111.h. BATTLE OF THE MARNE.*
;MR. BRIxoc has written a most fascinating book upon the battle of the ;Marne. That dark spot in history under his touch positively glows and scintillates. His lucidity, indeed, might almost be said to benumb and bewilder the mind. While one is under the spell of the enchanter one is always saying to oneself : " Why do people make all this bother about the battle of the Marne ? It is as clear as crystal." It is only when one escapes the spell and reassumes the Englishman's invincible habit of muddle-headednoss that one begins to wonder whether Mr. Bello° may not have perhaps mistaken a mystery for a chunk of the common- place. After all, could any human transaction be so obvious as this and yield so completely to analysis ? Finally, did the great actors in the great drama (for we fully admit that Mr. Bello° is dealing with one of the very greatest events in the history of the world) really know what they were about, or understand that they were fighting what he so happily calls—following the technical nomenclature of the French General Staff—a. " battle of dislocation " I However, even if Mr. `Bello° has made things too clear, or at any rate a great deal clearer than they really were, it does not very much matter, for he has pro ;duced a most attractive book, which, oddly enough, even if in later years it should be proved wrong, must always greatly help to elucidate the battle of the Marne. His explanations of the influences at work will always provide a basis for the understanding of the wonderful story. Ho may conceivably have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but it is a mighty cudgel, and nobly does he make it ring round ffiis head.
It would be absurd for us to attempt to retell Mr. Belloe's tale or treanalyse his analysis. Our readers ought to go direct to his book. If they do, we can promise them, if they have a little patience and any 'instinct for the art of war, an hour or two of real enjoyment. All we ;shall try to do here is to set forth some of the impressions which—rightly or wrongly—have been made upon the mind of the present writer by Mr. Belloc's new volume. The first lesson which we draw from his version is that, in the period just before the battle of the Marne, General von Kluck had no idea of marching on Paris or of seizing the capitaL He was out for something quite different, the envelopment and de- struction of the French field armies. Paris could well wait until that was accomplished. There would then be no trouble about capturing the capital. It was merely because the armies were so big, and the terrain, comparatively speaking, so small, that General von Kluck had to get so near to Paris that it looked as if he were threatening it. His juxta- position was due to accident, not design. His strategy ignored Paris. But if Klock's design goes, so also goes the glorious legend that the battle of the Marne was brought on by Gallieni or some other French General dashing out of Paris with his troops in taxi-cabs, striking the *enemy on his flank, and consigning him to the infernal regions.
No doubt a body of troops—apparently an Algerian division or corps d'arnies, or a brigade of it, "be the same a little more or less "—did dart out of Paris in taxi-cabs, but it did not play a supreme part in the action. What really happened appears to have been that the Germans committed one of the greatest blunders in war as in commerce—that of over-trading, of overdoing it. At the beginning ,of September, 1914, German armies were stretched in a great line from west to east across Northern France, with aline of French armies opposite to them. General von Muck wished to move south and east, in order to envelop these French armies. But just as he was starting on this project a weak French army under General Maunoury gallantly attacked !his right flank. This was annoying, but not really dangerous to General von Kluck, and he at once sent back sufficient troops to brush aside these tiresome wasps. But though Maunoury did not make " a great *fist of it," he was not brushed aside quite so easily as Kluck expected, and Black had to send again. But this tended to make the whole line of German armies push up a little to the right. Unfortunately for them, however, they conformed more thoroughly and decisively than they should have done to the comparatiiiely unimportant move- ment on the right executed by one section of Kiuck's troops. Just *General Sketch el the European War : the Second Nam" By liuske London : T. Nelson and Sons. V3s. net.]
