Illustration: Sketch 32. ] PART III. THE FIRST OPERATIONS. In any general view of the great war which aims both at preservingproportion between its parts, and at presenting especially the mainlines in relief, the three weeks between the German sudden forcing ofwar and the seventeen or eighteen days between the English declarationand the main operations upon the Sambre, will have but a subsidiaryimportance. They were occupied for at least half the period in themobilization of the great armies. They were occupied for the secondhalf of the period in the advance across the Rhine of German numbersgreatly superior to the Allies, and also through the plain of NorthernBelgium. The operation, as calculated by the German General Staff, wasdelayed by but a very few days--one might almost say hours--by thehastily improvised resistance of Liége, and the imperfect defence oftheir country which was all the Belgian forces, largely untrained, could offer. We must, therefore, pass briefly enough over that preliminary period, though the duty may be distasteful to the reader, on account of thevery exaggerated importance which its operations took, especially inBritish eyes. For this false perspective there were several reasons, which it isworth while to enumerate, as they will aid our judgment in obtaining atrue balance between these initial movements and the great conflictsto which they were no more than an introduction. 1. War, as a whole, had grown unfamiliar to Western Europe. War onsuch a scale as this was quite untried. There was nothing inexperience to determine our judgment, and after so long a peace, during which the habits of civil life had ceased to be conventionedand had come to seem part of the necessary scheme of things, the firstirruption of arms dazzled or confounded the imagination of all. 2. The first shock, falling as it did upon the ring fortress ofLiége, at once brought into prominence one of the chief questions ofmodern military debate, the value of the modern ring fortress, andpromised to put to the test the opposing theories upon this sort ofstronghold. 3. The violation of Belgian territory, though discounted in thecynical atmosphere of our time, when it came to the issue was, withoutquestion, a stupendous moral event. It was the first time thatanything of this sort had happened in the history of Christian Europe. Historians unacquainted with the spirit of the past may challenge thatremark, but it is true. One of the inviolable conventions, or rathersacred laws, of our civilization was broken, which is that Europeanterritory not involved in hostilities by any act of its Government isinviolable to opposing armies. The Prussian crime of Silesia, nearlytwo centuries before, the succeeding infamies of 1864, and the forgeryof the Ems dispatch, the whole proclaimed tradition of contempt forthe sanctities of Christendom, proceeding from Frederick the Great, had indeed accustomed men to successive stages in the decline ofinternational morals; but nothing of the wholly crude character whichthis violation of Belgium bore was to be discovered in the past, evenof Prussia, and posterity will mark it as a curious term and possiblya turning-point in the gradual loss of our common religion, and of themoral chaos accompanying that loss. 4. The preparations of this country by land were not complete. Thoseof the French were belated compared with those of the Germans, and theprospect of even a short delay in the falling of the blow wasexaggerated in value by all the intensity of that anxiety with whichthe blow was awaited. To proceed from these preliminaries to the story. * * * * * The German Army had for its ultimate object, when it should be fullymobilized, the passage of the greater part of its forces over theBelgian Plain. This Belgian Plain has for now many centuries formed the naturalavenue for an advance upon the Gauls. It has been represented too often as a sort of meeting-place, wheremust always come the shock between what is called Latin civilizationand the Germanic tribes. But this view is both pedantic andhistorically false. There never was here a shock or conflict betweentwo national ideals. What is true is, that civilization spread farmore easily up from the Gauls through that fertile land towards theforests of Germany, and that when the Roman Empire broke down, orrather when its central government broke down, the frontier garrisonscould here depend upon wealthier and more numerous populations for thesupport of their local government. That body of auxiliary soldiers inthe Roman army which was drawn from the Frankish tribes ruled herewhen Rome could no longer rule. It was from Tournai that the father ofClovis exercised his power; and in the resettlement of the localgovernments in the sixth century, the Belgian Plain was the avenuethrough which the effort of the civilized West was directed towardsthe Rhine. It has Roman Cologne for its outpost; later it evangelizedthe fringes of German barbarism, and later still conquered them withthe sword. All through the succeeding centuries the ambitions of kingsin France, or of emperors upon the Rhine, were checked or satisfied inthat natural avenue of advance. Charlemagne's frontier palace andmilitary centre facing the Pagans was rather at Aix than at Trèves orMetz; and though the Irish missionaries, who brought letters and thearts and the customs of reasonable men to the Germans, worked ratherfrom the south, the later forced conversion of the Saxons, whichdetermined the entry of the German tribes as a whole into Christendom, was a stroke struck northwards from the Belgian Plain. Cæsar'sadventurous crossing of the Rhine was a northern crossing. TheCapetian monarchy was saved on its eastern front at Bouvines, in thatsame territory. The Austro-Spanish advance came down from it, to bechecked at St. Quentin. Louis XIV. 's main struggle for power upon themarches of his kingdom concentrated here. The first great check to itwas Marlborough's campaign upon the Meuse; the last battle was withinsound of Mons, at Malplaquet. The final decision, as it washoped--the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo--again showed what thisterritory meant in the military history of the West. It was followingupon this decision that Europe, in the great settlement, decided tocurb the chaos of future war by solemnly neutralizing the BelgianPlain for ever; and to that pact a seal was set not only by the Frenchand the British, but also by the Prussian Government, with whatresults we know. The entries into this plain are very clearly defined by naturallimits. It is barred a few hours' march beyond the German frontier bythe broad and deep river Meuse, which here runs from the rough anddifficult Ardennes country up to the Dutch frontier. The whole passageis no more than twelve miles across, and at the corner of it, wherethe Meuse bends, is the fortress of Liége. West of this fortress theupper reaches of the river run, roughly east and west upon Namur, andafter Namur turn south again, passing through a very deep ravine thatextends roughly from the French town of Mezières to Namur through theArdennes country. The Belgian Plain is therefore like a bottle with anarrow neck, a bottle defined by the Dutch frontier and the MiddleMeuse on either side, and a neck extending only from the Ardennescountry to the Dutch frontier, with the fortress of Liége barring theway. Now the main blow was to be delivered ultimately upon the lineNamur-Charleroi-Mons. That is, the situation was roughly that of theaccompanying diagram: by the bottle neck at D the whole mass of troopsmust pass--or most of them--which are later to strike on the front AB. To reach that front was available to the invader the vast network ofBelgian railways RRR crammed with rolling stock, and provided suchopportunities for rapid advance as no other district in Europe couldshow. But all this system converged upon the main line which ranthrough the ring of forts round Liége, L, and so passed throughAix-la-Chapelle, A, and to Germany. [Illustration: Sketch 33. ] The German Government, therefore, could not be secure of its intentionto pass great bodies through the Belgian Plain until Liége wasgrasped, and it was determined to grasp Liége long before themobilization of the German forces was completed. For this purpose onlya comparatively small force, rapidly gathered, was available. It wasplaced under the command of General von Emmerich, and its first bodiesexchanged shots with the Belgian outposts early in the afternoon ofTuesday, August 4, 1914. The hour and date should always be remembered for the solemnity whichattaches to the beginning of any great thing; and the full observer ofEuropean affairs, who understands what part religion or superstitionplays in the story of Europe, will note this enormously significantdetail. The first Germans to cross the violated frontier accomplishedthat act upon the same day and at the same hour as that in whichtheir forerunners had crossed the French frontier forty-four yearsbefore. The afternoon wore on to night, with no more than a conflict betweenoutposts. Just before midnight the cannonade was first heard. It alsowas the moment in which the ultimatum delivered to Germany by thiscountry, by a coincidence, expired. [2] This night attack with guns was only delivered against one sector ofthe Liége forts, and only with field-pieces. As to the first of these points, it will be found repeated throughoutthe whole of the campaign wherever German forces attack a ring ofpermanent works. For the German theory in this matter (whichexperience has now amply supported) is that since modern permanentworks _of known and restricted position_ go under to a modern siegetrain if the fire of the latter be fully concentrated and the largestpieces available, everything should be sacrificed to the putting intothe narrowest area of all the projectiles available. The ring oncebroken on a sufficient single sector point is broken altogether. The second point, that only field-pieces as yet were used (which wasdue to the fact that the siege train was not yet come up), is animportant indication of the weakness of the defence--on all of whichthe enemy were, of course, thoroughly informed. There were perhaps 20, 000 men in and upon the whole periphery ofLiége, a matter of over thirty miles, and what was most serious, nosufficient equipment or preparation of the forts, or, what was moreserious still, no sufficient trained body of gunners. It is almost true to say that the resistance of Liége, such as it was, was effected by rifle fire. With the dawn of August 5th, and in the first four hours of daylight, a German infantry attack upon the same south-eastern forts which hadbeen subjected to the first artillery fire in the night developed, andafter some loss withdrew, but shortly after the first of the forts, that of Fléron, was silenced. The accompanying sketch map will showhow wide a gap was left henceforward in the defences. Further, Fléronwas the strongest of the works upon this side of the river. Seeingthat, in any case, even if there had been a sufficient number oftrained gunners in the forts, and a sufficient equipment and fullpreparation of the works for a siege (both of which were lacking), the absence of sufficient men to hold the gaps between would in anycase have been fatal to the defence. With such a new gap as this openby the fall of Fléron, the defence was hopeless, even if it were onlyto be counted in hours. [Illustration: Sketch 34. ] It is high praise of the Belgian people and character to point outthat, after the fall of Fléron, for forty-eight full hours such a gapwas still contested by men, a great part of whom were little betterthan civilian in training, and who, had they been all tried regulars, would have been far too few for their task. General Leman, whocommanded them, knew well in those early hours of Wednesday, the 5th, that the end had already come. He also knew the value of even a fewhours' hopeless resistance, not perhaps to the material side of theAllied strategy, but to the support of those moral forces lackingwhich men are impotent in maintaining a challenge. Not only all thatWednesday, the 5th, but all the Thursday, the 6th, he maintained aline against the pressure of the invaders with his imperfect andinsufficient troops. During those forty-eight hours, the big howitzer, which is the typeof the heavy German siege train--the 225 mm. --was brought up, and itis possible that a couple of the still larger Austrian pieces of 280mm. (what we call in this country the 11-inch), which are constructedwith flat treadles to their wheels to fire from mats laid on anyreasonably hard surface (such as a roadway), had been brought up aswell. At any rate, in the course of the Thursday, the fort nextwestward from Fléron, Chaudefontaine, was smashed. The gap was nowquite untenable, and the first body of German cavalry entered thecity. The incident has been reported as a _coup de main_, with theobject of capturing the Belgian general. Its importance to themilitary story is simply that it proved the way to be open. In theafternoon and evening of the day, the Belgians were retiring into theheart of the city, and it is typical of the whole business that thegreat railway bridge upon which the main communications depended wasleft intact for the Germans to use. With the morning of Friday, the 7th August, the first bodies of Germaninfantry entered the town. The forts on the north and two remainingwestern forts upon the south of the river were still untaken, anduntil a large breach should be made in the northern forts at least, the railway communication of the German advance into the Belgian plainwas still impeded. Great masses of the enemy, and, in proportion tothose masses, still greater masses of advance stores were brought in. In all that follows, until we reach the date of Monday, August 24th, Ipropose to consider no more than the fortunes of the troops who passedthrough Belgium to attack the French armies upon the Sambre and theMeuse, with the British contingent that had come to their aid. And myreasons for thus segregating and dealing later with contemporaryevents in the south will appear in the sequel. This reservation made--an important one in the scheme of this book--Ireturn to what I have called the preliminaries, the advance throughBelgium. We have already seen that the reduction of the northern forts of Liégewas the prime necessity to that advance. We have also seen that meanwhile it was possible and advisable toaccumulate stores for the advance as far forward as could be managed, and that it was also possible, with caution, to bring certainbodies--not the bulk of the army--forward through the Ardennes, tocommand the passages of the Meuse above Liége, between that fortressand Namur. This latter operation was effected by the 12th of August, when thetown of Huy, with its bridge and its railway leading from the BelgianArdennes right into the Belgian Plain, was seized. Meanwhile, upon the north of the river Meuse, cavalry and armedmotor-cars were similarly preparing the way for the general advancewhen the northern forts of Liége should be dominated; and on this sameWednesday, August 12th, the most advanced bodies of the invader lay ina line roughly north and south from the neighbourhood of Diest alongthe Gethe and thence towards Huy. Of the outrages committed upon the civilian inhabitants in all thesecountry-sides, the Government of which was neutral, and the territoryof which was by the public law of Europe free not only from suchnovel crimes but from legitimate acts of war, I shall not speak, justas I shall not allude, save where they happen to have militaryimportance, to the future increase of similar abominations whichmarked the progress of the campaign. For my only object in these pagesis to lay before the reader a commentary which will explain thegeneral strategy of the war. [Illustration: Sketch 35. ] While this advance line of cavalry was engaging in unimportant minoractions, or rather skirmishes (grossly exaggerated in the news ofthose days), the attack on the northern forts of Liége, upon whicheverything now depended, was opened. It was upon Thursday, August13th, that the 280 mm. Howitzers opened upon Loncin. Other of theremaining forts were bombarded; but, as in the case of Fléron a weekbefore, we need not consider the subsidiary operations, becauseeverything depended upon the fort of Loncin, which, as theaccompanying diagram shows, commanded the railway line westward fromLiége. General Leman himself was within that work, the batteriesagainst which were now operating from _within_ the ring--that is, fromthe city itself, or in what soldiers technically call "reverse"--thatis, from the side upon which no fort is expected to stand, the sidewhich is expected to defend and not to be attacked from. WhetherLoncin held out the full forty-eight hours, or only forty, or onlythirty-six, we do not know; but that moral factor to which I havealready alluded, and which must be fully weighed in war, was againstrengthened by the nature of such a resistance. For nearly all thatgarrison was dead and its commander found unconscious when thecomplete destruction of the work by the high explosive shellspermitted the enemy to enter. [Illustration: Sketch 36. ] It was upon Saturday, the 15th of August, that the great bulk of thetwo main German armies set aside for passage through the Belgian Plainbegan to use the now liberated railway, and the week between that dateand the first great shock upon the Sambre is merely a record of thealmost uninterrupted advance, concentration, and supply of somethingnot far short of half a million men coming forward in a huge tideover, above, and round on to, the line Namur-Charleroi-Mons, which wastheir ultimate objective, and upon which the Anglo-Frenchbody--perhaps half as numerous--had determined to stand. [Illustration: Sketch 37. ] The story of that very rapid advance is merely one of succeedingdates. By the 17th the front was at Tirlemont, by the 19th it wasacross the Dyle and running thence south to Wavre (the first army), the second army continuing south of this with a little east in it to apoint in front of Namur. On the 20th there was enacted a scene of nomilitary importance (save that it cost the invaders about a day), butof some moral value, because it strongly impressed the opinion in thiscountry and powerfully affected the imagination of Europe as a whole:I mean the triumphal march through Brussels. Far more important than this display was the opening on the evening ofthe same day, Thursday, August 20th, of the first fire against theeastern defences of Namur. This fire was directed upon that eveningagainst the two and a half miles of trench between the forts ofCognelée and Marchovelette, and in the morning of Friday, the 21st, the trenches were given up, and the German infantry was within thering of forts north of the city. The point of Namur, as we shall seein a moment, was twofold. First, its fortifications, so long as theyheld out, commanded the crossings both of the Sambre and of the Meusewithin the angle of which the French defensive lay; secondly, itsfortified zone formed the support whereupon the whole French rightreposed. It was this unexpected collapse of the Belgian defence ofNamur which, coupled with the unexpected magnitude of the forcesGermany had been able to bring through the Belgian plain, determinedwhat was to follow. Once Namur was entered, the reduction of the forts was not ofimmediate importance, though it was immediately and successfullyachieved. For the German business was not here, as at Liége, to graspa railway within the zone of the fortifications, but to destroy thebuttress upon which the French depended for their defensive position, and to prevent the French from holding the crossings over the tworivers Sambre and Meuse at their junction. With this entry of the Germans into Namur, their passage of the linesupon Friday, August 21st, their capture of the bridgeheads onSaturday, August 22nd, we reach the beginning of those greatoperations which threatened for a moment to decide the war in theWest, and to establish the German Empire in that position to attainwhich it had planned and forced the war upon its appointed day. It behoves us before entering into the detail of this large affair tosee the plan of it clearly before our eyes. * * * * * I have already described that general conception underlying the wholemodern French school of strategy for which the best title (though oneliable to abuse by too mechanical an interpretation) is "the openstrategic square. " I have further warned the reader that, in spite of the way in whichthe intricacy of organization inseparable from great masses and themanifold disposition of a modern army will mask the general nature ofsuch an operation, that operation cannot be understood unless itssimplest lines are clear. I have further insisted that in practicethose lines remain only in the idea of the scheme of the whole, andare not to be discovered save in the loosest way from the actualpositions of men upon the map. We have seen that this "open strategic square" involved essentiallytwo conceptions--the fixed "operative corner" and the swinging"manoeuvring masses. " The manoeuvring masses, at this moment when the great German blow fellupon the Sambre and the Meuse, and when Namur went down immediatelybefore it, were (_a_) upon the frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine, (_b_)in the centre of the country, (_c_) near the capital and to the westof it, and even, some of them, upon the sea. The operative corner was this group of armies before Namur on theSambre and Meuse, the 4th French Army under Langle, the 5th FrenchArmy under Lanrezac, the British contingent under French. We know from what has been written above in this book that it is thewhole business of an operative corner to "take on" superior numbers, and to hold them as well as possible, even though compelled toretreat, until the manoeuvring masses can swing and come up in aid, and so pin the enemy. We further know from what has gone before that the whole crux of thismanoeuvre lies in the power of the operative corner to stand theshock. It was the business of the French in this operative corner beforeNamur and of their British Allies there to await and, if possible, towithstand by a careful choice of position the first shock of enemieswho would certainly be numerically superior. It was the whole businessof the German commanders to make the shock overwhelming, in order thatthe operative corner should be pounded to pieces, or should besurrounded and annihilated before the manoeuvring masses could swingup in aid. Should this destruction of the operative corner take placebefore the manoeuvring masses behind it could swing, the campaign inthe West was lost to the Allies, and the Germans pouring in betweenthe still separated corners of the square were the masters for good. It behoves us, therefore, if we desire to understand the campaign, tograsp how this operative corner stood, upon what defences it relied, in what force it was, what numbers it thought were coming against it, and what numbers were, as a fact, coming against it. To get all this clear, it is best to begin with a diagram. Suppose two lines perpendicular one to the other, and thereforeforming a right angle, AB and BC. Suppose at their junction, B, aconsiderable zone or segment, SSS, of a circle, as shaded in thefollowing diagram. Supposing the line AB to be protected along theouter half of it, AK, by no natural obstacle--the state of affairswhich I have represented by a dotted line αγ; but suppose the secondhalf of it, KB, should be protected by a natural obstacle, though nota very formidable one--such as I have represented by the continuousline γβ. Supposing the perpendicular line BC to be protected by areally formidable natural obstacle βδ, and supposing the shadedsegment of the circle at B to represent a fortified zone (1)accessible to any one within the angle KBC, as from the arrow M; (2)inaccessible (until it was captured or forced) to any one coming fromoutside the angle, as from the arrows NNN; (3) containing withinitself, protected by its ring of fortifications, passages, PP, fortraversing the two natural obstacles, γβ and βδ, which meet at thepoint β. [Illustration: Sketch 38. ] There you have the elements of the position in which the advancecorner of the great French square was situated just before it took theshock of the main German armies. The two lines AB and BC are theFrench and British armies lying behind the Sambre, γβ, and the MiddleMeuse, βδ, respectively; but the line of the Sambre ceases to protecteastward along the dotted line αγ beyond the point up to which theriver forms a natural obstacle, while from K to B the line isprotected by the river Sambre itself. The more formidable obstacle, βδ, represents the great trench or ravine of the Meuse which stretchessouth from Namur. The town of Namur itself is at B, the junction ofthe two rivers; and the fortified zone, SSS, is the ring of fortslying far out all round Namur; while the passages, PP, over theobstacles contained within that fortified zone, and accessible to thepeople _inside_ the angle from M, but not to the people _outside_ theangle from NNN, are the bridges across both the Sambre and the Meuseat Namur. All this is, of course, put merely diagrammatically, and a diagram issomething very distant from reality. The "open strategic square" inpractice comes to mean little more than two main elements--one theoperative corner, the other a number of separate units disposed in allsorts of different places behind, and generally denominated "themanoeuvring mass. " If you had looked down from above at all the Frencharmies towards the end of August, when the first great shock came, youwould have seen nothing remotely resembling a square. [Illustration: Sketch 39. ] You would have seen something like Sketch 31 where the bodies enclosedunder the title A were the operative corner; various garrisons andarmies in the field, enclosed under the title B, were the manoeuvringmass. But it is only by putting the matter quite clearly in theabstract diagrammatic form that its principle can be grasped. With this digression I will return and conclude with the main pointsof debate in the use of the open strategic square. We have seen that the operative corner is in this scheme deliberatelyimperilled at the outset. The following is a sketch map of the actual position, and it will beseen that the topographical features of this countryside are fairlyrepresented by Sketch 39; while this other sketch shows how thesetroops that were about to take the shock stood to the general mass ofthe armies. But to return to the diagram (which I repeat and amplify as Sketch41), let us see how the Allied force in the operative corner beforeNamur stood with relation to this angle of natural obstacles, thetwo rivers Sambre and Meuse, and the fortified zone round the pointwhere they met. [Illustration: Sketch 40. ] The situation of that force was as follows:-- [Illustration: Sketch 41. ] Along and behind βγ stretched the 5th Army of the French, prolonged onits left by the British contingent. I have marked the first in thediagram with the figure 5, the second with the letters Br, and thelatter portion I have also shaded. At right angles to the French 5thArmy stretched the French 4th Army, which I have marked with thefigure 4. It depended upon the obstacle of the Meuse βδ for itsdefence, just as the French 5th Army depended upon the Sambre, γβ. Itmust, of course, be understood that when one says these forces "layalong" the aforesaid lines, one does not mean that they merely laybehind them. One means that they held the bridges and prepared todispute the crossing of them. Now, the French plan was as follows. They said to themselves: "Therewill come against us an enemy acting along the arrows VWXYZ, and thisenemy will certainly be in superior force to our own. He will perhapsbe as much as fifty per cent. Stronger than we are. But he will sufferunder these disadvantages:-- "The one part of his forces, V and W, will find it difficult to act inco-operation with the other part of his forces, Y and Z, because Y andZ (acting as they are on an outside circumference split by thefortified zone SSS) will be separated, or only able to connect in along and roundabout way. The two lots, V and W, and Y and Z, couldonly join hands by stretching round an awkward angle--that is, bystretching round the bulge which SSS makes, SSS being the ring offorts round Namur. Part of their forces (that along the arrow X) willfurther be used up in trying to break down the resistance of SSS. That will take a good deal of time. If our horizontal line AB holdsits own, naturally defended as it is, against the attack from V and W, while our perpendicular line BC holds its own still more firmly(relying on its much better natural obstacle) against YZ, we shallhave ample time to break the first and worst shock of the enemy'sattack, and to allow, once we have concentrated that attack uponourselves, the rest of our forces, the masses of manoeuvre, or at anyrate a sufficient portion of them, to come up and give us a majorityin _this_ part of the field. We shall still be badly outnumbered onthe line as a whole; but the resistance of our operative corner, relying on the Sambre and Meuse and the fortress of Namur, will gathermuch of the enemy unto itself. It will thus make of this part of thefield the critical district of the whole campaign. Our masses, arriving while we resist, will give us a local superiority here whichwill hold up the whole German line. We may even by great good luck sobreak the shock of the attack as ourselves to begin taking thecounter-offensive after a little while, and to roll back either Y andZ or V and W by the advance of our forces across the rivers when theenemy has exhausted himself. " It will be clear that this calculation (whether of the expected andprobable least favourable issue--a lengthy defence followed by anorderly and slow retreat designed to allow the rest of the armies tocome up--or of the improbable and more favourable issue--the taking ofthe counter-offensive) depended upon two presumptions which thecommander of the Allies had taken for granted: (1) that the Germanshock would not come in more than a certain admitted maximum, saythirty per cent. Superiority at the most over the Allied forces atthis particular point; (2) that the ring of forts round Namur would beable to hold out for at least three or four days, and thus absorb theefforts of part of the enemy as well as awkwardly divide his forces, while that enemy's attack was being delivered. Both these presumptions were erroneous. The enemy, as we shall see ina moment, came on in much larger numbers than had been allowed for. Namur, as we have already seen, fell, not in three or four days, butinstantly--the moment it was attacked. And the result was that, instead of an orderly and slow retirement, sufficiently tardy topermit of the swinging up of the rest of the French "square"--that is, of the arrival of the other armies or manoeuvring masses--there cameas a fact the necessity for very rapid retirement of the operativecorner over more than one hundred miles and the immediate peril fordays of total disaster to it. To appreciate how superior the enemy proved to be in number, and howheavy the miscalculation here was, we must first see what the numbersof this Allied operative corner were. I have in Sketch 42 indicated the approximate positions and relativesizes of the three parts of the Allied forces. Beginning from the left, we have barely two army corps actuallypresent of the British contingent in the fighting line: for certaincontingents of the outermost army corps had not yet arrived. We mayperhaps call the numbers actually present at French's command whencontact was taken 70, 000 men, but that is probably beyond the mark. To the east lay the 5th French Army, three army corps amounting, say, to 120, 000 men, and immediately south of this along the Meuse lay the4th French Army, another three army corps amounting to at the mostanother 120, 000 men. We may then call the whole of the operative corner (if we excludecertain cavalry reserves far back, which never came into play) justover 300, 000 men. That there were as many as 310, 000 is improbable. The French calculation was that against these 300, 000 men there wouldarrive at the very most 400, 000. That, of course, meant a heavy superiority in number for the enemy;but, as we have seen, the scheme allowed for such an inconvenience atthe first contact. That more than 400, 000 could strike in the region of Namur no onebelieved, for no one believed that the enemy could provision andorganize transport for more than that number. A very eminent English critic had allowed for seven army corps offirst-line men as all that could be brought across the Belgian Plain. The French went so far as to allow for ten, a figure represented bythe 400, 000 men of the enemy they expected. We had then the Allied forces expecting an attack in about thesuperiority indicated upon this diagram, where the British contingentand the two French armies are marked in full, and the supposed enemyin dotted lines. [Illustration: Sketch 42. ] Roughly speaking, the Allies were allowing for a thirty per cent. Superiority. Now, lying as they did behind the rivers, and with the ring of fortsaround Namur to shield their point of junction and to split theenemy's attack, this superiority, though heavy, was not crushing. Thehopes of the defensive that it would stand firm, or at least retireslowly so as to give time for the manoeuvring masses to come up was, under this presumption, just. It was even thought possible that, ifthe enemy attacked too blindly and spent himself too much, thecounter-offensive might be taken after the first two or three days. As for the remainder of the German forces, it was believed that theywere stretched out very much in even proportion, without any thinplaces, from the Meuse to Alsace. Now, as a matter of fact, the German forces were in no suchdisposition. 1. The Germans had added to every army corps a reservedivision. 2. They had brought through the Belgian plains a very muchlarger number than seven army corps: they had brought nine. 3. Theyhad further brought against Namur yet another four army corps throughthe Ardennes, the woods of which helped to hide their progress fromair reconnaissance. To all this mass of thirteen army corps, eacharmy corps half as large again as the active or first line allowedfor, add some imperfectly trained but certainly large bodies ofindependent cavalry. We cannot accurately say what the total numbersof this vast body were, but we can be perfectly certain that more than700, 000 men were massed in this region of Namur. The enemy was comingon, not four against three, but certainly seven against three, andperhaps eight or even nine against three. The real situation was that given in the accompanying diagram (Sketch43). Five corps, each with its extra division, were massed under von Kluck, and called the 1st German Army. Four more, including the Guards, werepresent with von Buelow, and stretched up to and against the firstdefences of Namur. Now, around the corner of that fortress, two Saxoncorps, a Wurtemberg corps, a Magdeburg corps, and a corps of reserveunder the Duke of Wurtemberg formed the 3rd Army, the right wing ofwhich opposed the forts of Namur, the rest of which stretched alongthe line of the Meuse. Even if the forts of Namur had held out, the position of so hopelesslyinferior a body as was the Franco-British force, in face of suchoverwhelming numbers, would have been perilous in the extreme. Withthe forts of Namur abandoned almost at the first blow, the peril wasmore than a peril. It had become almost certain disaster. [Illustration: Sketch 43. ] With the fall of Namur, the angle between the rivers--that is, thecrossings of the rivers at their most difficult part where they werebroadest--was in the hands of the enemy, and the whole French body, the 4th and 5th Armies, was at some time on that Saturday fallingback. The exact hour and the details of that movement we do not yet know. Wedo not know what loss the French sustained, we do not know whether anyconsiderable bodies were cut off. We do not know even at what hour theFrench General Staff decided that the position was no longer tenable, and ordered the general retreat. All we know is that, so far from being able to hold out two or threedays against a numerical superiority of a third and under the buttressof Namur, the operative corner, with Namur fallen and, not 30 percent. , but something more like 130 per cent. Superiority against it, began not the slow retreat that had been envisaged, but a retirementof the most rapid sort. Such a retirement was essential if the cohesion of the Allied forceswas to be maintained at all, and if the combined 4th and 5th FrenchArmies and British contingent were to escape being surrounded orpierced. By the Saturday night at latest the French retirement was ordered; bySunday morning it was in full progress, and it was proceedingthroughout the triangle of the Thierarche all that day. But the rate of that retirement, corresponding to the pressure uponthe French front, differed very much with varying sections of theline. It was heaviest, of course, in those advanced bodies which hadlain just under Namur. It was least at the two ends of the bow, forthe general movement was on to the line Maubeuge-Mezières. The fartherone went east towards Maubeuge, the slower was the necessary movement, and to this cause of delay must be added the fact that von Kluck, coming round by the extreme German line, had farthest to go, andarrived latest against the line of the Allies. Therefore the British contingent at the western extreme of the Alliedline felt the shock latest of all, and all that Sunday morning theBritish were still occupied in taking up their positions. They hadarrived but just in time for what was to follow. It was not till the early afternoon of the Sunday that contact wasfirst taken seriously between Sir John French and von Kluck. At thatmoment the British commander believed, both from a general anderroneous judgment which the French command had tendered him and fromhis own air work, that he had in front of him one and a half or at themost two army corps; and though the force, as we shall see in amoment, was far larger, its magnitude did not appear as the afternoonwore on. Full contact was established perhaps between three and four, by which hour the pressure was beginning to be severely felt, and uponthe extreme right of the line it had already been necessary to take updefensive positions a little behind those established in the morning. But by five o'clock, with more than two good hours of daylight beforeit, the British command, though perhaps already doubtful whether theadvancing masses of the enemy did not stand for more men, andespecially for more guns than had been expected, was well holding itsown, when all its dispositions were abruptly changed by an unexpectedpiece of news. It was at this moment in the afternoon--that is, about fiveo'clock--that the French General Staff communicated to Sir John Frenchinformation bearing two widely different characteristics: the firstthat it came late; the second that had it not come when it did, thewhole army, French as well as British, would have been turned. The first piece of information, far too belated, was the news thatNamur had fallen, and that the enemy had been in possession of thebridge-heads over the Sambre and the Meuse since the preceding day, Saturday. Consequent upon this, the enemy had been able to effect thepassage of the Sambre, not only in Namur itself, but in its immediateneighbourhood, and, such passages once secured, it was but a questionof time for the whole line to fall into the enemy's hands. Whensuperior numbers have passed one end of an obstacle it is obvious thatthe rest of the obstacle gradually becomes useless. [3] At what hourthe French knew that they had to retire, we have not been told. As wehave seen, the enemy was right within Namur on the early afternoon ofSaturday, the 22nd, and it is to be presumed that the Frenchretirement was in full swing by the Sunday morning, in which case theBritish contingent, which this retirement left in peril upon thewestern extreme of the line, ought to have been warned many hoursbefore five o'clock in the afternoon. To what the delay was due we are again as yet in ignorance, butprobably to the confusion into which the unexpected fall of Namur andthe equally unexpected strength of the enemy beyond the Sambre and theMeuse had thrown the French General Staff. At any rate, the news did come thus late, and its lateness was ofserious consequence to the British contingent, and might have beendisastrous to it. The second piece of news, on the other hand, was the saving of it; andthat