French opinion on the capacity of reserve formations.

General Michel had partly wrought his own downfall, because, foreseeing the wide German sweep through Belgium, he had proposed to swell his forces by incorporating the reserve divisions in the active army. Such an idea was anathema to the 'Young Turks,' who held that their cherished offensif à outrance could only be carried out by rigidly disciplined troops whose reflexes would carry them for ward in spite of bullets. Thus the way was paved for the great, and almost decisive, opening surprise of the warfor the Germans, in contrast, had not hesitated to build up their attacking mass from an amalgam of active and reserve divisions, and thus obtained a superiority of three to two at the outset. And thus the pit was dug for the downfall of Plan XVII, and almost of France, by the hands of Joffre, guided by the minds of his entourage.

The phrase, if hard, is justified not only by unofficial evidence but by the words of Joffre himself before the court of inquiry which in 1919 investigated the causes of the loss in 1914 of the Briey iron fields whence came practically all the iron-ore supplies of France. It is, incidentally, a further side light on the narrow outlook of the French command that their plan had not taken into account the defense of their vital economic sources.

III

No more pitiable disclosure of puppetry has ever been made than in Joffre's evidence. When asked to produce the plan of campaign, he first replied that he had no remembrance of it, and fatuously said: 'A plan of operations is an idea which one has in one's head, but which one does not commit to paper.' This was so absurd, as well

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as contrary to the evidence of all the other generals, that the President of the Court expressed surprise that there were no traces of a plan in writing. Joffre replied, "There Joffre replied, "There may be some, but it was not I who drew them up.' He became more and more confused under examination and ultimately said, 'You ask me a mass of things which I cannot answer; I know nothing about them.'

His slow wits, combined with his inexperience of higher war study, made him a modern Delphic oracle, the mere mouthpiece of a military priesthood among whom Grandmaison was the leading intellectual influence and Castelnau the acting high priest. On Joffre's appointment, his ignorance of European warfare had been officially recognized by the nomination of General Castelnau as his assistant, and chief of staff in case of war, and although this was subsequently changed to command of an army, owing to political distrust of Castelnau's clerical sympathies, he remained the chief influence on Joffre until the war came. As it was Pau who discounted the value of reservists, so it was Castelnau who underrated the danger of a German advance through Belgium and neglected the fortress defenses, saying, 'These strong places cramp me and take too many men. I don't want them.'

When the war came, a still more astonishing revelation of Joffre's surrender of his military conscience occurred at the conference of army commanders on August 3, 1914. General Dubail, commanding the First Army, declared that he would need strong reënforcements for his 7th Corps which was to begin the offensive in Alsace. Joffre merely replied: "This plan is your plan; it is not mine.' Dubail, thinking he had not been understood, began to explain his needs, whereupon Joffre, his face beaming with his usual large smile, repeated his words. The conference

broke up without further light, and it was little wonder that some of the army commanders were uneasy, asking each other if there was any idea behind the massive forehead of their commander in chief.

Nor did enlightenment as to their own misconceptions come quickly either to Joffre or to his staff. On August 6, when the German guns were battering at the outer defenses of Liége, Joffre informed the French armies that 'it may be concluded that the Germans are executing a plan of concentration, drawn up two years ago, of which we have knowledge.' The reference was to a document found by a French officer, when traveling in Germany the year before, in the lavatory of his railway carriage!

Thus, in blind ignorance and supreme disdain for the enemy's moves, the main French advance into Lorraine began on August 14 and on August 19 and 20 was broken in the battle of Morhange-Saarburg, where the French discovered to their surprise that the material could subdue the moral, and that in their enthusiasm for the offensive they had blinded themselves to the defensive power of modern weapons, a condition which was to throw out of balance the whole mechanism of orthodox warfare.

Faced with this repulse and the now unmistakable news of a German advance through Belgium, Joffre and Company, Limited, were forced to readjust their plan, which had, it is true, partially allowed for such an alternative. But as the plan only recognized the hypothesis of a German advance east of Liége and the Meuse, and not the wider arc the Germans were actually traversing, the French command were more than ready to believe that the enemy was merely 'conforming to plan' the French plan.

Grasping once again at phantoms,

Joffre and Company embraced this idea so fervently that they transformed their counter into an imaginary coup de grâce. Their Third and Fourth Armies were to strike northeast through the Ardennes against the rear flank of the Germans advancing through Belgium. The left-wing (Fifth) Army, under Lanrezac, was moved farther to the northwest into the angle formed by the Sambre and Meuse between Givet and Charleroi. With the British Expeditionary Force coming up on its left, it was to deal with the enemy's forces west of the Meuse, and then to converge upon the supposed German main forces in conjunction with the 'right fist' attack through the Ardennes. Here was another pretty picture of the Allied pincers closing or the unconscious Germans! Curiously, the Germans had the same idea of a pincerlike manoeuvre, with rôles reversed, and with better reason.

