Sei)tcmber 1:2, 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
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tlie rear, as at M N O, etc. Day after day tlio 
superior numbers of the invadei'S permitted them to 
extend beyond the ■western extreme of the Allies and 
con-espondinsi'ly forced the Allies to retreat. They 
■were happy to be able to retreat — even at so great an 
expense in guns, munitions, and men— and to escape 
encirclement and annihilation. For such encirclement 
smd annihilation German strategy presupposes, and in 
superiornumbers — acting rapidly and hn-ishly spent — 
all that over-simple strategy depends. 
An effort undertaken at such an enormous 
expense of energy ■with so clear an object, cannot for 
a moment be regaixled as intended to dupe its enemy. 
The immense cost in numljers alone by Avhich the 
Gennans hoped to purchase an immediate success, 
proves that this success— an envelopment — was really 
attempted, and attempted in a fashion easily recog- 
nisable. The extraordinary pace at 'whicli the 
manoeuvre was forced points to exactly the same 
conclusion. 
Suddenly, when the Allied line had been pushed 
back so far that its left repo.se upon Paris, its right 
upon Verdun, the Oennan scheme changed in one 
day — Septeml^er 4th. The attempted envelopment 
ceases, (^uite a new mana-uvre, the attempt to break 
the Allied line, succeeds to it. 
Not only does this attempt to break the Allied 
line take the place of the earlier attempt at envelop- 
nient, but the bi-eaking of that line has suddenly 
become an immediate necessity for the invaders. 
Their main game has failed. They have not got 
round their inferior enemy. He will now never be 
suiTOundod, and the master-idea of the (lerman Staff 
hits missed its goal. But if they succeed in pu.^hlng 
back the French lines or breaking their centre the 
< iermans have at least saved them.selves, and possibly 
destroyed a large body of th.eir opponents ; if they 
fail in this last attempt not to turn but to break the 
French lines thei-e is nothing open to them but retreat. 
Why is this? 
Upon the accompanying diagram which, though 
giving only the barest elements of the position, is 
drawn to scale, the necessity under which the Germans 
now are of breaking the Allied line or retreating 
^\-iIl be clear. 
From positions near Meaux, twenty-five miles 
east of the forts of Paris, the German armies which 
had hitherto been achieving the immensely ra])id 
invasion of northern I'rance, after the check, extended 
in a great convex arc to A^eixlun. 
They were fed, as to projectiles and everything 
else, by lines of communication coming from Belgium 
and Luxembourg in the direction of the arrows (1 ) — ( I ) . 
Their right wing at JM., INleaux, having come up against 
unexpectedly large reserves (there gathered to a^vait 
them by the French) was bent back. It has had to 
tm-n back eastward. On their left is the great fortress 
of A'erdun, which is still holding out; another great 
fortress to the south is Toul, and between these two 
a chain of forts at a a a is, if not impassable, at least 
only to be passed at an immense expense in men and 
at some considerable expense in time. 
But south of Toul, and covering the gap between 
that fortress and the fortress of Epiual, sundry French 
forces at L.L.L. (which may be called the French 
ai-my of Lorraine) are confronted by further German 
forces, K.K.K., stretched along the frontier between 
France and Gennany in this region. 
Now ob.serve that if the considerable numerical 
superiority of the French near M. pennits them tliei'e 
to march round, and push back, the German right 
wing, the existing communications (I) (1) of the main 
German annies in the north arc at once threatened. 
Should this considerable body of the Allies in the 
neighbourhootl of M. continue the pressure which it 
has been exercising during the last four days, the 
German forces between A'erdun and Paris, if they 
cannot break through to the south, woidd have no 
choice but to retreat. The initiative will have passed 
from them to their enemies, and it is even jx>ssible 
that, unless the retreat is conducted as precipitately as 
was the advance, their supplies might be cut and they 
might suffer disastei*. 
But if the Germans break the centre of the French 
line towai*ds the east, say at sonie such point as \ . 
(which stands i-oughly for A'itry-le-Francois) or even 
if, Avithout breaking it, they push it back to such a 
line as the positions W. AV. W. (corresponding roughly 
to a line passing through Troycs), then the Germans, 
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