second piece of news was the information that Sir John French hadin front of him not one German army corps, and possibly part or eventhe whole of a second, but at least three. As the matter turned out, the British contingent was really dealing first and last with fourarmy corps, and the essential part of the news conveyed was that theextreme western portion of this large German force _was attempting toturn the flank of the whole army_. It was not only attempting to do so, it was in number sufficient to doso; and unless prompt measures were taken, what was now discovered tobe the general German plan would succeed, and the campaign in theWest would be in two days decided adversely to the Allies--the samespace of time in which the campaign of 1815 was decided adversely toNapoleon in just these same country-sides. It is here necessary to describe what this German plan was. The reader has already seen, when the general principles of the openstrategic square were described on a previous page, that everythingdepends upon the fate of the operative corner. This operative cornerin the present campaign had turned out to be the two French armies, the 4th and the 5th, upon the Lower Sambre and the Meuse, and theBritish contingent lying to the left of the 5th on the Upper Sambreand by Mons. If the operative corner of a strategic open square is annihilated as amilitary force, or so seriously defeated that it can offer noeffective opposition for some days, then the whole plan of a strategicsquare breaks to pieces, and the last position of the inferior forceswhich have adopted it is worse than if they had not relied upon themanoeuvre at all, but had simply spread out in line to await defeatin bulk at the hands of their superior enemy. Now there are two ways in which a military force can be disposed of byits opponent. There are two ways in which it can be--to use the ratherexaggerated language of military history--"annihilated. " The first is this: You can break up its cohesion by a smashing blowdelivered somewhere along its line, and preferably near its centre. But if you do that, the results will never be quite complete, and maybe incomplete in any degree according to the violence and success ofyour blow. The second way is to get round the enemy with your superior numbers, to get past his flank, to the back of him, and so envelop him. If thatmanoeuvre is carried out successfully, you bag his forces entire. Itis to this second manoeuvre that modern Prussian strategy and tacticsare particularly attached. It is obvious that its fruits are far morecomplete than those of the first manoeuvre, when, or if, it is whollysuccessful. For to get round your enemy and bag him whole is a largerresult than merely to break him up and leave _some_ of him able tore-form and perhaps fight again. Two things needful to such successare (_a_) superior numbers, save in case of gross error upon the partof the opponents; (_b_) great rapidity of action on the part of theoutflanking body, coupled, if possible, with surprise. That rapidityof action is necessary is obvious; for the party on the flank has gotto go much farther than the rest of the army. It has to go all thelength of the arrow (1), and an element of surprise is usuallynecessary. For if the army AA which BB was trying to outflank learnedof the manoeuvre in time he only has to retreat upon his left by theshorter arrow (2) to escape from the threatened clutch. [Illustration: Sketch 45. ] Now, von Kluck with his five army corps, four of which were inoperation against Sir John French, was well able to count on allthese elements. He had highly superior numbers, his superiority hadnot been discovered until it was almost too late, and for rapidity ofaction he had excellent railways and a vast equipment of petrolvehicles. What he proposed to do was, while engaging the British contingent ofless than two army corps with three full army corps of his own, toswing his extreme western army corps right round, west throughTournai, and so turn the British line. If he succeeded in doing that, he had at the same time succeeded in turning the whole of theFranco-British forces on the Sambre and Meuse. In other words, he wasin a fair way to accomplishing the destruction of the operative cornerof the great square, and consequently, as a last result, thedestruction of the whole Allied force in the West. The thing may be represented on a sketch map in this form. Of von Kluck's five corps, 1 is operating against the junction of theEnglish and French lines beyond Binche, 2, 3, and 4 are massingagainst the rather more than one and a half of Sir John French at AA, and 5, after the capture of Tournai, is going to take a big sweepround in the direction of the arrow towards Cambrai, and so to turnthe whole line. Meanwhile, the cavalry, still farther west, actingindependently, is to sweep the country right out to Arras and beyond. [Illustration: Sketch 46. ] The particular titles of corps are of no great value in following theleading main lines of a military movement; but it may be worthremembering that this "number 5, " to which von Kluck had allotted theturning movement, was the _Second_ German Corps. With its cavalry itnumbered alone (and apart from all the other forces of von Kluck whichwere engaging the British line directly) quite three-quarters as manymen as all that British line for the moment mustered. It was not possible, from local circumstances which the full historyof the war, when it is written, will explain, for the Britishcontingent to fall back in the remaining hours of daylight upon thatSunday. Belated by at the most twelve hours, as the news of the Frenchretirement had been, the British retirement followed it fully twentyhours after. It was not until daylight of Monday, the 24th, that allthe organizations for this retirement were completed, the plans drawnup, and the first retrograde movements made. To permit a retirement before such a great superiority of the enemy tobe made without disaster, it was necessary to counter-attack not onlyat this inception of the movement, but throughout all the terriblestrain of the ensuing eight days. Here it may be necessary to explain why, in any retirement, continualcounter-attacks on the pursuing enemy are necessary. It is obvious that, under equal conditions, the pursuing enemy canadvance as fast as can your own troops which are retreating beforehim. If, therefore, a retreat, once contact has been established, consisted in merely walking away from the enemy, that enemy would beable to maintain a ceaseless activity against one portion of yourunited force--its rear--which activity would be exercised againstbodies on the march, and incapable of defence. To take but one exampleout of a hundred: his guns would be always unlimbering, shooting atyou, then limbering up again to continue the pursuit; unlimberingagain, shooting again--and so forth; while your guns would neverreply, being occupied in an unbroken retirement, and thereforecontinually limbered up and useless behind their teams. A retiring force, therefore, of whatever size--from a company to anarmy--can only safely effect its retirement by detaching one fractionfrom its total which shall hold up the pursuit for a time while themain body gets away. When this detached fraction is wearied or imperilled, another fractionrelieves it, taking up the same task in its turn; the first fraction, which had hitherto been checking the pursuit, falls back rapidly on tothe main body, under cover of the new rearguard's fire as it turns toface the enemy. And the process is kept up, first one, then anotherportion of the whole force being devoted to it, until the retirementof the whole body has been successfully effected, and it is well aheadof its pursuers and secure. [Illustration: Sketch 47. ] For example: two White army corps, I. , II. , as in the annexed diagram, each of two divisions, 1, 2, and 3, 4, have to retire before a greatlysuperior Black force, _abcde_. They succeed in retiring by the actionexpressed in the following diagram. White corps No. I. Firstundertakes to hold up the enemy while No. II. Makes off. No. I. Detaches one division for the work (Division 2), and for a short timeit checks the movement of _a_, _b_, and _c_, at least, of the enemy. Now _d_ and _e_ press on. But they cannot press on at any pace theychoose, for an army must keep together, and the check to _a_, _b_, and_c_ somewhat retards _d_ and _e_. They advance, say, to the positionsδε. [Illustration: Sketch 48. ] Next, White corps No. II. Stops, puts out one of its divisions (say 4)to check _d_ and _e_, while its other division either helps or fallsback, according to the severity of the pressure, and White corps No. I. Makes off as fast as it can. _a_, _b_, _c_, no longer checked by aWhite rearguard, are nevertheless retarded from two causes--first, the delay already inflicted on them; secondly, that they must not, ifthe army is to keep together, get too far ahead of their colleagues, _d_ and _e_, which White corps II. Is holding up. [Illustration: Sketch 49. ] Thus, on the second or third day the retreat of White is being securedby an increasing gap between pursued and pursuers. The process iscontinued. Every succeeding day--if that process is successful--shouldfurther widen the gap until White can feel free from immediatepressure. Such is the principle--modified indefinitely in practice by variationsof ground and numbers--under which a retirement must be conducted ifit is to have any hope of ultimate success in saving the pursued. But it is clear that the process must always be a perilous one. Unlessthe most careful co-ordination is maintained between the moving partsof the retreat; unless the rearguard in each action falls back only_just upon_ and not a _little while after_ the precise moment when itcan last safely do so; unless the new rearguard comes into play intime, etc. , etc. --the pursuers may get right in among the pursued andbreak their cohesion; or they may get round them, cut them off, andcompel them to surrender. In either case the retreating force ceasesto exist as an army. In proportion as the pursuers are numerous (mobility being equal)compared with the pursued, in that proportion is the peril. And withthe best luck in the world some units are sure to be cut off, manyguns lost, all stragglers and nearly all wounded abandoned in thecourse of a pressed retreat, and, above all, there will be theincreasing discouragement and bewilderment of the men as the strain, the losses, and the ceaseless giving way before the enemy continue dayafter day with cumulative effect. The accomplishment of such a task, the maintenance of the "operativecorner" in being during its ordeal of retreat before vastly superiornumbers, and in particular the exceedingly perilous retirement of theBritish contingent at what was, during the first part of the strain, the extreme of the line, are what we are now about to follow. The initial counter-attack, then, on this Monday, the first day of theretreat, was undertaken by the 2nd British Division from the region ofHarmignies, which advanced as though with the object of retakingBinche. The demonstration was supported by all the artillery of the1st Army Corps, while the 1st Division, lying near Peissant, supportedthis action of the 2nd. While that demonstration was in full activity, the 2nd Corps to the west or left (not all of it was yet in the field)retired on to the line Dour-Frameries, passing through Quaregnon. Itsuffered some loss in this operation from the masses of the enemy, which were pressing forward from Mons. When the 2nd Corps had thushalted on the line Dour-Frameries, the 1st Corps, which had beenmaking the demonstration, took the opportunity to retire in its turn, and fell back before the evening to a line stretching from Bavai toMaubeuge. [Illustration: Sketch 50. ] The 2nd Corps had entrenched itself, while the 1st Corps was thusfalling back upon its right; and when it came to the turn of the 2ndCorps to play the part of rearguard in these alternate movements, theeffort proved to be one of grave peril. [Illustration: Sketch 51. ] Since the whole movement of the enemy was an outflanking movement, the pressure upon this left and extreme end of the line wasparticularly severe. The German advance in such highly superiornumbers overlapped the two British corps to _their_ left or west, which was at this moment the extreme end of the Allied Franco-Britishline. They overlapped them as these pursuing Black units overlap thelesser retiring White units. It is evident that in such a case thelast unit in the line at A will be suffering the chief burden of theattack. An attempt was made to relieve that burden by sending the andCavalry Brigade in this direction to ride round the enemy's outlyingbody; but the move failed, with considerable loss to the 9th Lancersand the 18th Hussars, which came upon wire entanglements five hundredyards from the enemy's position. There did arrive in aid of theimperilled end of the line reinforcement in the shape of a new body. One infantry brigade, the 19th, which had hitherto been upon the lineof communications, reached the army on this its central left nearQuarouble and a little behind that village before the morning wasspent. It was in line before evening. This reinforcement lent somestrength to the sorely tried 2nd Corps, but it had against it stilldouble its own strength in front, and half as much again upon itsexposed left or western flank, and it suffered heavily. By the night of that Monday, the 24th of August, however, the whole ofthe British Army was again in line, and stretched from Maubeuge, whichprotected its right, through Bavai, on to the fields between thevillages of Jenlain and Bry, where the fresh 19th Infantry Brigade hadnewly arrived before the evening, while beyond this extreme left againwas the cavalry. The whole operation, then, of that perilous Monday, the first day ofthe retreat, may be planned in general as in Sketch 52. At thebeginning, at daybreak, you have the three German army corps lying asthe shaded bodies are given opposite to the unshaded, which representthe British contingent of not quite two full army corps. By nightfallthe British contingent, including now the 19th Brigade of infantry, lay in the positions from Maubeuge westward, with the 1st Corps nextto Maubeuge, the 2nd Corps beyond Bavai, the 1st being commanded bySir Douglas Haig, the 2nd by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; while theGermans lay more or less as the dotted shaded markings are. The fortress of Maubeuge was, under these circumstances, clearly alure. An army in the field in danger of envelopment will always betempted to make for the nearest fortified zone in order to saveitself. The British commander was well advised in his judgment toavoid this opportunity, and that for two reasons. First, that thelocking up of any considerable portion of the Anglo-French force inits retirement would have jeopardized the chance of thatcounter-offensive which the French hoped sooner or later to initiate;secondly, that, as will be seen later, the works of Maubeuge werequite insufficient to resist for more than a few days a modern siegetrain. [Illustration: Sketch 52. ] This point of Maubeuge and of its fall must be discussed later; forthe moment all we need note is that the fortress afforded for a fewhours--that is, during the night of Monday to Tuesday, the 24th-25thAugust--support to the British line during its first halt upon therapid and perilous retirement from Mons. Meanwhile the whole of the French 5th Army had been falling back withequal rapidity, and upon its right the 4th Army had followed soon; andas this French retirement had preceded the retirement of the British, its general line lay farther south. On the other hand, from the nature of the topography in this sectionof the Franco-Belgian border, the units of the French command had tofall back farther and more rapidly in proportion as they stretchedeastward. The attack of the enemy in forces of rather more than two toone had come, as we have seen, not only from across the line of theSambre, but, once Namur had fallen, from across the line of the Meuseat right angles to the line of the Sambre. Therefore the 5th and the4th Armies, contained within the triangle bounded by the Sambre andMeuse, retiring from blows struck from the direction of the arrows 1-5over all that hilly and wooded country known as the Thiérache, were, as to the extreme salient of them at A, compelled to a very rapidretirement indeed; and on this Sunday night the French line wasdeflected southward, not without heavy losses, until either on thatnight or on the Monday morning it joined up with the forces whichstretched northward through and from Mézières. An attempt tocounter-attack through the precipitous ravines and deep woods on tothe valley of the Semois had failed, and the line as a whole ran, uponthis night between the Sunday and the Monday, much as is indicatedupon the accompanying sketch. [Illustration: Sketch 53. ] From this it will be seen that the British contingent away upon theextreme left was in very grave peril, not only because the turningmovement was wholly directed round their exposed flank, but alsobecause, their retirement having come late, they stood too far forwardin the general scheme at this moment, and therefore more exposed tothe enemy's blow than the rest of the line. With this it must beremembered Tournai had already fallen. It was very imperfectly held bya French Territorial brigade, accompanied by one battery of Englishguns; and the entering German force, in a superiority of anything youlike--two, three, or four to one--easily swept away the resistanceproffered in this quarter. These German forces from Tournai had not yet, by the nightfall ofMonday, come up eastward against the British, but they were on theway, and they might appear at any moment. The corps next to them, the4th of von Kluck's five, was already operating upon that flank, andthe next day, Wednesday, 26th of August, was to be the chief day oftrial for this exposed British wing of the army. So far the operations of the British Army had not differed greatlyfrom the expected or at least one of the expected developments of thecampaign. The operative corner, if it should not have the luck, through lossesor blunders on the part of the enemy, to take the counter-offensiveafter receiving the third shock, is intended to retire, and to drawupon itself a maximum of the enemy's efforts. But between what had been intended as the most probable, and in anycase perilous, task of this body (which comprised, it will beremembered, six French and ultimately two British army corps) turnedout, within twenty-four hours of the retreat, and within forty-eightof the fall of Namur, to be an operation of a difficulty so extreme asto imperil the whole campaign, and in this operation it was theBritish force upon the outer left edge of the line--the unsupportedextremity round which the enemy made every effort to get--which wasbound to receive the severest treatment. This peculiar burden laidupon the Expeditionary Force from this country was, of course, gravelyincreased by the delay in beginning its retreat, which we have seen tobe due to the delay in the communication to it by the French of thenews of the fall of Namur. On account of this delay not only was theextreme of the line which the British held immediately threatened withoutflanking, but it still lay somewhat forward of the rest of theforce. It was in danger of being turned round its exposed edge C, notonly because it lay on the extreme of the line, but also because, instead of occupying its normal position, AB, which it would haveoccupied had the retreat begun with all the rest, it actually occupiedthe position CD, which made it far more likely to be surrounded thanif it had been a day's march farther back, as it would have been ifthe French Staff work had suffered no delays. [Illustration: Sketch 54. ] There lay in the gap formed by this untoward tardiness in the Britishretirement, at the point M, the fortress of Maubeuge. It wasgarrisoned by French reserves, or Territorial troops, not of the samequality as the active army, and its defensive power was, even if theold ring of fortress theory had proved sound, of very doubtful order. The French 5th Army being no longer present to support the Britishright, but having fallen back behind the alignment of that right, General Sir John French had no support for what should have been