Now, it is evident that in all this everything depends upon the tenacity and military value of the operative corner, which is exposed and sacrificed that the whole scheme of the Open Square may work.
If that operative corner is destroyed as a force—is overwhelmed or dispersed or surrounded—while it is fighting its great odds, the whole 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 been had to the open strategic square at all. For if the operative corner, A, is out of existence before the various bodies forming the "manœuvring mass" behind it have had time to "swing," then the enemy will 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 violently with the French. The Germans maintained that an ordeal which Napoleon might have been able to live through with his veterans and after fifteen years of successful war, a modern conscript army, most of its men just taken from civilian life and all of short service, would never endure. They believed the operative corner would go to pieces and either be pounded to disintegration, or outflanked, turned, and caught in the first days of the shock before the rest of the square had time to "work." The French believed the operative corner would stand the shock, and, though losing heavily, would remain in being. They believed that the operative corner of the square would, even under modern short service and large quasi-civilian reserve conditions, remain an army. They staked their whole campaign upon that thesis, and they turned out to be right. But they only just barely won through, and by the very narrowest margin. Proving right as they did, however, the success of their strategical theory changed the whole course of the war.
With this contrast of the great opposing theories considered, I come to the conclusion of my Second Part, which examines the forces opposed. I will now turn to the Third Part of my book, which concerns the first actual operations from the Austrian note to the Battle of the Marne.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thus, after these lines were written, I had occasion in Land and Water to estimate the garrison of Przemysl before the figures were known. The element wherewith to guide one's common sense was the known perimeter to be defended; and arguing from this, I determined that a minimum of not less than 100,000 men would capitulate. I further conceived that the total losses could hardly be less than 40,000, and I arrived at an original force of between three and four corps.
Sketch 32.