Namur was surrounded by twelve forts. The bombardment began on a Wednesday night and three of the forts were reduced to scrap in two days. The Germans marched through the gap thus made and took the other forts in the rear, so that in less than three days Namur was completely in their possession. This will undoubtedly be the system used against Paris, and apparently there is no antidote. The forts cannot reply, for they cannot determine where the big guns are located; but meanwhile the big guns know the exact position of the forts, and they, moreover, outrange the forts.
Today I had an opportunity to talk with three British officers recently arrived in Paris from that part of the front just this side of Chantilly. They were incredibly grimy, dirty, and sweaty and were greatly embarrassed thereby. They were of the first body of British troops landed in France; they had met the Germans at Charleroi and had been through the whole retreat of nearly one hundred and fifty miles, having been constantly in action for some two weeks. They summed up their experiences by saying that they had received “a hell of a licking.” This statement is rather over-modest since within a day or so we have learned that the British, numbering about sixty thousand, were opposed by four or five German army corps, amounting to two hundred thousand men, and that in spite of this the British had retreated stubbornly, contesting every mile.
A most extraordinary thing which these officers told me was that, during their whole retreat from Charleroi to Compiègne, they had never seen a single French soldier nor received any assistance from the French army. One is tempted to wonder what would have happened if there had been no British army to help check the retreat toward Paris.
British soldiers agree that they have received most extraordinary hospitality from the civilians and peasantry of Belgium and France. Whole villages, themselves facing starvation, gave their last crumb of bread and their last drop of wine to the British troops and cheerfully slept in the fields in order that the soldiers might snatch a bit of rest in their houses.
All the officers with whom I have had the opportunity to talk agree that the German losses have been enormous. I do not think that this is entirely patriotic exaggeration, since British officers are not particularly prone to flights of fancy. One of them prefaced his remarks on the retreat from Charleroi by saying, “The truth of the matter is, we got damn well licked,” and went on to say that his men shot and shot and shot until they became sick of killing, and that the Germans kept coming, always coming, their ranks riddled and smashed by bullets and shells. The British all agree that the German troops have an unflinching, dogged, brutal courage, which nothing seems to daunt. They come on and on, climbing over the bodies of the regiments which have gone before. The German tactics are those of Napoleon. They attack a position and they keep on attacking it until they take it, no matter what it costs; regiments and brigades are wiped out without any wavering in the commander’s resolve or in the dogged persistence of his troops.
In spite of the fact that they have been constantly beaten by German tactics, the officers of the Allies persist in considering them antiquated and barbarous. They ascribe the German successes to their big guns and to the wonderfully efficient way in which their bad tactics are carried out. They all agree that the German skill in concentrating troops before an attack is wonderful. So far they have never failed to have overwhelming numbers at any point of offense.