hissecure flank save this fortress of Maubeuge, and it will be evidentfrom the above diagram that the enemy, should he succeed inoutflanking the British line, would compel it to fall back within thering of forts surrounding Maubeuge. To avoid destruction it would haveno alternative but to do that. For, counting the forces in front of itand the forces trying to get round its back, it was fighting odds oftwo to one. Maubeuge was a stronghold that had played a great part in therevolutionary war. Its resistance in the month of October 1793 hadmade possible the French victory of Wattigines, just outside itswalls, and had, perhaps, done more than any other feat of arms in thatyear to save the French Revolution from the allied governments ofEurope. It was, indeed, full of historic memories, from the momentwhen Cæsar had defeated the Nervii upon the Sambre just to the west ofthe town (his camp can still be traced in an open field above theriver bank) to the invasion of 1815. But this rôle which it had played throughout French history had notled to any illusion with regard to the rôle it might play in anymodern war; and at the best Maubeuge, in common with the otherill-fortified points of the Belgian frontier, suffered from the onlyerror--and that a grave one--which their thorough unnational politicalsystem had imposed upon the military plan of the French. This errorwas the capital error of indecision. No consistent plan had beenadopted with regard to the fortification of the Belgian frontier. The French had begun, after the recuperation following upon the war of1870, an elaborate and very perfect system of fortification alongtheir German frontier--that is, along the new frontier which dividedthe annexed territory of Alsace-Lorraine from the rest of the country. They had taken it for granted that the next German attempt would bemade somewhere between Longwy and Belfort. And they had spent in thisscheme of fortification, first and last, the cost of a great campaign. They had spent some three hundred million pounds; and it will bepossible for the reader to gauge the magnitude of this effort if hewill consider that it was a military operation more costly than wasthe whole of the South African War to Great Britain, or of theManchurian War to Russia. The French were wise to have undertaken thisexpense, because it had hitherto been an unheard-of offence againstEuropean morals that one nation in Christendom should violate thedeclared neutrality of another. And the attack upon Belgium as a meansof invading France by Germany had not then crossed the mind of any buta few theorists who had, so to speak, "marched ahead" of the rapiddecline in our common religion which had marked now threegenerations. But when the French had completed this scheme of fortification, Europeheard it proposed by certain authorities in Prussia that, as the costof invading France through the now fortified zone would beconsiderable, the German forces should not hesitate to originate yetanother step in the breakdown of European morality, and to sacrificein their attack upon France the neutrality of Belgium, of whichPrussia was herself a guarantor. Men have often talked during this war, especially in England, asthough the crime accompanying Prussian activities in the field werenormal to warfare; and this error is probably due to the fact that warupon a large scale has never come home to the imagination of thecountry, and that it is without experience of invasion. Yet it is of the very first importance to appreciate the truth thatPrussia in this campaign has postulated in one point after another newdoctrines which repudiate everything her neighbours have held sacredfrom the time when a common Christianity first began to influence thestates of Europe. The violation of the Belgian territory is on a parwith the murder of civilians in cold blood, and after admission oftheir innocence, with the massacre of priests, and the sinking withoutwarning of unarmed ships with their passengers and crews. To regardthese things as something normal to warfare in the past is asmonstrous an historical error as it would be to regard the reign ofterror during the French Revolution as normal to civil disputes withinthe State. And to appreciate such a truth is, I repeat, of especialmoment to the understanding of the mere military character of thecampaign. For if the violation of Belgium in particular had not beenthe unheard of thing it was, the fortification of the Franco-Belgianfrontier with which we are here concerned would have had a verydifferent fortune. As it was, the French could never quite make up their minds--or ratherthe French parliamentarians could never make up their minds--upon theamount of money that might wisely be expended in the defence of thisneutral border. There were moments when the opinion that Prussiawould be restrained by no fear of Europe prevailed among theprofessional politicians of Paris. The fortification of the Belgianfrontier was undertaken in such moments; a full plan of it was drawnup. But again doubt would succeed, the very large sums involved wouldappal some new ministry, and the effort would be interrupted. To suchuncertainty of aim characteristic of parliamentary government in amilitary nation was added, unfortunately, the consideration of theline of the Meuse. Liége and Namur were fortresses of peculiarstrength, Antwerp was thought the strongest thing in Europe; and thattriangle was conceived, even by many who believed that the violationof Belgian territory would take place, as affording a sufficientbarrier against the immediate invasion of France from the north-east. Those who made this calculation did not forget that fortresses arenothing without their full complement of men, guns, and stores; butthey could neither control, nor had they the elements properly toappreciate, the deficiency of organization in a foreign and notmilitary country. For all these causes Maubeuge, in common with other points along theBelgian frontier less important than itself, was left imperfect. Evenif the ring fortress had remained after 1905 what it had been beforethat date, and even if modern howitzer fire and modern high explosiveshad not rendered its tenure one of days rather than months, Maubeugewas not a first-class fortress. As it was, with fortificationsunrenewed, and with the ring fortress in any case doomed, Maubeuge wasa death-trap. The rôle assigned to the fortress in the original French plan was nomore than the support of the retiring operative corner, as it"retreated, manoeuvred, and held the enemy. " Maubeuge was consideredas part of a line beyond which the operative corner would not have tofall before the rest of the square, the "manoeuvring mass, " had swungup. Hence it was that the French General Staff and its Chief had putwithin the ring of its insufficient forts nothing more than a garrisonof Territorials--that is, of the older classes of the reserve. Had the British General accepted the lure of Maubeuge as Bazaine didthe lure of Metz in 1870, the Expeditionary Force would have beendestroyed. But it would have been destroyed, not after a long delay, as was the army at Metz, but immediately; for Maubeuge was not Metz, and the fortress power of resistance of to-day is not that of ageneration ago. Maubeuge, as a fact, fell within a fortnight of thedate when this temptation was offered to the sorely pressed Britisharmy, and had that temptation been yielded to, the whole force wouldhave been, in a military sense, annihilated before the middle ofSeptember. What preserved it was the immediate decision undertaken upon thatMonday night to proceed, in spite of the fatigues that were alreadyfelt after the first day's retreat, with a retirement upon thesouth-west, and to proceed with it as vigorously as possible. It was not yet daylight upon the morning of Tuesday, August 25th, whenthe move began. The Field-Marshal counted justly upon some exhaustionin his immensely superior enemy, especially in those troops of hisupon the west (the 2nd German Corps) which had to perform the heavymarching task of getting round the end of the British line. Thiselement, combined with the considerable distance which the Britishmarched that morning, saved the army; though not until another week ofalmost intolerable suffering had passed, and not until very heavylosses indeed had been sustained. The great Maubeuge-Bavai road, whichis prolonged to Eth, and which was, roughly, the British front of thatnight, was cleared shortly after sunrise. A couple of brigades ofcavalry and the divisional cavalry of the 2nd Corps covered theoperation on the centre of the right, in front of the main body of the2nd Corps, while the rest of the cavalry similarly covered the exposedwestern edge and corner of the line. Delays, with the criticism of which this short summary has no concern, had forbidden the whole force which should have been present with theBritish Army in Flanders at the outset of the campaign to arrive intime, and the contingents that had already come up had taken theshock, as we have already described, in the absence of the 4thDivision. This 4th Division had only begun to detrain from thejunction at Le Cateau at the same hour that General Sir John Frenchwas reading that Sunday message which prompted his immediateretirement from before Mons. When the full official history of the warcomes to be written, few things will prove of more credit to theExpeditionary Force and its command than the way in which this belateddivision--belated through no fault of the soldiers--was incorporatedwith the already existing organization, in the very midst of itsretreat, and helped to support the army. There are few parallels inhistory to the successful accomplishment of so delicate and perilousan operation. At any rate, in less than forty-eight hours after its arrival, the 4thDivision--eleven battalions and a brigade of artillery--wereincorporated with the British line just as the whole force was fallingback upon this Tuesday morning, the 25th; and the newly arriveddivision of fresh men did singular service in the further covering ofthe retirement. General Snow, who was in command of this division, was deployed upon a line running from just south of Solesmes, on theright, to a point just south of La Chatrie, upon the road from Cambraito Le Cateau, upon his left; and, as will be seen by the accompanyingsketch map, such a line effectually protected the falling back of therest of the force. Behind it the 1st and the 2nd British Corps fellback upon the line Cambrai to Landrecies. The small inset map showshow the various points in this two days' retreat stood to one another. [Illustration: Sketch 55. ] This line from Landrecies towards Cambrai had already been in partprepared in the course of that day--Tuesday--and entrenched, and itmay be imagined what inclination affected commanders and men towardsa halt upon that position. The pressure had been continuous and heavy, the work of detraining and setting in line the newly arrived divisionhad added to the anxieties of the day, and an occupation of theprepared line seemed to impose itself. Luckily, the unwisdom of such astand in the retirement was perceived in time, and the BritishCommander decided not to give his forces rest until some considerablenatural object superior to imperfect and hurriedly constructedtrenches could be depended upon to check the enemy's advance. Thethreat of being outflanked was still very grave, and the few hours'halt which would have been involved in the alternative decision might, or rather would, have been fatal. The consequences, however, to the men of this decision in favour ofcontinual retirement were severe. The 1st Corps did not reachLandrecies till ten o'clock at night. They had been upon the move foreighteen hours; but even so, the enemy, in that avalanche of advance(which was possible to him, as we now know, by the organization ofmechanical transport), was well in touch. The Guards in Landreciesitself (the 4th Brigade) were attacked by the advance body of the 9thGerman Army Corps, which came on in overwhelming numbers right intothe buildings of the town, debouching from the wood to the north undercover of the darkness. Their effort was unsuccessful. They did notsucceed in piercing or even in decisively confusing the British lineat this point; and, packed in the rather narrow street of Landrecies, the enemy suffered losses equivalent to a battalion in that desperatenight fighting. But though the enemy here failed to achieve hispurpose, his action compelled the continued retreat of men who werealmost at the limit of exhaustion, and who had now been marching andfighting for the better part of twenty-four hours. In that same darkness the 1st Division, under Sir Douglas Haig, washeavily engaged south-east of Maroilles. They obtained ultimately theaid of two French reserve divisions which lay upon the right of theBritish line, and extricated themselves from the peril they were inbefore dawn. By daylight this 1st Corps was still continuing itsretirement in the direction of Wassigny, with Guise as its objective. [Illustration: Sketch 56. ] Meanwhile the 2nd Corps, which had not been so heavily attacked, andwhich lay to the west--that is, still upon the extreme of theline--had come, before the sunset of that Tuesday, the 25th, into aline stretching from Le Cateau to near Caudry, and thence prolonged bythe 4th Division towards Seranvillers. [Illustration: Sketch 57. ] It will be seen that this line was bent--its left refused. Thisdisposition was, of course, designed to meet the ceaseless Germanattempt to outflank on the west; and with the dawn of Wednesday, the26th, it was already apparent how serious would be the task beforethis 2nd Corps, which covered all the rest of the army, and, in asense, the whole of the Anglo-French retirement. General Sir HoraceSmith-Dorrien, who was here in command, was threatened with a disasterthat might carry in its train disaster to the whole Britishcontingent, and ultimately, perhaps, to the whole Franco-British line. Although the German bodies which were attempting the outflanking hadnot yet all come up, the field artillery of no less than four Germancorps was already at work against this one body, and a general actionwas developing upon which might very well depend the fate of thecampaign. Indeed, the reader will do well to fix his attention uponthis day, Wednesday, the 26th August, as the key to all that followed. There are always to be found, in the history of war, places and timeswhich are of this character--nuclei, as it were, round which thebusiness of all that comes before and after seems to congregate. Ofsuch, for instance, was the Friday before Waterloo, when Erlon'scounter-orders ultimately decided the fate of Napoleon; and of suchwas Carnot's night march on October 15, 1793, which largely decidedthe fate of the revolutionary army. The obvious action to take in such a position as that in which the 2ndCorps found themselves was to break contact with the enemy, to callfor support from the 1st Corps, and to maintain the retreat asindefatigably as it had already been maintained in the precedingtwenty-four hours. But men have limits to their physical powers, which limits commonlyappear sharply, not gradually, at the end of a great movement. The 1stCorps had been marching and fighting a day and a night, and that aftera preceding whole day of retirement from before Mons. It was unable toexecute a further effort. Further, the general in command of the 2ndCorps reported that the German pressure had advanced too far to permitof breaking contact in the face of such an attack. It would have been of the utmost use if at this moment a large body ofFrench cavalry--no less than three divisions--under General Sordet, could have intervened upon that critical moment, the morning ofWednesday, the 26th, to have covered the retirement of the 1st Corps. They were in the neighbourhood; the British commander had seen theircommander in the course of the 25th, and had represented his need. Through some error or misfortune in the previous movement of thiscorps--such that its horses were incapable of further action throughfatigue--it failed to appear upon the field in this all-importantjuncture, and General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was left facingoverwhelming odds, which in artillery--the arm that was doing all theheavy work of that morning--were not less than four to one. The fact that the retirement was at last made possible was due morethan anything else to the handling of the British guns upon this day, and to the devotion with which the batteries sacrificed themselves tothe covering of that movement; while the cavalry, as in the precedingtwo days, co-operated in forming a screen for the retreat. It was about half-past three in the afternoon when the general incommand of this exposed left flank judged it possible to breakcontact, and to give the order for falling back. The experiment--forit seems to have been no more secure than such a word suggests--wasperilous in the extreme. It was not known whether the consequences ofthis fierce artillery duel against an enemy of four-fold superiorityhad been sufficient to forbid that enemy to make good the pursuit. Luckily, as the operation developed, it was apparent that the checkinflicted upon such enormous odds by the British guns was sufficientfor its purpose. The enemy had received losses that forbade him tomove with the rapidity necessary to him if he was to decide thematter. He failed to press the retiring 2nd British Corps in anyconclusive fashion: this 2nd Corps, the left wing, was saved; and withit the whole army, and perhaps the whole line. The retreat of this body, which had thus covered all its comrades, continued under terrible conditions of strain (and after so heavy anaction) right through the afternoon, and on hour after hour throughthe darkness; but though such an effort meant the loss of stragglersand of wounded, of guns whose teams had been destroyed, of material, and of all that accompanies a perilous retreat, one may justly saythat well before midnight of that Wednesday, the 26th, the operationhad proved successful and its purpose was accomplished. Two more days of almost equal strain were, as we shall see, to besuffered by the whole army before it had reached a natural obstaclebehind which it could draw breath (the river Oise), and might fairlybe regarded as no longer in peril of destruction; but the breakingpoint that had come on that Wednesday, the 26th, had been successfullypassed without disaster, and had been so passed, in the main, byvirtue of the guns. This critical day, upon which depended the fortunes certainly of theBritish contingent, and in some degree of all the "operative corner"of the French plan, turned in favour of the Allies, not only throughthe military excellence of the action which was broken off by SirHorace Smith-Dorrien during the afternoon, but also through the vigourand tenacity of the retreat. I must here beg the reader's leave for a short digression inconnection with those two phrases--"in favour of, " and "vigour. "History in general treats a retirement, particularly a rapidretirement accompanied by heavy losses, as a disaster; and theconception that such a movement may seem to the military historian asuccess, and that the energy of its conduct is just as important asthe energy of an assault, is unfamiliar to most students of civilianrecord. But I am writing here, though an elementary, yet a militaryhistory; and to the military historian a retreat may be just as much afactor in victory as an advance; while the energy and tenacityrequired for its carriage are, if anything, more important than thecorresponding qualities required for an advance. And in the case ofthis critical day and a half, the Wednesday, August 26th, and theWednesday and Thursday night, August 26th-27th, the preservation ofthe British forces, and to some extent of all that lay east of them, was made possible by the very fact that the retirement was prosecutedwith the utmost rapidity and without a halt. Had the retreat beeninterrupted in the hope of making a stand, or in the hope of repose, the whole army would have gone. Throughout the night, then, with heavy losses from stragglers, and inone case with the surrounding and annihilation by wounds and captureof nearly a whole battalion (the Gordons), the retreat of the 2ndCorps proceeded, and, in line with it, the retreat of the 1st Corps tothe east. But this 1st Corps, though