The Way to Win

by William Le Queux

The menace to Paris roused the French to fury, and produced superhuman exertions which a contest on the soil of France elsewhere might very possibly not have evoked. Moreover, the German threat at Paris gave the English time to come into action with what proved to be decisive effect. Was there no German blundering here? What, I wonder, would have been the result if the Germans had in those early days of the War flung all their force at the coasts of Northern France? How should we have met the menace with the sea bases largely in German hands? What would have been our position in the naval warfare to-day?

And even with Paris almost in their grasp, the Germans failed—failed as lamentably as they possibly could. They never even suspected the existence of that great army of Paris which General Manoury had formed under their very noses, as it were. And when on that fatal day Von Kluck found himself faced with a new danger from that great army which issued from the gates of the French capital, what did he do? He committed a blunder which has been condemned by every military writer by trying to march his retreating columns across the front of the British Army which lay parallel to the line of his retreat. No doubt he reckoned that after its terrific gruelling in the great retreat the British Army was in no shape to take offensive action against him. But it was his business to know, not to think; probably his Teutonic arrogance led him to believe that no troops after such a retreat could stand up against the pick of the German arms. He was soon undeceived. General Joffre struck at once and with all his might, seizing with the truest military genius and insight the psychological moment. The French and British flung themselves upon the badly shaken enemy, and in a few short days the victory of the Marne had been won.

Whatever we may think of what has happened since, it is certain that the battle of the Marne will be recognised in the future as one of the great decisive battles of the world. For it smashed beyond repair the German strategic scheme. German blundering alone made victory possible, for at the time the battle was fought the Germans were unquestionably superior to the Allies in every factor which should have given them the victory had they acted on sound lines. The machine was there—the machine upon which the Germans have all along relied—but the human control broke down, and disaster followed. Among all the mistakes which had been made by the Allies, can the keenest critic discover anything to compare with this?

A prominent feature of the German strategy has been the attack of their infantry in dense masses; their commanders have flung men forward in solid columns in the hope of overwhelming their enemies by sheer weight of numbers. This has been a matter of considered policy; attack in this formation has been practised at the German manoeuvres for years. The German commanders took no notice of those military critics of other nations who assured them that with modern weapons such tactics could only meet with irretrievable disaster. With true Prussian cocksureness, and knowing nothing of war since the days when quick-firing guns and magazine rifles had revolutionised war, they insisted that they were right, and that German hardihood would be proof against even the most appalling losses. They have practised what they preached, since there was no possibility of re-training their men in time of war, and the result has been daughter on such a scale as the world has never seen. Not once, but a hundred times have German massed attacks across open country simply melted away before the fire which greeted them, and in this way Germany has lost untold thousands of men who, had they been intelligently used, might have gone far to win the War.

This, again, is not an example of the mistakes made by subordinate commanders in the field, but a settled matter of policy approved by the highest German military experts, and proved hopelessly wrong under the actual test of war. Attacks by massed guns and not by massed infantry have been the most powerful factors in winning the German successes. We saw in the appalling slaughter of the great battle of Ypres how little infantry, resolute and well handled, have to fear from the advance of men who simply come on in solid masses to be shot down.

It has long been a part of the German creed that “frightfulness” in war pays. The avowed German policy is that a conquered nation shall be left “nothing but its eyes to weep with.” The idea, of course, is that any nation which has the misfortune to incur Germany’s resentment shall be so completely terrorised and oppressed that anything in the shape of a spirit of resistance shall be utterly crushed out in a welter of blood and savagery before which a civilised community must sink appalled. Here we have a simple explanation of the crimes which staggered the world after the invasion of Belgium. It was all a part of the German policy that the Belgian civilians should be tortured, outraged, and murdered, that their towns should be laid waste, that monuments of an ancient civilisation which even the Huns of old respected should be destroyed by the newest apostles of “kultur.” Eight hundred civilians were massacred at Dinant in cold blood to show the Belgians how hopeless it was to resist Germany; hundreds of women have been violated in the same cause; hundreds of churches have been destroyed; dozens of villages have been laid in ashes. And all this, let it be remembered—let it, indeed, never be forgotten—was the result not of war-maddened soldiers losing their heads and their manhood, but of a deliberate policy deliberately adopted by the rulers of Germany.

In every war and in every army there happen, in hot blood, incidents over which humanity weeps; human nature being what it is, excesses are sometimes unavoidable. But it has been left to modern Germany to elevate murder and violence and destruction to a science; she has in this respect set up a record which would shame a Red Indian, and from which the great warring and plundering nations of old would have shrunk appalled. The history of war for centuries has given us nothing to approach in horror the German devastation of Belgium and of Poland, unless we except the massacres of the Armenians by Germany’s Turkish Allies with Germany’s connivance and approval.

Now I am quite certain that the criminality of these proceedings troubles the German nation not one whit. But I am equally certain that they will be seriously troubled when they realise that “frightfulness” is what is in their eyes far worse than a crime; it is a blunder. When the German Hyde has recovered from his debauch of bestiality and violence, we may expect the German Jekyll to begin assuring us that he is really a very decent sort of fellow after all. For Jekyll will come some day to realise that Hyde’s crimes have not helped his cause, that Hyde was really not merely a savage—that he could accept without a pang—but that he was a sad blunderer. That, to the German, is the real unforgivable sin. And blunderer in his campaign of “frightfulness” the German assuredly has been and is. The policy of terrorism has been a complete failure; it has failed in Belgium, it has failed in France, it has failed in Serbia, it has failed in Poland, it has failed afloat, and it has failed in the air. It is a record of blood and murder unredeemed by a solitary success; it has steeled the hearts and the resolution of all to whom it has been applied, and among the neutral nations it has provoked feelings which cause nausea whenever Germany is mentioned.

In the face of unmentionable horrors—unmentionable except in the pages of official reports—Belgium has steadily refused to have any traffic whatever with the Huns; her soldiers are preparing to-day to take their full meed of vengeance of those who have made a desert of her smiling land. Serbia is still unconquered, though her land is occupied and devastated. Poland spurns the German yoke. Britain not only is undismayed, but is more firmly resolved than ever to make an end for good and all of German pretensions. Russia is striking shrewd blows, and will strike yet harder in the near future. Italy is steadily preparing for greater things. France is her own great self, and is waiting with unconquerable resolution for the appointed hour. Only in Germany and her Allies do we discover a growing spirit of apprehension and of weakening purpose. Can we say in the face of all these things that the policy of “frightfulness” has been anything but a blunder of the first magnitude?

It is commonly assumed that German savagery reached its height in the sinking of the “Lusitania,” and certainly that crime struck the conscience of civilisation more forcibly than the horrors in Belgium, partly because it was a direct object-lesson of the depths to which modern Germany was capable of descending. But in sober truth the “Lusitania” outrage was nothing in comparison with what had been done in Belgium. There Germany’s record of horrors was so atrocious that no respectable newspaper could reproduce the evidence gathered by the French Official Commission, and only those who had read the original could form any conception of what the reality must have been. The victims of the “Lusitania” at least died swiftly and comparatively painlessly; Belgium’s lot was in too many cases such that death would have been infinitely preferable. But to the sinking of the “Lusitania” is to be attributed the uprising of the wrath of the United States, who saw over a hundred of her citizens simply murdered in cold blood.