The worst flaw in the French plan was that the Germans had deployed half as many troops again as they had been credited with, and for a vaster enveloping movement. The French, pushing blindly into the difficult Ardennes country against a German centre supposedly denuded of troops, blundered head on into the advancing German Third and Fourth Armies, and were heavily thrown back in encounter battles around Virton-Neufchâteau. Fortunately the Germans were also too vague as to the situation to exploit their opportunity.

But to the northwest the French Fifth Army and the British had, under Joffre's orders, put their heads almost into the German noose. The masses of the German First and Second Armies were closing in on them from the north, and the Third Army from the east. Lanrezac, the French Fifth Army commander, alone had an inkling of the hidden menace.

All along he had suspected the wideness of the German wheel, and it was through his insistence that his army had been allowed to move so far north. It was due to his caution in hesitating to advance across the Sambre, to the arrival of the British on his flank unknown to the German Intelligence, and to the premature attack of the German Second Army, that the Allied forces fell back in time and escaped from the trap.

At last Joffre realized the truth, and the utter collapse of Plan XVII. An Olympian calm was his greatest asset, and with a cool resolution, admirable, if astonishing, in face of the disaster to which he had led France, he sanctioned a retirement which had already begun, while he and his staff were evolving a new plan out of the wreckage. He decided to swing back his centre and left, with Verdun as the pivot, while forming a fresh Sixth Army to enable the retiring armies to return to the offensive.

His optimism might have been again misplaced but for German mistakes. The first was the folly of Moltke, chief of the German General Staff, in detaching seven divisions to invest Maubeuge and Givet, and to watch Antwerp, instead of using Landwehr and Ersatz troops as in the original plan. This had been drawn up as far back as 1905 by Moltke's great predecessor, Graf von Schlieffen, who had decided on the route through Belgium, and whose governing idea had been to mass overwhelming strength in the wide-marching right wing. He had even welcomed the likelihood of a French advance into Lorraine, and made his left wing there purposely weak, for thus the action would be like a revolving door- the more heavily the French pressed on the eastern side in Lorraine, the more effectively would the western side in Belgium swing

round and hit their exposed rear. Schlieffen's dying words were: 'It must come to a fight, only make the right wing strong.'

A more ominous infringement of his plan was when, on August 25, 1914, Moltke decided to send four divisions to check the Russian advance in East Prussia. All these were taken from the right wing, and the excuse afterward given for this violation of the principle of concentration was that the German command thought that the decisive victory had already been won!

Further, the German headquarters lost touch with the advancing armies and the movements of these became disjointed. The British stand at Le Cateau and Lanrezac's riposte at Guise were also factors in checking the German enveloping wing, and each had still greater indirect effects. For Le Cateau apparently convinced the German First Army Commander, von Kluck, that the British Army could be wiped from the slate, and Guise led von Bülow (Second Army) to call on von Kluck for help, whereupon the First Army wheeled inward, thinking to roll up the French left. The idea of a new Sedan was an obsession with the Germans, and led them to pluck the fruit before it was ripe. This premature wheel before Paris had been reached was an abandonment of the Schlieffen plan, and exposed the German right to a counterenvelopment.

While the French command clung too long to preconceived ideas, the Germans could not cling long enough to any idea. Almost daily during the advance they were changing their minds, -and the original plan, until on September 4 they definitely abandoned it in favor of a concentric thrust on both sides of Verdun, which was intended to squeeze the French armies as in a pair of pincers. One further factor must be mentioned, perhaps the

most significant of all: the Germans had advanced so rapidly that their supplies failed to keep pace. Thus, in sum, so much grit had worked into the German machine that a slight jar would suffice to cause its breakdown. This was delivered in the Battle of the Marne.

IV

The reputation of Joffre is so linked with the drama of 1914 that it is essential to paint his figure against a background of events, but we have here reached a point at which we can break off for a brief sketch of his personal action during the great

retreat.

It is beyond doubt that he did much by his moral-rather than by his mental influence to repair the shattered fighting power of France. This influence was applied, not by any soulstirring appeal, but by simply visiting the headquarters of his sorely tried subordinate commanders and sitting there, saying little, but conveying such an impression of ponderous and be nign calm that they felt that affairs must be favorable elsewhere, however serious was their own situation. By similar intervention he sought to pour oil on the troubled relations between Sir John French and Lanrezac, and to secure some coöperation between their two armies, on the Allied flank, which were each 'ganging their own gait.'