set an easier task than the 2nd (which, atthe extreme of the line, was under the perpetual menace ofdevelopment), did not retire without losses of a serious character. Itwas marching on Guise, just as the 2nd Corps to the west of it wasmarching across the watershed to St. Quentin. The Munster Fusiliers, who were on its extreme right, had halted for the night on that sameevening of the 26th; for the 1st Corps, being less hard pressed, hadmore leisure for such repose. During the night a messenger was sent tothis body with orders for the resumption of the march next morning. Hewas taken prisoner, and never reached his goal. The Munsters wereattacked at dawn by the German pursuit in greatly superior numbers, surrounded and destroyed, as the Gordons of the 2nd Corps had been;the unwounded remnant was compelled to surrender. [Illustration: Sketch 58. ] The whole of Thursday, the 27th, and Friday, the 28th of August, theBritish retreat continued, the 1st Corps following on at the valley ofthe Oise towards La Fère, while the 2nd Corps to the west passed St. Quentin, and made for Noyon, in the neighbourhood of the same riverfarther down; and on the night of that Friday the Expeditionary Forcewas at last in line, and in some kind of order, organized for thefirst breathing space possible after so terrible an ordeal. [Illustration: Sketch 59. ] It is clear from the accompanying sketch map that the position theBritish had now reached gave to the whole Allied force a bent contour. The French armies to the east lay along line AB, which, had it beendirectly prolonged, would have stretched towards C; but the Britishcontingent, which, on account of its extreme position, had sufferedmost heavily, was turned right back on the scheme AD, and even so, was still in some peril of being outflanked by the German forces alongthe arrow (1) to the west of it. At this moment the French, whosefortunes we shall next describe, found it possible to check the furyof the pursuit. The drive of the German masses, which had so nearlyannihilated the British end of the line, was blocked, and theremainder of the great retreat followed a more orderly fashion, proceeded at a much slower rate, and approached that term at which acounter-offensive might be attempted. The whole process may be compared to the flood of a very rapid tide, which, after the first few hours, is seen to relax its speedconsiderably, and to promise in the immediate future an ebb. In order to appreciate how this was, let us next consider what thelarger French forces to the east of the British had been doing. Thereare no details available, very few published records, and it will notbe possible until an official history of the war appears to give morethan the most general sketch of the French movements in this retreat;but the largest lines are sufficient for our judgment of the result. It will be remembered that what I have called "the operative corner"of the Allied army had stood in the angle between the Sambre and theMeuse. It had consisted in the British contingent upon the left, orwest, in front of Mons; the 5th French Army, composed of three armycorps, under Lanrezac, to the east of it, along the Sambre, pastCharleroi; and the 4th French Army, also of three army corps, underLangle, along the Middle Meuse, being in general disposition what wehave upon the accompanying sketch. It had been attacked upon Saturday, the 22nd August, by seventeen German army corps--that is, by forcesdouble its own. On that same day Namur, at the corner, had fallen intocomplete possession of the Germans, the French retreat had begun, andon the following day the English force had, after the regrettabledelay of half a day, also begun its retirement. We have seen that the British retirement (following the dotted linesupon Sketch 60) had reached, upon the Friday night, the position fromNoyon to La Fère, marked also in dots upon the sketch. What had happened meanwhile to their French colleagues upon the east? [Illustration: Sketch 60. ] The first thing to note is that the fortress of Maubeuge, with itsgarrison of reserve and second line men, had, of course, been at onceinvested by the Germans when the British and French line had fallenbehind it and left it isolated. The imperfection of this fortress Ihave already described, and the causes of that imperfection. Maubeugecommanded the great railway line leading from Belgium to Paris, whichis the main avenue of supply for an invasion or for a retreat, runningnorth-east to south-west on the Belgian frontier upon the capital. The 5th French Army retired parallel to the British along the beltmarked in Sketch Map 60 by diagonal lines. At first, as its retirementhad begun earlier, it was behind, or to the south of, the British, whowere thus left almost unsupported. It lay, for instance, on Monday, the 24th, much along the position 1, at which moment the British Armywas lying along the position 2. That was the day on which the Germansattempted to drive the British into Maubeuge. But during the succeeding two days the French 5th Army (to which thefive corps, including the Prussian Guard, under Buelow, were opposed)held the enemy fairly well. They were losing, of course, heavily instragglers, in abandoned wounded, and in guns; but their retreat wassufficiently strongly organized to keep this section of the line wellbent up northwards, and just before the British halted for their firstbreathing space along the line La Fère and Noyon, the French 5th Armyattempted, and succeeded in, a sharp local attack against the superiorforces that were pursuing them. This local attack was undertaken fromabout the position marked 3 on Sketch 60, and was directed againstGuise. It was undertaken by the 1st and 3rd French Corps, underGeneral Maunoury. He, acting under Lanrezac, gave such a blow to thePrussian Guard that he here bent the Prussian line right in. Meanwhile the 4th French Army, which had also been retiring rapidlyparallel to the 5th French Army, lay in line with it to the east alongthat continuation of 3 which I have marked with a 4 upon the sketch. Farther east the French armies, linking up the operative corner withthe Alsace-Lorraine frontier, had also been driven back from the UpperMeuse, and upon Friday, the 28th of August, when the British halt hadcome between La Fère and Noyon (a line largely protected by theOise), the whole disposition of the Allied forces between theneighbourhood of Verdun and Noyon was much what is laid down in theaccompanying sketch. At A were the British; at B the successfulcounter-offensive of the French 5th Army had checked and bent back thePrussian centre under von Buelow; at C, the last section of what hadbeen the old operative corner, the army under Langle was thrust backto the position here shown, and pressed there by the Wurtembergers andthe Saxons opposed to it. Meanwhile further French forces, D and E, had also been driven back from the Upper Meuse, and were retiring withVerdun as a pivot, leaving isolated the little frontier town ofLongwy. This was not seriously fortified, had held out with onlyinfantry work and small pieces, and had not been thought worthy ofattack by a siege train. It surrendered to the Crown Prince uponFriday, 28th August. [Illustration: Sketch 61. ] [Illustration: Sketch 62. ] On that date, then, the two opposing lines might be compared, the oneto a great encircling arm AA, the elbow of which was bent at Guise, the other to a power BB which had struck into the hollow of the elbow, and might expect, with further success, to bend the arm so much moreat that point as to embarrass its general sweep. Those who saw the position as a whole on this Friday, the 28th ofAugust, wondered whether or not the French Commander-in-chief wouldorder the continuation of the successful local attack at Guise, and soattempt to break the whole German line. He did not give this order, and his reasons for retiring in the face of such an opportunity may bebriefly stated thus:-- 1. The French forces in line from Verdun to La Fère, and continued bythe British contingent to the neighbourhood of Noyon, were stillgravely inferior to the German forces opposed to them. Even, therefore, if the French success at Guise had been pushed farther, andhad actually broken the German line, either half of the French lineupon either side of the forward angle would have been heavilyoutnumbered by the two limbs of the enemy opposed to each, and thatenemy might perfectly well have defeated, though separated, eachportion of the force opposed to it. 2. To the west, at the position FF on Sketch 62, were acting largebodies of the enemy, which had swept, almost without meetingresistance, through Arras to Amiens. Against that advance there wasnothing but small garrisons of French Territorials, which were brushedaside without difficulty. Now these bodies, though they were mainly of cavalry which wereoperating thus to the west, had already cut the main line ofcommunications from Boulogne, upon which the British had hithertodepended, and were close enough to the Allied left flank to threatenit with envelopment, or, rather, to come up in aid of von Kluck at A, and make certain what he already could regard as probable--his powerto get round the British, and turn the whole left of the Allied line. 3. More important even than these two first conclusive considerationswas the fact that the French Commander-in-chief, had he proposed tofollow up this success of his subordinate at Guise, would have had tochange the whole of his general plan, and to waste, or at best todelay, the action of his chief factor in that plan. This chief factorwas the great manoeuvring mass behind the French line which had notyet come into play, and the advent of which, at a chosen moment, wasthe very soul of the French strategy. It is so essential to the comprehension of the campaign to seize thislast point that, at the risk of repetition, I will restate for thereader the main elements of that strategy. [Illustration: Sketch 63. ] I have called it in the earlier pages of this book "the open strategicsquare, " and I have shown how this theoretical arrangement was inpractice complicated and modified so that it came to mean, under theexisting circumstances of the campaign, the deliberate thrusting forthof the fraction called "the operative corner, " behind which largermasses, "the mass of manoeuvre, " were to come up in aid and assume thegeneral counter-offensive when the operative corner should have drawnthe enemy down to that position in which such a generalcounter-offensive would be most efficacious. To concentrate the great mass of manoeuvre was a business of somedays, and having ordered its concentration in one district, it wouldbe impossible to change the plan at a moment's notice. The districtinto which a great part of this mass of manoeuvre had beenconcentrated--or, rather, was in course of concentration at thismoment, the 28th August--was the district behind and in theneighbourhood of Paris. It lay far from the scene of operation atGuise. It was intended to come into play only when the general retreatshould have reached a line stretching from Verdun to the neighbourhoodof Paris itself. To have pursued the success at Guise, therefore, would have been to waste all this great concentration of the mass ofmanoeuvre which lay some days behind the existing line, and inparticular to waste the large body which was being gathered behind andin the neighbourhood of Paris. With these three main considerations in mind, and in particular thethird, which was far the most important, General Joffre determined togive up the advantage obtained at Guise, to order the two successfularmy corps under Maunoury, who had knocked the Prussian Guard at thatpoint, to retire, and to continue the general retreat until the Alliedline should be evenly stretched from Paris to Verdun. The wholesituation may be put in a diagram as follows: You have the Allied linein an angle, ABC. You have opposed to it the much larger German forcesin a corresponding angle, DEF. Farther east you have a continuation ofthe French line, more or less immovable, on the fortified frontier ofAlsace-Lorraine at M, opposed by a greater immovable German force atN. At P you have coming up as far as Amiens large German bodiesoperating in the west, and at Q a small newly-formed French body, the6th French Army, supporting the exposed flank of the Britishcontingent at A, near Noyon. Meanwhile you have directed towards S, behind Paris, and coming up at sundry other points, a concentration ofthe mass of manoeuvre. [Illustration: Sketch 64. ] It is evident that if the French offensive at B which has successfullypushed in the German elbow at E round Guise is still sent forward, andeven succeeds in breaking the German line at E, "the elbow, " the twolimbs into which the Germans will be divided, DE and EF, are eachsuperior in number to the forces opposed to them, and that DE inparticular, with the help of P, may very probably turn AB and its newsmall supporter at Q, roll it up, and begin a decisive victory, whilethe other large German force, EF, may press back or pierce the smalleropposed French force, BC. Meanwhile you would not only be risking this peril, but you would alsobe wasting your great mass of manoeuvre, SS, which is still in processof concentration, most of it behind Paris, and which could notpossibly come into play in useful time at E. It is far better to pursue the original plan to continue the retreatas far as the dotted line from Paris to Verdun, where you will havethe whole German force at its farthest limit of effort andcorresponding exhaustion, and where you will have, after the salutarydelay of the few intervening days, your large mass of manoeuvre, SS, close by to Paris and ready to strike. From such a diagram we see the wisdom of the decision that was takento continue the retirement, and the fruits which that decision was tobear. The whole episode is most eminently characteristic of the Frenchmilitary temper, which has throughout the whole of French historyplayed this kind of game, and invariably been successful when it hasattained success from a concentration of energy upon purely militaryobjects and a sacrificing of every domestic consideration to thesingle object of victory in foreign war. It is an almost invariable rule in French history that when themilitary temper of the nation is allowed free play its success isassured, and that only when the cross-current of a political objectdisturbs this temper do the French fail, as they failed in 1870, asthey failed in 1812, or as they failed in the Italian expeditions ofthe Renaissance. By geographical accident, coupled with theconditions, economic and other, to which their aggression gives rise, the French are nearly always numerically inferior at the beginning ofa campaign. They have almost invariably begun their great wars withdefeats and retirements. They have only succeeded when a patient, tenacious, and consistently military policy has given them therequisite delay to achieve a defensive-offensive plan. It was soagainst Otto the Second a thousand years ago; it was so in the wars ofthe Revolution; it was so in this enormous campaign of 1914. There isin their two thousand years of constant fighting one great andsalutary exception to the rule--their failure against Cæsar; fromwhich failure they date the strength of their Roman tradition--stillvigorous. * * * * * The minor fortified posts lying behind the French line were notdefended. Upon 29th August the French centre fell back behind Rethel, the Germans crossed the Aisne, occupied Rheims and Châlons, while theBritish contingent on the left and the French 6th Army now protectingits flank continued also to fall back towards Paris. And on Sedan day, 2nd September, we may regard the great movement as having reached itsend. The German advance had nowhere hesitated, save at Guise, and theFrench retirement after their success at Guise can only have seemed tothe German commanders a further French defeat. Those commanders knewtheir overwhelming numerical superiority against the total of theAllied forces--a superiority of some 60 per cent. They may haveguessed that the French were keeping a considerable reserve; but intheir imagination that reserve was thought far less than it reallywas, for they could hardly believe that under the strain of the greatretreat the French commanders would have had the implacable fortitudewhich permitted them to spare for further effort the reinforcements ofwhich the retiring army seemed in vital and even in despairing need. Upon this anniversary of Sedan day it cannot but have appeared to theGreat General Staff of the enemy that the purpose of their greateffort in the West was already achieved. They had reached the gates of Paris. They had, indeed, not yetdestroyed the enemy's main army in the field, but they had swept upgarrison after garrison; they had captured, perhaps, 150, 000 woundedand unwounded men; their progress had been that of a whirlwind, andhad been marked by a bewildering series of incessant victories. Theywere now in such a situation that either they could proceed to thereduction of the forts outside Paris (to which their experience oftheir hitherto immediate reduction of every other permanent work leftthem contemptuous), or they could proceed to break at will theinsufficient line opposed to them. [Illustration: Sketch 65. ] They stood, on this anniversary of Sedan, in the general situationapparent on the accompanying sketch. The 6th French Army was forcedback right upon the outer works of Paris; the British contingent, toits right, lay now beyond the Marne; the 5th French Army, to its rightagain, close along the Seine; the 4th and 3rd continuing the great bowup to the neighbourhood of Verdun, three-quarters of the way roundwhich fortress the Crown Prince had now encircled; and in front ofthis bent line, in numbers quite double its effectives, pressed thegreat German front over 150 miles of French ground. Upon the left orwest of the Allies--the German right--stood the main army of vonKluck, the 1st, with its supporters to the north and west, that hadalready pressed through Amiens. Immediately to the east of this, vonBuelow, with the 2nd Army, continued the line. The Saxons and theWurtembergers, a 3rd Army, pressed at the lowest point of the curve inoccupation of Vitry. To the east, again, beyond and in the Argonne, the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia was upon the point of reducingVerdun, the permanent works of which fortress had already suffered thefirst days of that bombardment from the new German siege train whichhad hitherto at every experiment completely destroyed the defence in afew hours. If we take for the terminal of this first chapter in theGreat War the morning of 4th September, we may perceive how nearly theenemy had achieved his object, to which there now stood as a threatnothing more but the French reserves, unexpected in magnitude, thoughtheir presence was already discovered, which had for the most partbeen gathered in the neighbourhood of and behind the fortified zone ofParis. With this position, of what it meant in immediate alternatives to theenemy, I will deal a few pages on at the close of this book, when Iwill also consider in one conspectus on the map the whole of that tendays' sweep down from the north, and summarize its effect upon theAllied attitude towards the next phase of the war. But to understand a campaign, one must seize not only thetopographical positions of troops, nor only their number: one mustalso gauge the temper of their commanders and of the political opinionat home behind them, for upon this moral factor everything ultimatelydepends. The men that fight are living men, and the motive power isthe soul. It is, therefore, necessary for the reader to appreciate at thisterminal date, September 2-4, the moral strength of the enemy, and tocomprehend in what mood of confidence the Germans now lay. With thisobject we must add to the story of the advance on Paris the subsidiaryevents which had accompanied that great sweep into the West. We mustturn to the "holding up of Russia" upon the East by the Austrianforces, and see how the partial failure of this effort (news of whichwas just reaching the Western armies) was quite eclipsed by thesplendid tidings of Tannenberg. We must see with German eyes thesecondary but brilliant victory in front of Metz; we must stand intheir shoes to feel as they did the clearing of Alsace, and tocomprehend with what contempt they