On September 18, General Curières de Castlenau was made Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour on the ground that, “since the beginning of the war, his army has fought without cessation, and he has obtained from his troops sustained efforts and important results. General Castlenau has had, since the beginning of the campaign, two sons killed and a third wounded; nevertheless, he continued to exercise his command with energy.”

CHAPTER XI
SUMMING-UP

The battle of the Marne closed a definite phase of the Great War, and perhaps—in so far as it was marked by open and rapid movement, and as it finally exposed certain gross military errors—a phase of warfare in general. A fresh examination of the plans of the preceding years and the events of the preceding month immensely enhances the interest of the whole development; for it shows the real “miracle of the Marne” to have been an uprush of intelligence and patriotic will in which grave faults of strategy and tactics were corrected, and the victory to be the logical reward of a true conception, executed with unfailing skill through a new instrument created while the conditions of the struggle were being equalised. In whatever sense we may speak of a “greatest” battle of history, this was assuredly, of all clashes of force, that in which reason was most conspicuously vindicated.

Insanely presumptuous as was her ambition of reducing France, Russia, and Britain, Germany had at the outset some remarkable advantages. Chief among these must be counted the power of surprise, due to her long secret preparation, and a complete unity of command in face of dispersed Allies. The German forces concentrated on the west were not numerically superior to those of France, Britain, and Belgium; their effective superiority was considerable. Half of the active corps, which alone the French expected as troops of shock, were doubled with thoroughly trained reserve formations, giving a mass of attack of 34 corps, instead of 22, a difference larger than the two armies of the enveloping movement. Their strength was also increased by a clear superiority in several branches of armament and field service (the French field-gun and the use by the Allies of the French railways being notable exceptions), and in some particulars of tactical practice, especially the prudent use of field defences. The basic idea being to strike France down before Russia and Britain could effectually interfere, speed was a principal condition of success; and the plan of the Western campaign was probably the only one on which it could be realised. One-third of the whole force was to hold the old Franco-German frontier in a provisional defence, while one-third attacked through Luxembourg and the Belgian Ardennes, and the remainder was thrown across the Meuse and the open plain of Flanders, toward the French capital. This unprecedented enlargement of the offensive front, the outstanding feature of the plan, secured the most rapid deployment of the maximum forces; it alone could yield the great element of surprise; it alone provided the opportunity of envelopment dear to the German military mind. Its boldness, aided by terrorism in the invaded regions, astounded the world, and so seemed to favour the scheme of conquest. It might ultimately provoke a full development of British power; even in case of failure, it would cripple France and Belgium for many years. Its immediate weakness arose from the wide extension of forces not larger, except at certain points, allowing no general reserve and no large reinforcement, and from the necessity of great speed. The plan ignored many possibilities, from the Alps to Lille; once in motion, however, it could not be considerably or rapidly changed. Berlin, confident in the superiority of the war-machine to which it had devoted its best resources and thought, believed there would be no delay and no need of change.

