The silence at sea was accompanied by a suspense on land. Except for the overrunning and trampling down of Liége, and a French raid into Alsace, only the covering troops of the great armies were in contact. There was a long, stifling pause before the breaking of the storm. All over Europe millions of men, pouring along the roads and railroads, flowing across the Rhine bridges, draining from the farthest provinces of the wide Russian Empire, streaming northwards from Southern France and Northern Africa, were forming in the immense masses of manœuvre or the lines of battle. There was plenty to fill the newspapers; but to those who understood what was coming, the fortnight with which this chapter is concerned seemed oppressed by a deathly hush.
CHAPTER XII
THE BATTLE IN FRANCE
August 20–September 6, 1914
‘For while the dagger gleam’d on high
Reel’d soul and sense, reel’d brain and eye.’
Scott, ‘The Lady of the Lake,’ Canto V-XVI.
Germany’s Choice: Prudence or Audacity—Her Dangerous Compromise—The French Offensive School—One View of French Strategy—Plan XVII—Its Complete Failure—The Despatch of the Sixth Division—The Morrow of Mons—Fears for the Channel Ports—The Lloyd George of Agadir—The British Base Shifted to St. Nazaire—Some expedients—The Retreat—A Press Communiqué—The Eve of the Marne—The Russian Pressure—Lord Kitchener’s Journey to Paris—Correspondence with Sir John French—A Day on the Aisne—The Sea Flank Project—Lord Kitchener’s Wise Restraint.
Prudence and audacity may be alternated but not mixed. Having gone to war it is vain to shrink from facing the hazards inseparable from it. At the outset of the war Germany had a choice between a prudent and an audacious strategy. She could either have fallen, as she did, upon France with her main strength and held off Russia meanwhile, or have fallen upon Russia with ample forces and stood on the defensive against France. If she had taken the second course she would have said to France and to Europe: “This is an Eastern quarrel. Let us endeavour to limit the area of the conflict. We are going to rescue our ally Austria from Russia. We have no dispute with France. We have no intention of invading French territory. Unless you attack us, we shall not touch you: if you attack us, we shall have to defend ourselves. As for Belgium, it is sacred to us.” The German Government would then have appealed to England to help to localise the struggle, and a well-meaning effort would most probably have been made with that object. France would therefore have had to choose between deserting her ally and invading Germany in cold blood, alone. Neither Belgium nor England would have entered the war. By the winter the Russian armies would have been torn to pieces in the East, and France brought to a standstill before barbed wire and entrenchments on German soil in the West. France would therefore have appeared the aggressor, who had made a treaty with Russia in order to get back her lost provinces, and then in pursuance of this treaty had flagrantly invaded Germany and had been arrested by the defenders of the Fatherland. On the other hand, the moment Russia was beaten, overwhelming German forces could be brought to bear on France. And if in this second stage the Germans had chosen to violate the neutrality of Belgium, Britain, if she had intervened at all, would have intervened divided and too late. All these tremendous political-strategic considerations were present in the minds of British Ministers, and Mr. Lloyd George in particular would never believe, until the mass invasion of Belgium was an actual fact, that the Germans would be so unwise as to ignore them. Ludendorff, however, tells us that the German General Staff rejected such a plan for one decisive reason, namely, that it involved a long war. This answer seems insufficient.
Germany had long and deliberately committed herself to the alternative plan of the invasion of France through Belgium with the intention of destroying the French armies in a few weeks. This was a decision of extreme hazard and audacity; flying in the face of world opinion, openly assuming the rôle of the aggressor, committing a hideous wrong against Belgium, incurring probably Belgian resistance and possibly, as they must apprehend, British intervention. But having embarked on such an audacious adventure, the Germans failed to concentrate wholly upon it. In order to secure victory in a few weeks in France before England could develop her strength, they must be prepared to endure serious injuries in the East. The German force opposing Russia was therefore rightly cut down to the absolute minimum. But to carry their plan through in its integrity more territory should have been yielded to the Russian invaders, and in no circumstances should any reinforcements have been transferred from the West to the Eastern front until the decision in the West had been reached.
I had throughout the greatest misgivings of an impulsive offensive by the French based, not on calm calculations of numbers, distances and times, but upon ‘the psychology of the French nation,’ ‘the best traditions of the French Army,’ ‘the natural élan of the poilu.’ I knew, of course, that the offensive school held the dominance in France. One could see its reflection in the language of our military men, though these were strongly anchored to modern realities by unpleasant recollections of the Boer War. Without knowing with any certainty or exactness the French plan, I dreaded, whenever I reflected on the problem, an impetuous onset followed by a shattering shock.