must have watched the false pictureof the war which the governments and the press of the Allies, particularly in Britain, presented to public opinion in their doomedterritories; and we must, in general, grasp the now apocalyptic temperof the nervous, over-strained industrialized population which is thetissue of modern Germany. Not until we have a good general aspect of that mood can we understandeither the war at this turning-point in its fortunes, or the futuredevelopments which will be traced in the succeeding volumes of thisseries. I will, therefore, now turn to the three main elements productive ofthat mood in their historical order: the Battle of Metz, the Austrianoperations against Russia, and, lastly, the great victory ofTannenberg in East Prussia, before concluding this volume with asummary of the whole situation in those first days of September, justbefore the tide turned. THE BATTLE OF METZ. The Battle of Metz, though quite subsidiary to the general operationsof the war, and upon a scale which later operations have dwarfed, willbe mentioned with special emphasis in any just account of the greatwar on account of its moral significance. It took place before the main shock of the armies; it had no decisiveeffect upon the future of the campaign; but it was of the very highestweight, informing the German mind, and leading it into that attitudeof violent exaltation on which I shall later insist in these pages, and which largely determined all the first months of the war, withtheir enormous consequences for the future. For the action in front ofMetz was the first pitched battle fought in Western Europe during ourgeneration, and to an unexpected degree it fulfilled in its narrowarea all the dreams upon which military Germany had been nourished forforty years. It thrilled the whole nation with the news, at the veryoutset of hostilities, of a sharp and glorious victory; it seemed apresage of far more to come. The Battle of Metz was the limitedfoundation upon which was rapidly erected that triumphant mood thatlasted long after the tide had turned, and that matured, when badblundering had lost the victory in the West, into the unsoldierly, muddled hope that could fail to win, and yet somehow not lose, acampaign. We have seen that the disposition of the French armies at the momentwhen the shock was being delivered through Belgium involved along thefrontiers of Alsace-Lorraine the presence of considerable forces. These, once the operative corner had taken the shock, formed part ofthe mass of manoeuvre, and were destined in large part to swing up inaid of the men retreating from the Sambre. But in the very first days of the war, before the main blow hadfallen, and when the French General Staff were still in doubt as toprecisely where the blow _would_ fall, considerable bodies had beenoperating in Alsace and over the Lorraine frontier. The whole range ofthe Vosges was carried in the second week after the Britishdeclaration of war--that is, between 10th August and 15th August. Mulhouse was occupied; upon Monday, the 17th of August, Saarburg, themost important railway junction between Strassburg and Metz, was inFrench hands. Up to that date, though such comparatively small forceswere involved, the French had possessed a very decisive numericalsuperiority. It was not destined to last, for there was moving downfrom the north the now mobilized strength of Germany in this region;and a blow struck against the French left, with no less than fourarmy corps, was speedily to decide the issue upon this subsidiaryfront. [Illustration: Sketch 66. ] This great force was based upon Metz, from which fortress the actionwill presumably take its name in history. It stretched upon the 20thof August from the north of Pont-à-Mousson to beyond Château Salins. Before this overwhelming advance the French left rapidly retired. Itdid not retire quickly enough, and one portion of the French force--itis believed the 15th Division (that is, the first division of the 15thArmy Corps)--failed in its task of supporting the shock. Details of the action are wholly lacking. We depend even for what maybe said at this date upon little more than rumour. The Germans claimeda capture of ten batteries and of the equivalent of as manybattalions, and many colours. Upon the 21st the whole French left fellback, carrying with them as a necessary consequence the centre in theVosges Mountains and the right upon the plains of Alsace. So rapid wasthe retreat that upon the 22nd of August the Bavarians were atLunéville, and marching on Nancy; the extreme right of the German linehad come within range of the forts north of Toul; and in those samehours during which, on that same Saturday, the 22nd of August, the 5thFrench Army in the north fell back at the news of Namur and lost theSambre, those forces on the borders of Alsace-Lorraine had lost allthe first advantages of their thrust into the lost provinces, hadsuffered defeat in the first striking action of the war, and had putNancy in peril. Nancy itself was saved. The French counter-offensive was organized onthe 23rd of August, at a moment when the German line lay from St. Diénorthwards and westwards up to positions just in front of Nancy. Itwas delivered about a week later. That counter-offensive whichultimately saved Nancy belongs to the next volume, for it did notdevelop its strength until after Sedan Day, and after the end of thegreat sweep on Paris. The situation, then, in this field (the very names of which have suchgreat moral effects upon the French and the German minds) was, by the2nd of September, as follows:-- The French had suffered in the first considerable action of the war adisaster. They had lost their foothold in the annexed provinces. Theyhad put the capital of French Lorraine, Nancy, in instant peril. Theyhad fallen back from the Vosges. They were beginning, with gravedoubts of its success, a counter-offensive, to keep the enemy, ifpossible, from entering Nancy. They had lost thousands of men, manycolours, and scores of guns, and all Germany was full of the news. LEMBERG. The foundation of the Germanic plan upon the Eastern front at theorigin of the war was, as we have said, the holding up of Russiaduring her necessarily slow mobilization, while the decisive strokewas delivered in the West. That is the largest view of the matter. In more detail, we know that the main part of this task was entrustedto the Austro-Hungarian forces. The German forces had indeed enteredand occupied the west fringe of Russian Poland, seizing the smallindustrial belt which lies immediately east of Silesia, and the twotowns of Czestochowa and Kalish--the latter, in the very centre of thebend of the frontier, because it was a big railway depot, and, as itwere, a gage of invasion; the former, both because the holding of oneline demanded it (if Kalish and the industrial portion were held), andbecause Czestochowa being the principal shrine of the Poles, somestrange notion may have passed through the German mind that thepresence therein of Prussian officers would cajole the Poles into anaction against Russia. If this were part of the motive (and probablyit was), it would be a parallel to many another irony in the presentcampaign and its preliminaries, proceeding from the incapacity of theenemy to gauge the subtler and more profound forces of a civilizationto which it is a stranger. [Illustration: Sketch 67. ] This local German move was almost entirely political. The main task, as I have said, was left to the Austrians farther south; and, proceeding to further detail, we must see the Austrians stretched in aline from near the middle Carpathians past the neighbourhood ofTomasow towards Tarnow, and this line distinctly divided into twoarmies, a northern and a southern. The two met in an angle in front ofthe great fortress of Przemysl. The northern, or first, army faced, aswill be seen, directly towards the Russian frontier. It was theoperative wing; upon its immediate action and on the rapidity of theblow it was to deliver depended the success of this first chapter inthe Eastern war. [Illustration: Sketch 68. ] The southern, or second, army, which stretched all along the Galicianplain at the foot of the Carpathians to the town of Halicz, had forits mission the protection of the first army from the south. It wasknown, or expected, that the first army would advance right intoRussian Poland, with but inferior forces in front of it. It wasfeared, however, that the main Russian concentration to the south-eastof it might turn its right flank. The business of the second army wasto prevent this. The first army (I), being the operative body, wasmore homogeneous in race, more picked in material than the second(II), the latter containing many elements from the southern parts ofthe empire, including perhaps not a few disaffected contingents, suchas certain regiments of Italian origin from the Adriatic border. So far as we can judge, perhaps--and it is a very rough estimate--wemay put the whole body which Austria-Hungary was thus moving in thefirst phase of the war beyond the Carpathians at more than 750, 000, but less than 1, 000, 000 men. Call the mass 800, 000, and one would notbe far wrong. Of this mass quite a quarter lay in reserve near themountains behind the first army. The remaining three-quarters, or600, 000 men, were fairly evenly divided between the two groups of thefirst and of the second army--the first, or northern, one being underthe command of Dankl, the second under that of von Auffenberg. Eachof these forces was based upon one group of depots of particularimportance, the northern operative army (I) relying upon Przemysl, andthe southern one (II) upon Lemberg. It was less than a week after the first German advance bodies hadtaken the outer forts of Liége when Dankl crossed the frontier, heading, with his centre, towards Krosnik and farther towards Lublin. His troops were in Russian territory upon the Monday evening or theTuesday, 10th-11th August. The second army meanwhile stood fulfilling its rôle of awaiting andcontaining any Russians that might strike in upon the south. It hadadvanced no more than watching bodies towards the frontier, such asthe 35th Regiment of the Austrian Landwehr, which occupied Sokal, andsmaller units cordonned out southward between that town and Brody. Here, at the outset of the large operations that were to follow, it isimportant for the reader to note that everything depended upon theresisting power of the second, or southern, army. Observe the problem. Two men, a left-hand man and a right-hand man, go out to engage two other men whom they hope and believe to beunready. The left-hand man is particularly confident of being able todrive back his opponent, but he knows that sooner or later upon hisright the second enemy, a stronger man, may come in and disturb hisaction. He says therefore to his right-hand companion: "Stand firm andengage and contain the energy of your opponent until I have finishedwith mine. When I have done that, I shall turn round towards you, andbetween us we will finish the second man. " Seeing the paucity of Russian communications, and the physicalnecessity under which the Russians were, on account of the position oftheir depots and centres of mobilization, of first putting the mass oftheir men on the south, the physical impossibility under which theylay of putting the mass of their men in the north for the moment, theplan was a sound one; _but_ its success depended entirely upon thetenacity of the second Austrian army, which would have to meet large, and might have to meet superior, numbers. The first army went forward with very little loss and against verylittle resistance. The Russian forces which were against it, which wemay call the first Russian army, were inferior in number, and fellback, though not rapidly, towards the Bug. It relied to some extent inthis movement upon the protection afforded by the forts of Zamosc, butit was never in any serious danger until, or unless, things went wrongin the south. The Austrians remained in contact (but no more), turnedsomewhat eastward in order to keep hold of the foe, when their advancewas checked by the news, first of unexpected Russian strength, laterof overwhelming Russian advances towards the south. Long before thethird week in August, the first Austrian army was compelled to checkits advance upon the news reaching it from the second, and itsfortunes, in what it had intended to be a successful invasion ofRussian Poland, had ended. For the whole meaning of the first Galiciancampaign turns after the 14th of August upon the great Russian advancein the south. It was upon that day, August 14, that the Russian force, under GeneralRussky (which we will call the second army), crossed the frontier. Its right occupied Sokal, its centre left moved in line with the rightupon von Auffenberg's force directly before it. The Russian mobilization had proceeded at a greater pace than theenemy had allowed for. The Russian numbers expected in this fieldappeared in far greater strength than this expectation had allowedfor, and it was soon apparent that von Auffenberg's command would haveto resist very heavy pressure. But it would be an error to imagine, as was too hastily concluded inthe press of Western Europe at the time, that this pressure upon thefront of the second Austrian army, with its dogged day after dayfighting and mile by mile advance, was the principal deciding factorin the issue. That deciding factor was, in fact, the appearance uponthe right flank of von Auffenberg of yet another Russian army (whichwe will call the third) under Brussilov. It was the menace of thisforce, unexpected, or at least unexpected in its great strength, whichreally determined the issue, though this was again affected by thetardiness of the Austrian retirement. Russky's direct advance uponthe front of his enemy extended for a week. It had begun when it haddestroyed the frontier posts upon Friday, the 14th. It was continueduntil the evening of the succeeding Thursday, regularly, slowly, butwithout intermission. It stood upon the Friday, the 21st--the day onwhich the first shots were fired at the main Franco-British forces inthe West, and the day on which the first shell fell into Charleroistation--not more than one day's cavalry advance from the outer worksof Lemberg, but it was just in that week-end that the pressure ofBrussilov began to be felt. This third Russian army had come up from the south-east, supplied bythe main Odessa railway through Tarnopol. It was manifestlythreatening the right flank of von Auffenberg, and if a guess may behazarded upon operations on which we have so little detail as yet, andwhich took place so far from our own standpoint, the error of theAustrian general seems to have consisted in believing that he couldmaintain himself against this flank attack. If this were the case (andit is the most probable explanation of what followed), the errorwould have been due to the same cause which affected all Austrianplans in these first days of the war--the mistake as to the rapiditywith which Russia would complete her preparations. [Illustration: Sketch 69. ] The first outpost actions with the enemy, and even the more vigorousstruggles when full contact had been established with this third armyarrived thus from the south-east, only led the Austrian commanderdeeper into his mistaken calculation; for upon the Sunday, August23rd, a local success was achieved which seems to be magnified by theAustrians into a decisive check administered to the enemy. If this wastheir view, they were soon to be undeceived. In those very days whichsaw the greatest peril in the West, the last days of August, duringwhich the Franco-British Allies were falling back from the Sambre, pursued by the numbers we have seen upon an earlier page, the thirdand the second Russian armies effected their junction, the moment oftheir first joining hands being apparently that same Monday, the 24thof August, during which Sir John French was falling back uponMaubeuge. By the middle of the ensuing week they had already advancedwith a very heavy numerical superiority upon the part of the Russians, which threatened to involve the Austrian second army in disaster. Ifthat went, the first army was at the mercy of the victors upon thesouth, and with every day that passed the chance of collapseincreased. Now, too late (so far as we can judge), the second Austrianarmy disposed itself for retreat, but that retreat was not allowed toproceed in the orderly fashion which its commander had decided, andin the event part of it turned into a rout, all of it developed into adefinite disaster for the enemy, and as conspicuous a success for ourally. That this success was not decisive, as this great war must countdecisions, the reader will perceive before its description isconcluded; but it set a stamp upon the whole of the war in the East, which months of fighting have not removed but rather accentuated. Itdelivered the province of Galicia into the hands of Russia, it broughtthat Power to the Carpathians, it ultimately compelled Germany todecide upon very vigorous action of her own immediately in Poland, andit may therefore be justly said to have changed the face of the war. To this great series of actions, which history will probably know bythe name of Lemberg, we will now turn. When this large Russian movement against the right of von Auffenberg'sarmy, and the considerable Russian concentration there, was clearlydiscerned, the Austrian force was immediately augmented, and it wasnot until after the first stages of the conflict we are about todescribe that it counted the full numbers mentioned above. But, evenso reinforced, it was inadequate for the very heavy task which therefell upon it. It is not to be denied that its heterogeneouscomposition--that is, its necessary weakness in quality--affected itsvalue; but the principal factor in its ill success was still thesuperiority of Russian numbers in this field, and this, in its turn, proceeded from a rapidity and completeness in the Russian mobilizationfor which the enemy had never made provision. The action of the Russian left against von Auffenberg was twofold:Russky, from the north, was coming across the river Bug, and struck anAustrian entrenched line in front of Lemberg. His numbers permittedhim to turn that entrenched line, or, at any rate, to threaten itsturning, for Russky's right stretched almost to within cavalry touchof Tomasow. In combination with this movement, and strictlysynchronizing with it, Brussilov was advancing from the Sereth River. Both these movements were being carried out full during the last daysof August. [Illustration: Sketch 70. ] It was on Friday, the 28th of that month, that Tarnopol fell, as wehave seen, into the hands of the Russians, and that Brussilov was, therefore, able to effect his junction with Russky in the north, andthis success was the occasion of the first of those bayonet actions ona large scale wherein the Russians throughout the war continued toshow such considerable personal superiority over their opponents. When Tarnopol had gone, not on account of the loss of theirgeographical point, but because its occupation rendered the junctionof the Russian armies possible, and their advance in one great concaveline upon Lemberg, it was no longer doubtful that von Auffenberg hadlost this preliminary campaign. There are moments in war where the historian can fix a turning-point, although the decision itself shall not yet have been reached. Thus, inthe campaign of 1793 between the French Revolution and its enemies, Turcoing was not a decisive action, but it was the necessary breederof the decisive actions that followed. And in the same way Tarnopol, though but a local success, decided Lemberg. In the last days ofAugust all von Auffenberg's right had to fall back rather rapidly uponentrenched positions to the south and east of Lemberg itself, just ashis left had had to fall back on similar positions against Russky. The action for Lemberg itself opened, by a curious coincidence, thecampaign which was the anniversary of the first fighting round Sedan, and closed precisely at the moment when the tide of German advance inthe West was turned. Forty-eight hours decided the issue. It was, perhaps, Russky'scontinual extended threat to envelop the left of the Austrian positionand to come upon Auffenberg's communications which was the chieffactor in the result; but that result was, after the junction of thetwo Russian armies, no