LAND AND WATER. 
August 14, 1915. 
port 
Bril 
wtion along the Sambre was continued by a 
Jlish contfngent, in strength not qvute t.-o 
army corps, and it was this body which laj in 
^^^"it^vas upon this right angle of troops, num- 
bering, French and English together not quite 
eight army corps, that the chief blow of the enemy 
•was to fall. , 
The third French body, if it may be given so 
simple a title, consisted in a force gathered or 
gathering behind the frontier line, and pre- 
fent at numerous points northern and cen- 
tral— manv in or near Paris and Versailles, 
manv on "^the points of concentration between 
the capital and the frontier, some in Picardy, 
Normandy, and the Artois. These, in the 
lump, niav be regarded as the reserve or 
" ma.ss of ' manoeuvre ■' which French strategy 
proposed to use when the development of the fron- 
tier battle should show upon what sector they 
could be most usefully concentrated and directed. 
For it was the first principle of this school ot 
strateg}^ (knowing that it would have to meet 
superior forces at the outset of a war with Ger- 
many) to take the shock with but a portion of. its 
available resources and to attempt a decision only 
when the development of the campaign— regarded 
as one great action— had discovered a point upon 
which the main forces kept in reserve could be 
launched with their maximum effect. 
Although the French knew that they would 
have to meet superior forces, yet their higher com- 
mand did not probably envisage any considerable 
retreat, still less a very rapid and perilous one. 
The plan seems to have been a vigorous 
offensive across the Franco-German frontier into 
Alsace-Lorraine, while the f®rces to the north 
held the German advance through Belgium; which 
advance, be it remembered, was but tardily pro- 
vided against. 
It seems to have been conceived even by the 
middle of August that this German attack 
through Belgium against the Sambre and Meuse 
would not be delivered with more than nine or 
ten German corps. The resistance of Namur was 
depended upon to hold these, for some useful days 
at any rate, and meanwhile, should the operations 
in Lorraine prove successful, the " mass of 
manoevre " kept in reserve could be launched 
eastward until an increasing pressure upon the 
German left should clear the line of the Rhine, 
and, pushing northward, should catch and con- 
gest the German forces between the middle course 
of that river and the Meuse. 
This calculation suffered from two errors. 
First, an error as to the amount of men which Ger- 
many v.'ould contrive to place during the very first 
days into Lorraine; and, secondly, a miscalcula- 
tion as to the number of men Germany could move 
in the first days through the Belgian Plain and 
along the Valley of the Meuse. The French forces 
operating in Lorraine found themselves opposed 
to immensely superior numbers of men and guns 
ppon Augu.st 19, 2D, and 21; they were thrust 
back beyond the frontier, and their right wing 
was compelled to retire from Alsace. This disaster 
(for it was no less) in the first set action of the war 
is known as the Battle of Metz. Within forty- 
eight hours of the French check here upon the 
Alsace-Lorraine frontier the main blow fell upon 
the second force to the north along the Meuse and 
the Sambre. 
I have said that this force of somewhat less 
than eight armv corps, intluding the British con- 
tingent upon its extreme left, relied in the coming 
operations upon two things. First, that the main 
German attack along the Meuse and through thd 
Belgian Plain would hardly number more than 
nine — or at the most ten— corps. Secondly, that 
the projecting angle of the formation should be 
defended by the resistance of Namur. 
Now the enemy, with admirable organisa- 
tion and in those 'few days, had brought up 
against this front not nine or ten, but no less than 
seventeen army corps. He, therefore, out-num- 
bered the 7| corps of his opponents on this front 
by roughly two to one. And, upon the top of this, 
Namur wholly failed to resist. By the morning of 
the Sunday, August 23, the junction of the Sambre 
and the Meuse and the bridges across these rivers, 
all of which are contained within the circle of the 
Namur forts, w^ere in the hands of the enemy— by 
Sunday afternoon the two branches of the French 
force— the 4th Army, along the Middle Meuse, the 
5th along the Sambre — were in full retreat and 
suffering the pressure of forces about double their 
OWTl. 
The British contingent upon the extreme 
left heard of the fall of Namur at five o'clock 
on the afternoon of that day. Within a few 
hours their retirement, unfortunately belated, 
also began. It must be remarked that the posi- 
tion of this small British force upon the extreme" 
of the line was one of peculiar peril. It was 
not only their task to fall back like their French 
colleagues upon the right, but also to guard 
against enyelopment; for they had nothing to the 
west of them and formed the exposed end of the 
whole formation. 
For three full days the situation of this 
advanced Allied force, which had originally 
stood in the angle of the Sambre and Meuse, was 
full of danger. 
It was retiring with the utmost rapidity and 
suffering the violent pressure of an overwhelming 
enemy superiority in numbers of men and guns. 
The loss in prisoners, wounded and un- 
wounded, and in guns was exceedingly heavy. 
The British contingent (not quite a fourth of the 
whole), of whose fortunes we know more in detail 
than we do of the French armies to its right, 
extricated itself with difficulty, but with success, 
and reached a line passing through St. Quentin 
by Thursday, August 27. 
Two moments of peculiar anxiety to the 
higher command were present during these four 
days. The first was that when, upon the first day 
of the retreat, Monday, the 24th, the fortress of 
Maubeuge, offering itself as a refuge upon the 
British right, might have tempted the British 
Field-Marshal to take advantage of its works and 
to have shut his army up within them. It was 
the intention of the enemy to compel this con- 
clusion, and he undoubtedly believed that the 
threat to the exposed flank of the British force 
would lead to that conclusion. It was avoided. 
Maubeuge was left to its fate, and, as the event 
proved, most wisely. For it was destined to fall 
after a resistance of less than a fortnight, and 
with it would have disappeared, had they fallen 
behind the protection of its permanent works, all 
tJie British forces in the field. 
As it was, these forces maintained their 
retreat against the heaviest pressure, fighting in 
SuppUmtni to I^kd and Water, 'Autust n. loij. 8* 