More disputable is Joffre's action in dismissing several score of generals, including Lanrezac, during the retreat, which was mainly due to the blind folly of Joffre himself and his staff.

It was bitterly said later that it was fatal to offer suggestions to Joffre and to prove right when he was wrong; that Lanrezac was 'sacked' because he divined the German plan; Ruffey (Third Army) because he had proclaimed the vital need for heavy

artillery; Sarrail-Ruffey's successor -because he proposed sending troops by sea to Dunkirk to strike the enemy's open flank. Although Joffre's known jealousy of possible rivals lends weight to this charge, it is not the whole truth.

Lanrezac's is the most famous case. For long recognized as the ablest manœuvre general in the French Army, he, like Gallieni, had distrusted the new Plan XVII, but his observations had no effect. As soon as Liége was attacked he urged that his army should be moved farther to the northwest as a precaution, but was curtly answered 'that the responsibility of stopping a turning movement [by the Germans] did not rest with him.' The rebuff did not quiet him, and day after day, as the news of German movements became clearer, he pressed his point. At last, on August 15, he received permission, but still with the promise that he must hold himself ready to march by the Ardennes to the northeast! But for his insight and insistence the German right wing must have swept almost unopposed to victory; although Lanrezac had moved seventy-five miles farther west he was still overlapped by the German right wing. And in face of emphatic orders Lanrezac, by his refusal to cross the Sambre and attack, alone prevented his army from putting its head into the German noose. The fact that he proved right was not likely to lessen the irritation of the higher command at his importunity and disregard of their orders. All the public evidence strengthens the view that the man who unquestionably saved France was dismissed, at the end of the retreat, for his presumption.

But the intimate evidence of members of his staff raises a doubt. They say that this man, so acute of vision and intelligence during the concentration period, became hesitating and

flustered when the German forces were actually met, and lost his nerve as the pressure increased. Did his subaltern impressions of the année terrible of 1870 rise again to flood his mind? It may be significant that he was born. in the West Indian island of Guadeloupe. It is at least certain that he only counterattacked at Guisea tactical victory which had a great indirect effect under pressure from Joffre. Moreover, his friction with Sir John French made impossible that cooperation between the Allies which was vitally important. At their first meeting at Rethel, Lanrezac acquired such a contemptuous opinion of French's military knowledge that he never troubled to return the visit and made no effort to maintain liaison making his plans as if no British troops existed on his flank.

Joffre attempted to reconcile French and Lanrezac, but in vain, and his final step in replacing Lanrezac by Franchet d'Espérey may have been justified by the need for better coöperation and unflinching determination in the forthcoming counteroffensive. It is just also to say that Joffre had a long-standing admiration and personal regard for Lanrezac, and his reluctance during several days to take the actual step of dismissing Lanrezac is supporting evidence that his action was not merely pique.

V

The curtain was now to rise on the immortal drama of the Marne, that battle so indecisive in its fighting, yet one which by its mere frustration of the German plan changed the whole face and issue of the war. On the morrow of the battle the German armies, although undefeated, had lost the war.

It was natural that an event which caused such a miraculous change in

the course of the struggle should be explained by appropriate stories, but the documented records of the two sides now enable us to disentangle fact from fiction. The popular legend was that, following upon a check on the frontier due to mere weight of adverse numbers, Joffre conducted a masterly strategic retreat reculer pour mieux sauter and then, after drawing the Germans on to the position intended, launched his premeditated counterstroke at the chosen moment. His order of August 25 was quoted to buttress this legend. It ran thus:

'As it has not proved possible to carry out the offensive manœuvre which had been planned, the object of the future operations will be to reconstitute on our left flank with the Fourth and Fifth Armies, the British Army, and new forces drawn from our right, a mass capable of resuming the offensive while the other armies hold the enemy for the time necessary. A new group will be formed in the neighborhood of Amiens. . . .'

This order merely discloses a fresh burst of ill-timed optimism, for it was issued at the outset of the forced retreat, before Le Cateau and other rear-guard battles had revealed the full degree of the German pressure. Official orders are commonly worded with a vagueness which will cover the issuing authority in case of failure, but this one spoiled its general airiness by the incautious reference to a concrete locality- Amiens. With the retreat gathering momentum like a rolling stone, this suggested line of resistance was soon passed and the mirage of a French offensive vanished like its predecessors. A week later, on September 1, Joffre issued orders which, while still suggesting airily an ultimate counteroffensive, revealed a different outlook in the concrete details, by directing a continuance of the retreat