Only this could save Paris—the rapid strengthening of the Allied front by enormous reserves strong enough to hold back the arrow-shaped battering-ram of the enemy's right.
All our British reserves had been rushed up to the front from Havre and Rouen. There was only one deduction to be drawn from this great swift movement. The French and British lines had been supported by every available battalion to save Paris from its menace of destruction, to meet the weight of the enemy's metal by a force strong enough to resist its mass.
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One of the most dramatic incidents of the war was the transport of the army of Paris to the fighting line—in taxi-cabs. There were 2000 of these cabs in Paris, and on this day of September 1 they disappeared as though the earth had swallowed them, just as the earth had swallowed one of them not long before when the floods had sapped the streets. A sudden order from General Gallièni, the Military Governor of Paris, had been issued to each driver, who immediately ignored the upraised hands of would-be passengers and the shouts of people desperate to get to one of the railway stations with household goods and a hope of escape. At the depots the drivers knew that upon the strength of their tyres and the power of their engines depended the safety of Paris and perhaps the life of France. It was an extraordinary incident in the history of modern war. Five soldiers were loaded into each cab, four inside and one next to the driver, with their rifles and kit crammed in between them. In one journey twenty thousand men were taken on the road to Meaux. It was a triumph of mobility, and when in future the Parisian is tempted to curse those red vehicles which dash about the streets to the danger of all pedestrians who forget that death has to be dodged by never-failing vigilance, his righteous wrath will be softened, perhaps, by the remembrance that these were the chariots of General Manoury's army before the battle of Meaux, which turned the tide of war and flung back the enemy in retreat..
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It will be to the lasting credit of General Joffre and the French Staff that after six weeks of disorder owing to the unreadiness of their army and their grievous errors in the disposition of the available troops, they recovered themselves in a supreme effort and by a brilliant stroke of strategy took the enemy completely by surprise and dealt him a staggering blow. The German Headquarters Staff—the brains of the greatest military machine in Europe—sublimely arrogant in their belief that they had an exclusive knowledge of the whole science of war and that the allied armies were poor blunderers without intelligence and without organization, utterly incapable of resisting the military genius of the German race, found themselves foiled and out- manuvred at the very moment when the prize of victory seemed to be within their grasp.
For the first time since the beginning of their advance into French territory they were confronted with something like equal numbers, and they were brought to a halt at once. This arrest, shocking to their self- confidence, was found to be more than a mere check easily overpowered by bringing up more battalions. General von Kluck realized that the French had gathered together a formidable mass of men ready to be flung upon his right flank. Their guns were already beginning to open fire with frightful effect upon his advanced columns. The pressure of French regiments marching steadily and swiftly from the south-east and south-west after weeks of retirement, was forcing in his outposts, chasing back his cavalry and revealing a strong and resolute offensive. On September 4 and 5 there was heavy fighting on the German left and centre, to the south of the Marne and the west of the Ourcq. While General von Kluck was endeavouring to resist the thrust of the French and British troops who were massing their guns with great strength on his right, General von Bulow's left wing, with the Saxon army and the Prince of Wurtemberg's army, made desperate attempts to break the French centre by violent attacks to the north of Sezanne and Vitry-le- François. For two days the Germans tested the full measure of the strength opposed to them, but failed in smashing through any part of the French line, so that the Allies, successful in holding their ground against the full weight of the enemy, gained time for the supports to reach them and then developed a complete and general attack.
Von Kluck found that his troops were yielding. The French mordant was too much for Prussians as well as Saxons, who in many villages of France and in the hollows of the downs were heavily punished by the Anglo-French artillery, and routed by bayonet charges thrust home with incredible ferocity. The German Headquarters Staff, receiving these reports from all parts of the line, must have had many moral shocks, undermining their pride and racking their nerves. Perhaps one day we shall read the history of those councils of war between the German generals, when men who had been confident of victory began to be haunted by doubt, hiding their fears even from themselves until they were forced to a gloomy recognition of grave perils. Some of these men must have wept and others cursed, while Von Kluck decided to play again for safety, and issued an order for retreat. Retreat! What would the Emperor say in Berlin where he waited for the prize of Paris and heard that it had slipped from his grasp? How could they explain the meaning of that retreat to the people at home, expecting loot from the Louvre and souvenirs from Paris shops?
Some of the officers thought these things—I have read their letters— but General von Kluck must have had only one dominating and absorbing thought, more important even than an Emperor's anger. "Gott im Himmel, shall I get this army back to a stronger line or shall I risk all on a fight in the open, against those French and British guns and almost equal odds?" The failure of the German centre was the gravest disaster, and threatened von Kluck with the menace of an enveloping movement by the Allied troops which might lead to his destruction, with the flower of the Imperial troops. Away back there on the Aisne were impregnable positions tempting to hard-pressed men. Leaving nothing to chance, the Germans had prepared them already in case of retreat, though it had not been dreamed of then as more than a fantastic possibility. The fortune of war itself as well as cautious judgment pointed back to the Aisne for safety. The allied armies were closing up, increasing in strength of men and guns as the hours passed. In a day or two it might be too late to reach the strongholds of the hills.
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