France had been inevitably handicapped by the need of renouncing any initiative that could throw doubt upon her moral position, by the independence of her British and Belgian Allies, and by uncertainty as to Italy. This last doubt was, however, quickly removed; the Belgian Army delayed the invasion by a full week; and our “Old Contemptibles” gave most precious aid. A united Command at that time might have done little more than strengthen the instrument and confirm the doctrine whose imperfections we have traced. The instrument was inferior not only in effective strength, not only in some vital elements of arms and organisation, but in the system and spirit of its direction. The doctrine of the offensive, general, continuous, and unrestrained, had become an established orthodoxy during the previous decade, when the Russian alliance and the British Entente were fixed, when service was extended to three years, the 75 mm. gun was perfected, and a new method of railway mobilisation promised that the armies would be brought into action at least as rapidly as those of the enemy. Before a shot was fired, it had prejudiced the military information services—whence the scepticism of the Staff as to a large German movement west of the Meuse, and as to the German use of army corps of reserve in the first line; whence the ignorance of the German use of aeroplanes and wired entrenchment. No answer was prepared to the German heavy artillery. While unable to create the means to a successful general offensive, the French Command had discounted, if not positively discredited, modern methods of defence and delaying manœuvre, methods peculiarly indicated in this case, since France had the same reasons for postponing a decision as Germany had for hastening it. The only hope of the Allies at the outset lay in a combination of defence and manœuvre: there was no adequate defence, and no considerable manœuvre, but only a general headlong attack on a continuous line. Of the consequences of this lamentable beginning, an accomplished and sober French officer says: “It is just to speak of the Battle of the Frontiers as calamitous, for this battle not only doomed to total or partial ruin nine of our richest departments: insufficiently repaired by the fine recovery on the Marne, it weighed heavily upon the whole course of the war. It paralysed our strategy. From September 1914, our High Command was necessarily absorbed in the task, first, of limiting, then of reducing, the enormous pocket cut in our territory. Ever obsessed by the fear of abandoning to devastation a new band of country, we were condemned for nearly four years to a hideous trench warfare for which we were infinitely less prepared and less apt than the invader, and that we were able to sustain only by force of heroism.”[79] Any one of the errors that have been indicated would have been grave; in combination, they are accountable for the heavy losses of the three abortive inroads into Alsace, Lorraine, and the Ardennes, and for the dispositions which necessitated the long retreat from the north. That the German armies suffered in these operations is, of course, to be remembered; but for France it was more urgent to economise her strength. In strategy infatuated, in tactics reckless, in preparation unequal to the accomplishment of its own designs, the then French Command must be held responsible in large measure for the collapse of the national forces in the first actions of the campaign.

Joffre, who had been named Generalissimo designate three years before, almost by accident, who was an organiser rather than a strategist, had inherited, with the imperfect instrument, the imprudent doctrine and plan. There was not the time, and he was hardly the man, to attempt radically to change them; nor has he yet recognised in words that there was any large strategical error to correct. But the facts speak clearly enough: from the evening of August 23, when the general retreat from the north was ordered, we enter upon a profoundly changed situation, in which the native shrewdness and solid character of the French Commander-in-Chief are the dominant factor. The defence that should have been prepared could not be extemporised. The armies must be disengaged and re-formed. A large sacrifice of territory was therefore unavoidable. To delay the critical encounter till the balance of forces should be rectified was the first requirement. On August 24, Headquarters issued a series of tactical admonitions, prelude to a clean sweep of no less than thirty-three generals and many subordinate officers. Next day followed the “General Instruction” in which will be found the germ of the ultimate victory. The rule of blind, universal, unceasing offensive disappeared, without honour or ceremony; arose that of manœuvre; informed, elastic, resourceful, prudent but energetic.

At once there was precipitated a conception which governed not only the battle of the Marne, but the whole after-development of the war. There must be no more rash adventures on the east; from Belfort to Verdun, the front would be held defensively, with a minimum of strength, to fulfil the purpose for which its fortifications were built, and to protect the main forces, which would operate henceforth in the centre and west. The importance of the north-west coast, and the fact that Kluck was not approaching it, plainly suggested the creation of a new mass of manœuvre on this side to menace the German flank: this new body was Maunoury’s 6th Army. These two features of the Allied riposte—defence on the east, offence from the west—were to be permanent. The French centre must be strengthened to bear the impact of Bülow, the Saxons, and the Duke of Würtemberg. Foch’s Army, created to this end, to come in between those of d’Espérey (Lanrezac’s successor) and de Langle, had the further effect of preserving the full offensive strength of the 5th Army. For these purposes, large numbers of men had to be transferred from the east to the west and centre. Joffre at first hoped to stand on the Somme, and then on the Oise. But the new forces were not ready; the defence of the east was not secured; the British Army was momentarily out of action; Kluck threatened the Allied communications; the line was a hazardous zigzag. The Generalissimo would not again err on the side of premature attack.