“I wish particularly to bring to your Lordship’s notice the admirable work done by the Royal Flying Corps under Sir David Henderson. Their skill, energy, and perseverance have been beyond all praise. They have furnished me with the most complete and accurate information, which has been of incalculable value in the conduct of the operations. Fired at constantly both by friend and foe, and not hesitating to fly in every kind of weather, they have remained undaunted throughout.
“Further, by actually fighting in the air, they have succeeded in destroying five of the enemy’s machines.”
The combined French and British armies, including the forces that had retreated from Alsace and Lorraine, gave way with increasing stubbornness before von Kluck. That German general disregarding the fortresses surrounding Paris, swung southward to make a junction with the Army of the Crown Prince of Germany advancing through the Vosges Mountains. General Manoury’s army opposed the German advance on the entrenched line of Paris. General Gallieni commanding the garrison of Paris, was ready with a novel mobile transport consisting of taxicabs and fast trucks. The total number of soldiers in the French and British armies now outnumbered those in the German armies opposed to them.
General Joffre, in supreme command of the French, had chosen the battleground. He had set the trap with consummate skill. The word was given; the trap was sprung; and the first battle of the Marne came as a crashing surprise to Germany.
CHAPTER VI
The Trail of the Beast in Belgium
GERMANY’S onrush into heroic Belgium speedily resolved itself into a saturnalia that drenched the land with blood and roused the civilized world into resentful horror. As the tide of barbarity swept forward into Northern France, stories of the horrors filtered through the close web of German censorship. There were denials at first by German propagandists. In the face of truth furnished by thousands of witnesses, the denials faded away.
What caused these atrocities? Were they the spontaneous expression of dormant brutishness in German soldiers? Were they a sudden reversion of an entire nation to bestiality?
The answer is that the private soldier as an individual was not responsible. The carnage, the rapine, the wholesale desolation was an integral part of the German policy of schrecklichkeit or frightfulness. This policy was laid down by Germany as part of its imperial war code. In 1902 Germany issued a new war manual entitled “Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege.” In it is written this cold-blooded declaration:
All measures which conduce to the attainment of the object of war are permissible and these may be summarized in the two ideas of violence and cunning. What is permissible includes every means of war without which the object of the war cannot be attained. All means which modern invention affords, including the fullest, most dangerous, and most massive means of destruction, may be utilized.
Brand Whitlock, United States Minister to Belgium, in a formal report to the State Department, made this statement concerning Germany’s policy in permitting these outrages: