Lest We Forget: World War Stories

by John G. Thompson; Inez Bigwood

Brave little Belgium had been able to hold back the German hordes but for a short time at Liége and Namur, but, as future events proved, long enough to make possible the decisive battles at the Marne. The Germans had taken Brussels and Antwerp, had destroyed Louvain, had filled themselves with outrage and murder, had drunk of blood and wine and success until they were thoroughly intoxicated with the belief so common to drunken brutes that no men in the world can stand against them. The little Belgian army, "the contemptible little English army" (as the Kaiser called it), and the magnificent French army had been retreating day by day almost as fast as the Germans could advance. Soon Paris and then all of France would be in German hands—and what a glorious time they would have in the gayest and most beautiful capital of the world. Although bodies of German cavalry raided the coast, the German leaders, elated and intoxicated with thoughts of rich plunder and dissipation, did not turn aside in force to follow the Belgian army and to take the Channel ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, but pushed on toward Paris. The French government, expecting a siege of the city, moved to Bordeaux.

The main forces of the Germans had turned south from the coast towards Paris with General von Kluck's army of about 200,000 men at the right or west of the German line of advance. General von Kluck was attempting to outflank the English army, that is, to throw part of his forces around the extreme western end of the English army, which had to keep retiring rapidly to avoid being encircled. The French army was obliged to fall back to keep in touch with the British.

The English retired nearly one hundred miles without losing their cheerfulness or their confidence. It was this turning movement on the left that forced all the allies to retire. An English writer who was with the army said that though the Germans constantly attacked with reckless courage, yet the British and French retired slowly with their faces to the foe, and showing the greatest heroism. The numbers of the Germans were greater than those of the Allies, and the Germans gave them no rest. Night and day they hammered away, coming on like great waves. The gaps the English made were filled instantly. The German guns played upon the Allies constantly. Their cavalry swept down upon them recklessly. If the English had great losses, the Germans had greater. The English fought with cool bravery. They never wavered an instant. But the pressure upon them could not be resisted. Column after column, squadron after squadron, mass after mass, the enemy came on like a battering ram, crushing everything in its way. They swarmed on all sides, even though shattered by shot and shell. Nothing but the steadfast courage, the sheer pluck, the spirit, the soul of the English soldiers saved the army from complete destruction.

"The enemy hung on to us like grim death," said a wounded soldier. "They wanted us to retreat in a direction that would best suit their plans. But we were not taking marching orders from them. We went our own way at our own pace. We were retiring, not retreating."

Then on the fifth of September came General Joffre's appeal to the defenders of civilization, and particularly to the French soldiers: "The hour has come to hold our positions at any cost and to fight rather than to retreat.... No longer must we look at the enemy over our shoulders, for the time has come to put forth all our efforts in attacking and defeating him."

A French writer has said of the retreat, which by order of General Joffre had now come to an end, "Their bodies retreated, but never their souls;" and he might have added of the German advance, "It was an advance of bodies, not of souls." It was material might in men and guns forcing back an army weaker in everything except soul and spirit. The World War has shown over and over again, not only at the Marne but at a hundred other places and in a hundred other ways, that soul and spirit are the real conquerors and that God is not always, as Napoleon said, on the side of the larger battalions.

The Germans had come on flushed with success and egotism, destroying French property, looting, and dissipating. Their spirit was the spirit they found in the French wine cellars, and as for soul, as civilized people understand the word, they had none. They were an army of tired, conquering brutes. Their morale was low because of their great success and all that had accompanied it of feasts and slaughter. The morale of the French was never higher. Every day and every hour they had been compelled to retreat, giving up, giving up all that they loved even better than life itself to these brutes, until the brain of the French army said on the evening of September 5, 1914, "You have gone so far in order that you may now stand successfully." And in the morning at dawn, it was not only the bodies of the French soldiers that hurled themselves against the invaders, but the souls of French men, the soul of France; and all along the line from Verdun to Meaux, under the gallant leadership of Manoury, Foch, Sarrail, Castelnau, and others, the French armies held. If they had not held—not only held but attacked—all of future history would be different.

General Foch, commander in chief at the Second Battle of the Marne, inspired his troops in this first battle to supernatural bravery. He knew they must not yield, so with his right broken, his left shattered, he attacked with his center. It was that or retreat. His message to the commander-in-chief, General Joffre, will never be forgotten.

"My left has been forced back, my right is routed. I shall attack with the center."

The Germans could not put their souls into the battles as the French soldiers did, and besides, the Germans were weakened by feasting and dissipation. With the Huns it was the right of might; with the Allies it was the might of right, and in the end the second always defeats the first.