longer really in doubt. The first heavy assaultupon the trenches had taken place upon the Wednesday morning at dawn;before nightfall of Thursday the two extremes of the Austrian linewere bent back into such a horseshoe that any further delay would haveinvolved complete disaster. It is true that the central trenches infront--that is, to the east of the great town--still held secure, andhad not, indeed, been severely tried. But it remains true that vonAuffenberg had committed the serious error of risking defeat in frontof such a city. And here some digression upon the nature of thisoperation may be of service to the reader, because it is one whichreoccurs more than once in the first phases of the war, and must, inthe nature of things, occur over and over again before the end of it. Examples of it already appeared in the first six months of the war, inthe case of Lille and in the case of Lodz; and it is a necessarilyrecurrent case in all modern warfare. A great _modern_ town, particularly if it has valuable industries, isa lure as powerful over the modern commander as was a capital or theseat of any government or even a fortress for those of earlier times. To abandon such a centre is to let fall into the enemy's handsopportunities for provisionment and _machinery_ for his furthersupply; it is to allow great numbers of one's nationals to pass ashostages into his power; it is nearly always to give up to him thejunction of several great railways; it is to permit him to levy heavyindemnities, and even, if he is in such a temper, to destroy in greatquantities the accumulated wealth of the past. On account of all this, it requires a single eye to the larger issuesof war, and a sort of fanaticism for pure strategy in a commanderbefore he will consent to fall behind a position of such politicaland material value, and to let it fall to his opponent. But, on the other hand, such a position is as bad in strategical valueas it is good in material and political value. If you suffer defeat in front of a great modern town, and have toretreat through it under the blows of the victorious enemy, you are inthe worst possible position for conducting that retreat. The streetsof the town (but few of which will run parallel to your course andcan, therefore, serve as avenues of escape for your army) are so manydefiles in which your columns will get hopelessly congested. Theoperation may be compared to the pouring of too much liquid into afunnel which has too small an orifice. Masses of your transport willremain clogged outside the place; you run the risk of a partial andperhaps of a complete disaster as the enemy presses on. There is very much more than this. A great town cannot but contain, ifyou have long occupied it, the material of your organization; you willprobably abandon documents which the enemy should not see. You willcertainly, in the pressure of such a flight, lose accumulated stores. Again, the transverse streets are so many points of "leakage, " intowhich your congested columns will bulge out and get confused. Again, you will be almost necessarily dealing with the complication of a massof civilian conditions which should never be allowed to interrupt amilitary operation. In general, to fight in front of a great town, when the chances areagainst you, is as great an error as to fight in front of a marsh withfew causeways; so far as mere topography is concerned, it is a greatererror still. Lemberg did not, indeed, fulfil all these conditions. It is very large(not far from a quarter of a million people), with all its suburbs itis nearly two miles in extreme extent, and its older or central partis a confusion of narrow streets; but it is not highly industrialized, and the position of the Austrian armies was such that the retreatcould be effected mainly from either side of the built area, particularly as the main enemy pressure had not come in front of thecity along the Busk Road, but far to the east and south in the openfield. But Lemberg was an exceedingly important railway centre (sevenlines converge there), and it contained an immense amount of warmunitions. When, therefore, the retreat was tardily undertaken, thefact that the more precipitate retirement had begun in front of thecity and not behind it was of considerable effect in what followed. To some extent von Auffenberg, in spite of the tardiness of hisdecision to retire, had protected his retreat. The main line of thatretreat was established for him, of course, by the main Galicianrailway, which runs back from Lemberg to Przemysl. He prepared aposition some two days' march behind Lemberg, and defended with arearguard at Grodek the belated withdrawal of his main force. But fromthe nature of the Russian advance, Russky, upon von Auffenberg's left, perpetually threatened this railway; and Brussilov, upon his right, pressed the rapidly-melting mass of the varied contingents opposed tohim through the difficult, hilly, and woody country of the foothills. [Illustration: Sketch 71. ] It was upon the Friday, September 4th, that the Austrian evacuation ofLemberg was complete, and that the Russian administration wasestablished in the town. Before Monday, the 7th, the Austrian righthad already half converted their retirement into a rout, and the greatcaptures of prisoners and of guns had begun. That important arm, theirregular light cavalry of the Russians, notably the great Cossackcontingent, found its opportunity, and the captures began upon a scalefar exceeding anything which the war had hitherto shown or was toshow for at least the next six months. The matter is of moreimportance, to our judgment of the war, in its quality than in itsscale. In the very same week at Tannenberg nearly as many Russians hadbeen eliminated from the Russian forces as Austrians were hereeliminated from the Austrian forces. But the point is that, whereas inthe Battle of Tannenberg envelopment, with its consequent slaughter ofmen who cannot escape and its wholesale captures, left the rest of theRussian army with its _moral_ intact, the Austrian losses were theproduct of a partial dissolution, and affected the whole of theirsouthern army. First and last one-third of it had fallen _asprisoners_ into Russian hands, apart from the enormous number ofkilled and removed wounded. It could only just be said that that armyremained in being upon Monday, the 7th September, with which date thissection of my work ends. The other Austrian army to the north, itsflank thus uncovered, was compelled to fall back rapidly, though theforces in front of it were small; and the Austro-Hungarian servicenever fully recovered from this great blow. TANNENBERG. The province of East Prussia is of a character peculiar in the GermanEmpire and in Europe. That character must be grasped if the reader is to understand whatfortunes attended the war in this region; for it is a district whichin its history, in its political value, and in its geographicalarrangements has very powerfully affected the whole of the campaign. Historically this district is the cradle of that mixed race whosestrict, narrow, highly defined, but quite uncreative policy has nowpiqued, now alarmed, civilized Europe for almost two hundred years. [Illustration: Sketch 72. ] The Prussian, or rather the Prussian aristocracy, which, by achievingthe leadership of Germany, has flung so heavy a mass at Europe, originated in the rough admixture of certain West German and Christianknights with the vague pagan population of the Eastern Baltic plain, which, until almost the close of the Middle Ages, was still a fieldfor missionary effort and for crusade. It was the business of theTeutonic knights to tame this march of Christendom. They accomplishedtheir work almost out of sight of the governing empire, the Papacy, and Christendom in general, with what infamies history records. Thedistrict thus occupied was not within the belt of that high Polishculture which is one of the glories of Europe. Nations may notinexactly be divided into those who seek and those who avoid the sea. The Poles are of the latter type. This belt, therefore, of _Borussia_(whence our word Prussia is derived)--roughly from the Vistula up onto the Bight of Libau--was held by the Teutonic knights in a sort ofsavage independence. The Christian faith, which it had been theirpretext and at first their motive to spread, took little root; butthey did open those avenues whereby the civilization which Germanyitself had absorbed from the south and west could filter in; and thenorthern part of the district, that along the sea (which is the leastmarshy, and, as that poor country goes, the least barren), was fromthe close of the Middle Ages German-owned, though for some generationsnominally adherent to the Polish crown. The Polish race extended nofarther northward in the present province than the lake country of itssouthern half, and even there suffered an admixture of Lithuanian andGerman blood. That lake country well merits a particular description, for itstopography has powerfully affected the war in the East; but for themoment we must chiefly grasp the political character following uponthe history of this land. The chief noble of "Borussia, " the governingduke, acquired, not from the empire nor perhaps in the eyes of Europe, but from the Polish monarchy, the title of king, and it must never beforgotten that the capital at Berlin, and the "Mark"--that is, thefrontier march--of Brandenburg, though now the centre, are neither theorigins nor the pride of the Hohenzollern power. They were kings ofPrussia because Prussia was extraneous to the European system. Therecame a moment, as I have pointed out in an earlier page in this book, when the Prussian kingship and the electorate of Brandenburg coincidedin one person. All men of education know, and all men whatsoever feel, what influence an historical origin will have upon national outlook. East Prussia, therefore, remains to-day something of a politicalfetish. Its towns may be called colonies of the Germans, thebirthplaces or the residences of men famous in the German story. Itscountry-sides, although still largely inhabited by a population ofservile memories and habits not thoroughly welded with their masters, do not take up great space in the view the German takes of the region. He sees rather the German landowner, the German bailiff, the Germanschoolmaster, and the numerous German tenants of the wealthier typewho, though a minority, form the chief part of this social system. Weshall see later what this miscalculation cost the great landownersduring the Russian invasion, but we must note in passing that it is amiscalculation common to every people. Only that which is articulatein the States stands out large in the social perspective duringperiods of order and of peace. The Prussian royal house, the Prussian aristocracy, have then for thisbastion towards the east an especial regard, which has not beenwithout its sentimental influence upon the course of the war; and thatregard is very highly increased by the artificial political boundariesof modern times. East Prussia is, for the Germans as a whole, their rampart against theSlav; and though, beyond the present purely political and onlycentury-old frontier, a large German-speaking population is to bediscovered (especially in the towns under Russian rule), yet such isthe influence of a map upon a people essentially bookish in theirinformation, that East Prussia stands to the whole German Empire, aswell as to its wealthier inhabitants, for a proof of the German powerto withstand the dreaded pressure of the Russian from the East. It was to be expected, therefore, that two strategical consequenceswould flow from these non-strategical conditions: first, that theRussians would be tempted--though, no doubt, in very small force forsuch a secondary operation--to raid a district towards which theenemy's opinion was so sensitive; secondly, that enemy would betempted, after each such effort, to extend a disproportionate force inridding the country of such raids. The Germans, for all the dictates of pure strategics, would hardlyhold firm under the news that Slav soldiers were in the farms andcountry-houses, and were threatening the townsfolk of East Prussia. The Russians, though no direct advantage was to be gained, and thoughthe bulk of their force must be used elsewhere, would certainly bedrawn to move into East Prussia in spite of the known and peculiarlyheavy difficulties to an advance which that province presented. What were those difficulties? They were of two kinds, the second of which has been, perhaps, undulyemphasized at the expense of the first. The first was, that the Baltic extreme of this region lay at the veryend of the longest possible line the Russians could move on. Evensupposing their front extended (as soon it did) from the Carpathiansto the sea, this Baltic piece was the end of the line and farthestfrom their material bases and their sources of equipment. It was badlyserved with railways, difficult of access from the soil lying to theeast, and backed by that sparsely inhabited belt of Russian territoryin which the modern capital of St. Petersburg has been artificiallyerected, but which is excentric to the vital process of Russia. As afact, even after eight months of war, let alone in the first phaseswhich we are here about to describe, the extreme end of this line wasnot attempted by the Russians at all. Next to this extreme position, which was the first handicap, comes theregion of the lakes, the nature of which was the second handicap. The Masurian Lake district can best be appreciated by some descriptionof its geology and its landscape. It was probably moulded by the workof ice in the past. Great masses of ice have ground out, in their veryslow progress towards the sea over the very slight incline northwardsof that line, hollows innumerable, and varying from small pools toconsiderable lakes; the ice has left, upon a background of sand, patches of clay, which hold the waters of all this countryside inbrown stretches of shallow mere, and in wider extents of marsh andbog. The rare travellers who explore this confusion of low roundedswells and flats carry back with them to better lands a picture of onegrossly monotonous type continuing day upon day. Pine and birch woods, often ordered with the regularity and industry of the German forestorganization, but often also straggling and curiously stunted andsmall, break or confuse the view upon either side. The impression of the district is most clearly conveyed from somesandy summit, bare of trees, whence a man may overlook, though notfrom any great height, the desolate landscape for some miles. Heobtains from such a view neither the sense of forest which woodedlands of great height convey in spite of their clearings, nor thesense of endless plain which he would find farther to the east or tothe north. He perceives through the singularly clear air in autumnbrown heaths and plains set here and there with the great stretches ofwoodland and farmsteads, the stubble of which is soon confused by theeye in the distance with the barren heaths around. In winter, theundulating mass of deep and even snow is marked everywhere by thesmall, brown, leafless trees in their great groupings, and by thepines, as small, and weighted with the burden of the weather; but muchthe most striking of the things seen in such a landscape are thestretches of black water, or, if the season be hard, of black icewhich, save when the snow has recently fallen, fierce winds willcommonly have swept bare. The military character of such a region will be clear. It is, in thetechnical language of military art, a labyrinth of _defiles_. Care hasbeen expended upon the province, especially in the last twogenerations, and each narrow passage between the principal sheets ofwater carries a road, often a hard causeway. A considerable system ofrailways takes advantage of the same natural narrow issues; but evento those familiar with the country, the complexity of these narrow drygates or defiles, and their comparative rarity (contrasted with thevast extent of waterlogged soil or of open pool), render an advanceagainst any opposition perilous, and even an unopposed advance slow, and dependent upon very careful Staff work. Columns in their progressare for hours out of touch one with the other, and an unexpected checkin some one narrow must be met by the force there present alone, forit will not be able to obtain immediate reinforcement. Again, all this line, with its intermixture of sand and clay, which isdue to its geological origin, is a collection of traps for anycommander who has not thoroughly studied his lines of advance or ofretreat--one might almost say for any commander who has not had longpersonal experience of the place. There will be across one mere a beltof sand or gravel, carrying the heaviest burdens through the shallowwater as might a causeway. Its neighbour, with a surface preciselytwin, with the same brown water, fringed by the same leaves and drearystretches of stunted wood, will be deep in mud, but a natural platformmay stretch into a lake and fail the column which uses it before thefarther shore is reached. In the strongest platforms of this kind gapsof deep clay or mud unexpectedly appear. But even with thesedeceptions, a column is lucky which has only to deal in its march withopen water and firm banks; for the whole place is sown with what wereformerly the beds of smaller meres, and are now bogs hardened inplaces, in others still soft--the two types of soil hardlydistinguishable. During any orderly advance, an army proceeding through the MasurianLakes will strictly confine itself to the great causeways and to therailway. During any retreat in which it is permitted to observe thesame order it will be similarly confined to the only possible issues;but let the retreat be confused, and disaster at once threatens. A congested column attempting to spread out to the right or to theleft will fall into marsh. Guns which it has attempted to save by thecrossing of a ford will sooner or later find mud and be abandoned. Menwill be drowned in the unexpected deeps, transport embedded and lost;and apart from all this vast wastage, the confusion of units willspeedily put such a brake upon the whole process of retirement thatenvelopment by an enemy who knows the district more thoroughly ishardly to be avoided. It was this character in the dreary south of East Prussia which wasthe cause of Tannenberg, and as we read the strategical plan of thatdisaster, we must keep in mind the view so presented of an empty land, thus treacherous with marsh and reed and scrub and stretches of barrenflat, which may be heath, or may be a horse's height and more ofslightly covered slime. The first phase of the business lasts until the 24th of August, beginning with the 7th of that month, and may be very briefly dealtwith. Two Russian armies, numbering altogether perhaps 200, 000 men, or atthe most a quarter of a million, advanced, the one from the Niemen, the other from the Narew--that is, the one from the east, the otherfrom the south, into East Prussia. The Germans had here reservetroops, in what numbers we do not know, but perhaps half the combinednumbers of the Russian invasion, or perhaps a little more. The mainshock was taken upon the eastern line of invasion at Gumbinnen; theGermans, defeated there, and threatened by the continued advance ofthe other army to the west of them, which forbade their retreatwestward, fell back in considerable disorder upon Königsberg, lostmasses of munitions and guns, and were shut up in that fortress. Thedefeat at Gumbinnen occupied four days--from the 16th to the 20th ofAugust. Meanwhile the Russian army which was advancing from the Narew hadstruck a single German army corps--the 20th--in the neighbourhood ofFrankenau. The Russian superiority in numbers was very great; theGerman army corps was turned and divided. Half of it fled westward, abandoning many guns and munitions; the other half fled north-eastwardtowards Königsberg, and the force as a whole disappeared from thefield. The Russians pushed their cavalry westward; Allenstein wastaken, and by the 25th of August the most advanced patrols of theRussians had almost reached the Vistula. The necessity for retaking East Prussia by the Germans was a purelypolitical one. The vast crowd of refugees flying westward spread panicwithin the empire. The personal feeling of the Emperor and of thePrussian aristocracy in the matter of the defeated province was keen. Had that attempt to retake East Prussia failed, military history wouldpoint to it as a capital example of the error of neglecting purelystrategical for political considerations. As a fact, it succeededbeyond all expectation, and its success is known as the German victoryof Tannenberg. The nature of this victory may be grasped from the accompanying sketchmap. From the town of Mlawa, just within Russian Poland, beyond thefrontier, runs, coming up from Warsaw, a railway to Soldau, just uponthe Prussian side of the frontier. At Soldau three railwaysconverge--one from the east, one going west to Niedenberg and thejunction of Ortelsberg, a third coming in from the north-east andEylau. [Illustration: Sketch 73. ] From Eylau, through Osterode, the main international line runsthrough Allenstein, and so on eastward, while a branch from this goesthrough Passenheim to the junction at Ortelsberg. Here, then, you have a quadrilateral of railways about fifty miles inlength. Within that quadrilateral is extremely bad country--lakes, marshes, and swamps--and the only good roads within it are thosemarked in single lines upon my sketch--the road from Allensteinthrough Hohenstein to Niedenberg, and the road from Niedenberg toPassenheim. As one goes eastwards on that road from Niedenberg toPassenheim, in the triangle Niedenberg-Passenheim-Ortelsberg, thecountry gets worse and worse, and is a perfect labyrinth of marsh, wood, and swamp. The development of the action in such a ground was asfollows:-- The Russian commander, Samsonoff, with his army running fromAllenstein southwards, was facing towards the west. He had with himperhaps 200, 000 men, perhaps a trifle less. His reconnaissance wasfaulty, partly because the aeroplanes could discover little in thatwooded country, partly because the Staff work was imperfect, and hisIntelligence Department not well informed by his cavalry patrols. Hethought he had against him to the west only weak forces. As a fact, the Germans were sending against him what they themselves admit to be150, 000 men, and what were quite possibly nearer 200, 000, for they haddrawn largely upon the troops within Germany. They had brought roundby sea many of the troops shut up in Königsberg, and they had broughtup the garrisons upon the Vistula. Further, they possessed, drawn fromthese garrisons, a great superiority in that arm which throughout allthe earlier part of the great war was the German stand-by--heavyartillery, and big howitzers capable of use in the field. On Wednesday, 26th August, Samsonoff first discovered that he had aformidable force in front of him. It was under the command of von Hindenburg, a man who had studied thisdistrict very thoroughly, and who, apart from his advantage in heavyartillery, knew that difficult country infinitely better than hisopponents. During the Wednesday, the 26th, Hindenburg stood upon thedefensive, Samsonoff attacking him upon the line Allenstein-Soldau. Atthe end of that defensive, the attack on which was badly hampered inso difficult a country, von Hindenburg massed men upon his right nearSoldau. This move had two objects: first, by pushing the Russians backthere to make them lose the only good road and railway by which theycould retire south upon their communications into the country whencethey had come; secondly, to make them think, in their natural anxietyfor those communications, that his main effort would be deliveredthere to the south. As a fact, it was his intention to act elsewhere. But the effect of his pressure along the arrow _a_ was to give theRussian line by the evening of that Wednesday, the 26th of August, theform of the line 1 upon Sketch 73. The advantage he had thus gained in front of Soldau, Hindenburgmaintained by rapid and successful entrenchment; and the next day, Thursday, 27th August, he moved great numbers round by railway to hisleft near Allenstein, and appeared there with a great localsuperiority in numbers and in heavy guns. By the evening of that day, then, the 27th, he had got the Russian line into the position 2, andthe chief effort was being directed along the arrow _b_. On the 28thand 29th the pressure continued, and increased here upon the north;the Russian right was pushed back upon Passenheim, for which there wasa most furious fight; and by the evening of the 29th Samsonoff's wholebody was bent right round into the curve of the line 3, and vigorousblows were being dealt against it along the arrow _c_, which bent itfarther and farther in. It was clearly evident by that evening, the 29th of August, thatSamsonoff must retreat; but his opportunities for such a retreat werealready difficult. All he had behind him was the worst piece in thewhole country--the triangle Passenheim-Ortelsberg-Niedenberg--and hismain avenue of escape was a defile between the lake which the railwayat Ortelsberg uses. His retirement became hopelessly congested. Further pressure along thearrow _d_, during the 30th and 31st, broke that retirement into twohalves, one half (as at 5) making off eastwards, the other half (asat 4) bunched together in a hopeless welter in a country where everyegress was blocked by swamp and mire, and subjected to the pounding ofthe now concentrated ring of heavy guns. The body at 5 got away in thecourse of the 1st and 2nd of September, but only at the expense ofleaving behind them great numbers of guns, wounded, and stragglers. The body at 4 was, in the military sense of the word, "annihilated. "It numbered at least two army corps, or 80, 000 men, and of these it isprobable that 50, 000 fell into the hands of the enemy, wounded andunwounded. The remainder, representing the killed, and the chanceunits that were able to break out, could hardly have been more than20, 000 to 30, 000 men. Such was the victory of Tannenberg--an immensely successful example ofthat enveloping movement which the Germans regarded as their peculiarinheritance; a victory in nature recalling Sedan, and upon a scale notinferior to that battle. The news of that great triumph reached Berlin upon Sedan Day, at thevery moment when the corresponding news from the West was that vonKluck had reached the gates of Paris, and had nothing in front of himbut the broken and inferior armies of a disastrous defeat. THE SPIRITS IN CONFLICT. At this point it is well to pause and consider an element of thevastest consequence to the whole conduct of these great campaigns--Imean the element of German confidence. Here we have a nation which has received within a fortnight of itsinitial large operations, within the first five weeks of a war whichit had proudly imposed upon its enemies, the news of a victory morestartlingly triumphant than its most extreme expectation of successhad yet imagined possible. Let the reader put himself into the position of a German subject inhis own station of life, a town dweller, informed as is the Englishreader by a daily press, which has come to be his sole source ofopinion, enjoying or suffering that almost physical self-satisfactionand trust in the future which is, unfortunately, not peculiar to theNorth German, but common in varying degree to a whole school of moralsto-day. Let him remember that this man has been specially tutored andcoached into a complete faith in the superiority of himself and hiskind over the rest of the human race, and this in a degree superioreven to that in which other nations, including our own, have indulgedafter periods of expanding wealth and population. Let the reader further remember that in this the Germans' rooted faiththeir army was for them at once its cause and its expression; thenonly can he conceive what attitude the mind of such men would assumeupon the news from East and from West during those days--the news ofthe avalanche in France and the news of Tannenberg. It would seem tothe crowd in Berlin during the great festival which marked the timethat they were indeed a part of something not only necessarilyinvincible, but of a different kind in military superiority from othermen. These, from what would seem every quarter of the globe, had beengathered to oppose him, merely because the German had challenged histwo principal enemies. Though yet far from being imperilled by souniversal a movement, he crushes it utterly, and in a less time thanit takes for a great nation to realize that it is under arms, he isoverwhelmed by the news not of his enemy's defeat, but rather of hisannihilation. Miles of captured guns and hour upon hour of marchingcolumns of prisoners are the visible effect of his triumph and theconfirmation of it; and he hears, after the awful noise of hisvictories, a sort of silence throughout the world--a silence of aweand dread, which proclaims him master. It is the anniversary of Sedan. I do not set down this psychological phenomenon for the mere pleasureof its description, enormous as that phenomenon is, and worthy ofdescription as it is. I set it down because I think that only in anappreciation of it can one understand the future development of thewar. After the Battle of Metz, after the sweep down upon Paris fromthe Sambre, after this immense achievement of Tannenberg, themillioned opinion of a now united North Germany was fixed. It was sofixed that even a dramatically complete disaster (and the Germanarmies have suffered none) might still leave the North German unshakenin his confidence. Defeats would still seem to him but episodes upon ageneral background, whose texture was the necessary predominance ofhis race above the lesser races of the world. This is the mood weshall discover in all that Germany does from that moment forward. Itis of the first importance to realize it, because that mood is, so tospeak, the chemical basis of all the reactions that follow. That mood, disappointed, breeds fury and confusion; in the event of furtherslight successes, it breeds a vast exaggeration of such success; inthe presence of any real though but local advance, it breeds theillusion of a final victory. It is impossible to set down adequately in these few pages thisintoxication of the first German victories. It must be enough torecall to the reader that the strange mood with which we have to dealwas also one of a century's growth, a century during which not only inGermany, but in Scandinavia, in the universities (and many othercliques) of England, even largely in the United States, a theory hadgrown and prospered that something called "the Teutonic race" was theorigin of all we valued; that another thing, called in one aspect "theLatin" or in another aspect "the Celt, " was something in the one caseworn out, in the other negligible through folly, instability, anddecay. The wildest history gathered round this absurd legend, not onlyamong the Germans but wherever the "Teutonic theory" flourished, andthe fatuous vanity of the North German was fed by the ceaselessacceptance of that legend on the part of those who believed themselvesto be his kinsmen. They still believe it. In every day that passes the press of GreatBritain reveals the remains of this foolery. And while the realperson, England, is at grips with another real thing, Prussia, whichis determined to kill her by every means in its power, the emptytheorizing of professors who do not see _things_, but only theimaginary figures of their theories, continues to regard England as insome way under a German debt, and subject to the duty of admiring herwould-be murderer. Before leaving this digression, I would further remind the readerthat nowhere in the mass of the British population is this strangetheory of German supremacy accepted, and that outside the countries Ihave named not even the academic classes consider it seriously. In theeyes of the Frenchman, the Italian, and the Pole, the North German isan inferior. His numbers and his equipment for war do not affect thatsentiment, for it is recognized that all he has and does are theproduct of a lesson carefully learned, and that his masters alwayswere and still are the southern and the western nations, with theirvastly more creative spirit, their hardier grip in body as in mind, their cleaner souls, and their more varied and developed ideals. If this was the mood of the German people when the war in its firstintense moment had, as it were, cast into a permanent form the moltenpopular soul, what was that of the nation which the Germans knew intheir hearts, in spite of the most pitiable academic illusion, to bethe permanent and implacable enemy--I mean the French people? Comprehend the mood of the French, contrast and oppose it to that ofthe Germans, and you will have viewed almost in its entirety thespiritual theatre of this gigantic struggle. No don's talk of "Slav"or "Teuton, " of "progressive" or "backward" nations, mirrors in anyway the realities of the great business. This war was in some almostfinal fashion, and upon a scale quite unprecedented, the returningonce again of those conflicting spirits which had been seen over themultitudes in the dust of the Rhone valley when Marius came up fromItaly and met the chaos in the North. They had met again in the dampforests of the Ardennes and the vague lands beyond the Rhine, when theRoman auxiliaries of the decline pushed out into the Germanies to setback the frontiers of barbarism. It was the clash between strongcontinuity, multiple energies, a lucid possession of the real world, acreative proportion in all things--all that we call the ancientcivilization of Europe--and the unstable, quickly growing, quicklydissolving outer mass which continually learns its lesson from thecivilized man, and yet can never perfectly learn that lesson; whichsees itself in visions and has dreams of itself: which now servilelyaccepts the profound religion of its superior; now, the brain fatiguedby mysteries, shakes off that burden which it cannot comprehend. By an accident comparatively recent, the protagonist of chaos in thesethings happened to be that rigid but curiously amorphous power whichPrussia has wielded for many years to no defined end. The protagonistupon the other side of the arena was that same Romanized Gaul whichhad ever since the fall of the Empire least lost the continuity withthe past whereby we live. But the defender of ancient things was (again by an accident in whatis but a moment for universal history) the weaker power. In thetremendous issue it looked as though numbers and values had fallenapart, and as though the forces of barbarism, though they could nevermake, would now at last permanently destroy. In what mood, I say, did the defenders of the European story enter thelast and most perilous of their debates? We must be able to answerthat question if we are to understand even during the course of thewar its tendency and its probable end. By the same road, the valley of the Oise, which had seen twenty timesbefore lesser challenges of the kind, the North had rushed down. Itwas a gauge of its power that all the West was gathered there incommon, with contingents from Britain in the heart of the press. The enemy had come on in a flood of numbers: the defence, and half asmuch as the defence, and more again. The line swung down irresistible, with the massy weight of its club aimed at Paris. If the eastern fortsat Toul and at Verdun and the resistance before Nancy had held backits handle, that resistance had but enabled it to pivot with the freerswing. Not only had there fallen back before its charge all thearrayed armies of the French and their new Ally, but also all that hadcounted in the hopes of the defenders had failed. All that the lastfew years had promised in the new work of the air, all that ageneration had built up of permanent fortified work, had been provedimpotent before the new siege train. The barrier fortresses of theMeuse, Liége and Namur, had gone up like paper in a fire. Maubeuge wasat its last days. Another week's bombardment and the ring of Verdunwould be broken. The sweep has no parallel in the monstrous things of history. Ten dayshad sufficed for the march upon the capital. Nor had there been inthat ten days a moment's hope or an hour of relaxation. No such strain has yet been endured, so concentrated, so exact animage of doom. And all along the belt of that march the things that were thesacrament of civilization had gone. Rheims was possessed, the villagechurches of the "Island of France" and of Artois were ruins ordesolations. The peasantry already knew the destruction of somethingmore than such material things, the end of a certain social pact whichwar in Christendom had spared. They had been massacred in droves, withno purpose save that of terror; they had been netted in droves, thelittle children and the women with the men, into captivity. The trackof the invasion was a wound struck not, as other invasions have been, at some territory or some dynasty; it was a wound right home to theheart of whatever is the West, of whatever has made our letters andour buildings and our humour between them. There was a death and anending in it which promised no kind of reconstruction, and the foolswho had wasted words for now fifty years upon some imagined excellencein the things exterior to the tradition of Europe, were dumb andappalled at the sight of barbarism in action--in its last action afterthe divisions of Europe had permitted its meaningless triumph for solong. Were Paris entered, whether immediately or after thatapproaching envelopment of the armies, it would be for destruction;and all that is not replaceable in man's work would be lost to ourchildren at the hands of men who cannot make. The immediate approach of this death and the cold wind of it face toface produced in the French people a singular reaction, which evennow, after eight months of war, is grimly seen. Their irony wasresolved into a strained silence. Their expectation was halted andput aside. They prophesied no future; they supported the soul neitherwith illusions nor with mere restraint; but they threw their wholebeing into a tension like that of the muscles of a man's face when itis necessary for him to pass and to support some overmastering moment. There was no will at issue with the small group of united wills whoseplace was at the headship of the army. The folly of the politicianshad not only ceased, but had fallen out of memory. It is no exaggeration to say that the vividness of thatself-possession for a spring annihilated time. It was not a fortnightsince the blow had come of the 15th Corps breaking before Metz, andthe stunning fall of Namur. But to the mind of the People it wasalready a hundred years, and conversely the days that passed did notpass in hours, or with any progression, but stood still. There was to come--it was already in the agony of birth--the moment, aday and a night, in which one effort rolled the wave right back. Thateffort did not release the springs of the national soul. Theyremained stretched to the utmost. By a character surely peculiar tothis unexampled test of fire, no relaxation came as, month aftermonth, the war proceeded. But the passage of so many days, with the gradual broadening of visionand, in time, the aspect, though distant, of slow victory; thecreeping domination acquired over the mass of spiritually soddenthings that had all but drowned the race; the pressure of the handtightening upon the throat of the murderer; released a certain highpotential which those who do not know it can no more comprehend than asavage can comprehend the lightning which civilized man regulates andholds in the electric wire. And this potential made, and is making, for an intense revenge. That is the vision that should remain with those who desire tounderstand the future the war must breed, and that is the white heatof energy which will explain very terrible things, still masked by thefuture, and undreamt of here. FOOTNOTES: [2] The ultimatum expired at midnight (August 4-5) by Greenwich time, 11 p. M. (August 4) by German, or Central European, time. [3] AA is holding the obstacle OO against a superior number BB. Thereare six passages across OO. If BB forces No. 5 and No. 6 he createsthe situation in the following diagram, where it is obvious that BB isnow on the flank of AA, and that AA must retire, even if he stillholds passages 1, 2, 3, and 4. That is what happened when Namur fell. The French could hold, and were holding, the Germans along the Sambre, above Namur; but the bridges of Namur, which were thought safe behindthe forts, had fallen into German hands. [Illustration: Sketch 44. ] PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN. * * * * *