THE OPPOSED FORCES
[3] It is not necessary here to state the evidence in detail; but these figures may be accepted as substantially correct. I am indebted to a British authority for criticism and information. Besides the 4 Landwehr Divisions in course of formation during the last days of August, there were a number of Landwehr Brigades, which, however, had no artillery and were not organised for the field. By the first week of September, the XI Corps and Guard Reserve Corps had gone to the Russian front; but the 4 Landwehr Divisions named above had come in as effective. The “Metz Army Detachment” may be counted as adding a division.
[4] The transport of “covering troops” began at 9 p.m. on July 31, and ended at noon on August 3. On the Eastern Railway alone, 538 trains were required. The “transports of concentration,” from August 5 to 18, engaged 4300 trains, only a score of which were behind time. After Charleroi, between August 26 and September 3, the removal of three army corps, five infantry divisions, and three cavalry divisions from Lorraine to the Central and Western fronts was effected by 740 trains, while the railways were largely swamped by other military movements and the civilian exodus.
[5] For fuller explanations on this point, see Le Revers de 1914 et ses Causes, by Lt.-Col. de Thomasson (Paris: Berger-Levrault. 1919). Of the volumes published in France up to this date on the first period of the war, this moderate and closely-reasoned essay by an accomplished officer is one of the most valuable.
General Verraux (L’Oeuvre, June 1, 1919) refers to this weakness and confirms my general conclusion: “Despite the inferior organisation of reserves, with our 25 Active Corps, the 80 corps battalions of reserves, the Belgians and the British, we had, if not a numerical superiority, almost an equality with the German forces, deducting those on the Russian front.”
M. Victor Giraud, a competent historical writer, in his Histoire de la Grande Guerre (Part I. ch. iii. Paris: Hachette. 1919) gives other details, leading to the same conclusion.
[6] Etudes et Impressions de Guerre, vol. i, (Paris: Tallandier. 1917). General Malleterre, commanding the 46th Regiment, 3rd Army, was seriously wounded in the battle of the Marne. Taking up the pen on his recovery, he became one of the ablest French commentators on the war.
[7] “No enterprise, perhaps,” says a French military publication, “is as purely French as the conquest of the air. The first free balloon, the first dirigible, the first aeroplane all rose from our soil.” However, “the war surprised our aviation in an almost complete state of destitution. Our 200 pilots, almost all sportsmen, possessed between them a total of two machine-guns. A few squadrillas, without clearly-defined functions, sought their places on the front.” Aerial artillery ranging, photography, and observation had been envisaged, and, more generally, chasing and bombardment; but there was hardly a beginning of preparation.
France had at the beginning of the war 24 squadrillas, each of five or six machines, all scouts, of a speed from 50 to 70 miles an hour. M. Engerand says that “Germany entered the campaign with 1500 aeroplanes; we had on the front only 129.” Captive balloons had been abandoned as incapable of following the armies in the war of movement then almost exclusively contemplated. “Events proved our mistake,” says the official publication already quoted. “Enemy balloons followed the rapid advance of the armies of invasion. Ascending immediately behind the lines, they rendered the adversary indubitable services at the battle of the Marne. Then we hurriedly constituted balloon companies; and in 1915 we followed the German model of ‘sausage’ balloons.”
Mons and the Retreat, by Captain G. S. Gordon, a British Staff officer (London: Constable. 1918), contains some information of the Royal Flying Corps in August and September 1914. The Corps was founded in April 1912. At the beginning of the war, it included six squadrons, only four of which could be immediately mobilised, with a complement of 109 officers and 66 aeroplanes. These, however, did excellent work from the beginning. The writer says: “If we were better scouts and fighters, the Germans were better observers for the guns. The perfect understanding between the Taubes and the German gunners was one of the first surprises of the war.”