so in a line of men, if one man is moved two or three yards to the right for some special purpose, the rest of them, if not stopped, will tend automatically to correct the line by stringing opt a little in that direction also. Now the result of this instinctive movement on the right in order to conform to Kluck's punishment of Maunoury had, in Mr. Belloc's most illuminating phrase, the effect which is produced when you take a piece of elastic and stretch it in such a way as to add, say, twenty or thirty per cent. to its total length. At some point or other, generally the middle, the elastic becomes very thin, and if you put any strain upon it in that place the whole thing will probably break. Now this is just what happened to the Germans. Their line was accidentally stretched on their right, and probably also a little on their left, because of the splendid stand made near Verdun by the French. They held where they were not expected to hold, and therefore some of the German armies moved a little towards the loft to give support. The result was the formation of a gap, or, in other words, to employ Mr. Belloc's metaphor, a weakening and whitening of the elastic so that the light showed through.
Now it chanced that the General in the French line who was opposite the pseudo or potential gap was General Foch, one of the greatest military geniuses of the age. He not only saw the gap, but saw what it meant and how it could be used, and he brought troops counter-marching across the French front and rushed them into it. And then the miracle occurred, or rather let us say, for we do not want to be superstitious, that here the inherent weakness of German strategy and German moral showed itself. Whatever can be done by toilsome ingenuity, insistent ratiocination, and hard logic, the German will per- form. But his generalship is never governable by genius or inspiration. Hence it is that an act of true genius and true inspiration tends to flabbergast him. The Germans, it would seem, did not understand what they had done, or what Foch was doing, or what anybody else was doing. They suddenly lost the key of the great puzzle-lock. Then, strange as it may seem when we think what a position of advantage they were in, they got an attack of " cold feet." When this happens to a German, he plays for safety. Very possibly ho was quite right in doing so here. Mr. Belloo presumably thinks that he had no alternative. In any case, the Germans, made no attempt to envelop Foch and his thrice-gallant men, but " pounded back "—the happy phrase is Mr. Belloc's, not ours—in the direction of home. But once you turn your back upon an enemy with such Ran and with such speed of movement as the French you are " done," or at any rate are bound to suffer great local inconvenience. Thus it was that the world saw, though it did not realize the meaning of the thing at the moment, an army in great straits and almost beaten. suddenly fall upon those whom all men expected to be the conquerors of the world, and chase them flying from the field.
Perhaps Mr. Belloc will say that in our attempt to reproduce the final impression made upon our mind by his book we have distorted, or at any rate misunderstood, him. For example, we have not mentioned his candid admission that there are two schools of eluci- dators, and that, though he is firm for his school, he admits there is a good deal to be said for the school he rejects. On one point, how- ever, we can have made no mistake, and that is the tremendous impression which he gives us of the performance of the French generals and the French soldiers, and of their glorious steadfastness in the hour of darkness and of peril. Though we none of us knew it at the time, France in the first month of the war suffered disasters well-nigh as great as those which she suffered under Napoleon ILL But instead of reeling from the blow, she and her Generalissimo maintained the wens =qua in arduis. There was no thought of yielding, no despair, let alone panic. Every pulse in the veins of the French, men and women alike, every thought in their minds, every muscle in their bodies, remained
steadfast and determined. They showed themselves, indeed, invincible. They could,not be beaten. And that, after all, and not any strategic mistakes on the part of the Germans or any master-strokes of military art on the part of the French, saved France, and so saved Europe. No words can express our admiration and our gratitude for the stand of the French Army, supported by the French people. There is nothing in their history which equals the way in which they received, and recovered from, the hammer-stroke of the Hun.
Incidentally we may remark that Mr. Beitapparen tly will not agree with the opinion that Lord French's " c mptible little Army" played any great part in the battle of the Mame. Whether he is right or not, we shall not argue here. We shall only register our bare belief that he is wrong. We must leave the rest to time and fuller revelations. All we will say now in regard to the controversy which is
certain to arise is that, as far as the glory of British arms is concerned, it matters comparatively little whether we did or did not affect the result of the battle of the Marne. The record of our troops and of our high commands is so splendid that it would be absurd to fuss about our right to recognition in. this particular list of honours.
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