Things were going to be serious. Henceforward the army was to be on half rations, and he knew what that meant. He had been on "half rations" in the South African War, and he had seen a man give a franc for a dirty biscuit, and he knew what it was for soldiers on active service to be hungry. He ordered us, he begged and prayed them, to spare no energy in stopping waste of any description, and making their men realise the gravity of the position. No Officer was in future to draw any rations from the Company Cookers, and the Mess Sergeant had somehow procured and victualed a mess-cart.
That night must have been the most fateful night in the history of France. All the world was watching with bated breath, watching to see whether France was really a "back number"—whether the Prussian was truly the salt of the earth. If Paris fell, the French Armies in the field were cut off from their base; defeat was certain, and the national history of France, or, at any rate, the glory of it, would be stamped out for ever under the Kaiser's heel. The fate of France was in the balance, and also the fate of the Russian Armies. If Paris fell, Europe might be as much the slave of Prussia as it had been a century ago of Napoleon. As for England, if her Fleet could master the German, well and good. But, if not....
It looked as if the enemy were within an ace of victory. He had flooded Belgium and Luxembourg with his armies, and, at the first clash of arms, had hurled everything before him in a manner which to the civilian must have appeared terrible in its completeness. Several times had the defenders apparently attempted to stand, and as many times had they been hurled with even greater violence southwards. And now, before the campaign was a month old, the enemy were within an ace of the most complete victory of modern times. Many men will never forget that night—men on either side with high commands.
How the Kaiser must have chuckled when the French Cabinet left for Bordeaux! Bombastic phrases were perchance chasing themselves through his perverted mind. How fine he would look at Versailles, strutting about the Hall of Victories. He would sleep in the bed of the "Grand Monarque"—and in Les Invalides how he would smile at the tomb of Napoleon! Perhaps his statesmen were that very night drafting the terms of peace that a crushed adversary would be only too thankful to accept. His day had come at last! Henceforward how he would laugh at Democracy and Socialism. He would show them that he was master. The best weapon in all the world was sudden, bloody war. He would show his people that he was their Master, their Salvation, their War Lord. He was the greatest man in history, so he thought that night.
There may come a time when he will realise that, after all, he was only the most contemptible and pitiable. But that is by the way.
His Generals could not have been so sure. They must have seen the exhaustion of their men. Von Kluck must have already felt the weight of the army, rushed out of Paris by General Galliéni, that threatened to envelop his right flank. Von Heeringen must have realised that the offensive was being wrenched from his grasp. And the Crown Prince was throwing himself in vain upon the forts of Verdun and Nancy.
That night, too, somewhere behind the French lines, a man of very different stamp from the Kaiser was putting the final touches to the preparations of the greatest counter-attack in History. He knew that the enemy had literally overstepped his lines of communications, was exhausted, and nervous of failure so far from his bases. He knew that as long as de Castelnau clung on to the heights around Verdun, his centre and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now completely mobilised reinforcements. Moreover, the army that had hurried pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be outnumbered on his front and very seriously menaced on his right, and disaster would be certain.
Not that the Subaltern knew or cared much for these things. He and his men were past caring. Continuous retreat had first evoked surprise, then resentment, then, as fatigue began to grip them like a vice, a kind of dull apathy. He felt he would not have cared whatever happened. The finer emotions of sorrow or hope or happiness were drugged to insensibility. With the exception of odd moments when, absolutely causelessly, wild anger and ungovernable rage took possession of him and seemed to make his blood boil and seethe, he seemed to be degenerating into the state of mind commonly attributed to the dumb beasts of the field—indifferent to everything in the wide world except food and sleep.
That night a draft commanded by one Subaltern arrived to fill up the gaps.
The next day the retreat continued. The men's nerves were tried to breaking-point, and a little detail, small and of no consequence in itself, opened the lock, as it were, to a perfect river of growing anger and discontent.