July 21 and concentrated in Westphalia from July 26, it was not till August 3, after the publication of the German ultimatum, that France offered Belgium her eventual military aid. This was declined; but on August 4, when the violation of the frontier occurred the offer was accepted in principle. On August 5, General Joffre authorised the Sordêt Cavalry Corps to move to the Semoy. It began its march on the 6th, and on that night Major Collon arrived at Belgian Headquarters with a view to assuring the co-ordination of the French and Belgian operations.
16
“This plan was at once weak and supple. It was feeble because General Joffre, who established it, ‘saw too many things,’ in the words of the Napoleonic warning.... He knew as well as any one the feebleness of his plan. It was imposed upon him. He sought at least to make it supple” (Reinach, op. cit. pp. 58–9).
In an article reviewing this volume (Petit Parisien, June 16, 1916), M. Millerand, who became Minister of War a few days after the events in question, endorsed this opinion: The French Staff “had to foresee, did foresee, the two hypotheses—that of Belgium, certainly, but also that of Lorraine. Hence general dispositions whose suppleness did not escape weakness, a concentration for two ends.” The word “Belgium” here is ambiguous: it is clear that an attack by Western Belgium was not foreseen. The vice of the concentration was not that it faced two ends, “Belgium” and “Lorraine,” but that it essentially faced the end of a Lorraine offensive, whereas what was essentially needed was a northern defensive.
General Bonnal remarks: “The project of offensive operations conceived by Bernhardi in 1911 in case of a war with France deserved close study by us, which would probably have led to modifications in our plan of concentration while there was yet time” (Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne, p. 115. Paris: De Boccard. 1916).
General Palat writes: “The French concentration was vicious. Better conceived, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of our compatriots from the tortures of the invasion and occupation” (La Revue, Dec. 1, 1917).
“The unknown quantity on the side of Belgium,” says Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, “condemned us at the outset to a waiting strategy. The idea of at once taking the offensive madly overpassed the boldest conceptions of Napoleon” (p. 54). “A well-advised command would have understood that it was folly to launch at once all its army to attack troops of the value of the Germans; that the offensive should have been made only on certain points of the front, with a sufficient numerical superiority, and for this purpose the forces must be economised; that, in brief, the beginning of hostilities could only be favourable to us on condition of a superior strategy such as was shown in the preparation for the battle of the Marne, but not in the initial plan or in the first three weeks of the war” (177–8).
17
See Hanotaux, Histoire Generale de la Guerre; Engerand, “Lorraine–Ardennes” (Le Correspondant, April 25, 1918); Paul H. Courrière, “La Bataille de Sarre-et-Seille” (La Revue, Jan. 1, 1917); Gerald Campbell, Verdun to the Vosges (London: Arnold)—the author was correspondent of The Times on the Eastern frontier; Thomasson, loc. cit.
18
See Hanotaux, “La Bataille des Ardennes, Etude Tactique et Strategique” (Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 15, 1917); Engerand, as above; Ernest Renauld, “Charleroi–Dinant–Neufchâteau–Virton” (La Revue, Oct. 1916—inaccurate as regards the British Army); Malleterre, Un Peu de Lumière sur les Batailles d’Août—Septembre 1914 (Paris: Tallandier).
19
See L’Illustration, March 16, 1918: La Défense de Longwy, by P. Nicou.
20
The military history of Lille, is curious. See Lille, by General Percin (Paris: Grasset). M. Engerand, in his chapter on “The Abandonment of Lille,” says that a third of the cannon had been removed earlier in the year, but that on August 21, when General Herment took command, there remained 446 pieces with enough ammunition and 25,000 men, not counting the neighbouring Territorial divisions of General d’Amade. Though Lille had been virtually declassed on the eve of the war, General Percin, the Governor (afterwards cruelly traduced on the subject) and General Herment were anxious, and had begun preparations, to defend it. The municipal and other local authorities protested to the Government against any such effort being made; and at the last moment, on the afternoon of August 24, when the retreat from the Sambre had begun, the Minister of War ordered the abandonment of the town and the evacuation of the region. German patrols entered the city two days later, but it was only occupied at the beginning of October. It has been argued that, with Lille and Maubeuge held on their flanks, and the Scarpe, Scheldt, and Rhonelle valleys flooded, the Allied forces might have delayed the enemy long enough to permit of a definite stand on the line Amiens–La Fère–Laon–Rheims. General Berthaut rejects any such idea, and says that inundations would have required forty days.
21
French’s 1914.
22
See La Grande Guerre sur le Front Occidental, especially vol. iv., by General Palat (Paris: Chapelot, 1918–19).
23
For details, see Hanotaux, Histoire General and L’Enigme de Charleroi (Paris, 1917); Maurice, Thomasson, Engerand, loc. cit.; Sir John French’s Dispatches and 1914; Lord Ernest Hamilton, The First Seven Divisions; La Campagne de l’Armée Belge, from official documents (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915); L’Action de l’Armée Belge, also official; Van der Essen, L’Invasion Allemande. For some information in this chapter and the subsequent note with regard to the British Army, I am indebted to the military authorities.
After the reference to Brussels, M. Hanotaux continues: “The rôle reserved to the British Army was to execute a turning movement of the left wing, advancing north of the Sambre toward Mons, in the direction of Soignies–Nivelles; it was thought it would be there before Kluck,” It was there a day before Kluck. “Unfortunately, as the Exposé de Six Mois de Guerre recognises, it did not arrive on the 20th, as the French Command expected.... In fact, it was only in line on the 23rd” (pp. 49–50). M. Hanotaux repeats himself with variations. The Allied Armies suffered, he says, not only from lateness and fatigue, but from lack of co-ordination in the High Command. “It is permissible to-day to say that the Belgian Command, in deciding to withdraw its army into the entrenched camp of Antwerp, obeyed a political and military conception which no longer conformed to the necessities of the moment. Again, the British Army appeared in the region only on the 23rd, although the battle had been engaged for two days and was already compromised between Namur and Charleroi. The rôle of turning wing which the British Army was to fulfil thus failed at the decisive hour” (pp. 53–4). M. Hanotaux mentions (p. 77) the receipt by Sir John French, at 5 p.m. on August 23, of “a telegraphic message qualified as ‘unexpected,’” announcing the weight of Kluck’s force and the French retirement, but omits to say that this message came from the French Generalissimo. He adds that the British commander gave the order to retreat at 5 p.m., Lanrezac only at 9 p.m., omitting to explain that the French retreat was, in fact, in operation at the former hour, while the British retreat only began at dawn on the 24th, after a night of fighting. “By 5 p.m., on Sunday the 23rd, when Joffre’s message was received at British Headquarters”—says Captain Gordon, on the authority of the British War Office (Mons and the Retreat)—“the French had been retiring for ten or twelve hours. The British Army was isolated. Standing forward a day’s march from the French on its right, faced by three German Corps with a fourth on its left, it seemed marked out for destruction.”
In strong contrast with M. Hanotaux’s comments—repeated, despite public correction, in his article of March 1919 cited above—are M. Engerand’s references to the part played by the British Expeditionary Force. First, to its “calm and tenacious defensive about Mons, a truly admirable defence that has not been made known among us, and that has perhaps not been understood as it should be. It was the first manifestation of the form the war was to take; the English, having nothing to unlearn, and instructed by their experiences in the South African war, had from the outset seized its character.... It shows us Frenchmen, to our
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