Au^st 14, 1915. 
LAND AND JV; A T E R, 
particular^ upon the 25th, at Le Cateau, a detain- 
ing rearguard action which at once checked the 
pursuit and, by the evening of the day, had frus- 
trated the German attempt at envelopment. This 
particularly brilliant action, fought against an 
offensive perhaps fourfold the defensive, and 
certainly in that proportion of superiority in 
guns, was decisive in the sense that it saved the 
army, which forty-eight hours later, though still 
retiring beyond St. Quentin, was no longer com- 
pelled to such precipitancy of movement and was 
now secure from being turned. 
As the British Army fell back the French, 
from their reserves, formed a new force (known 
as the Sixth Army), which came up and covered 
the British flank. The original French forces 
upon the right, in spite of a heavy check adminis- 
tered to the pursuit at Guise, were ordered to 
continue their retirement towards the Valley of 
the Marne, and by September 2 — 4 the German 
advance had reached its limits (save for certain 
movements on its right, which will be considered 
in a moment), and the initial phase of the cam- 
paign in the West had closed. 
At this moment, the anniversary of Sedan, a 
date also upon which the enemy had, apparently, 
presumed to bring the French forces as a whole 
to action and to achieve a decision, the general 
position was as follows : 
. . Along the frontier, none of the four great 
fortresses save Verdun had been reached by the 
enemy. A French army covered them from Bel- 
fort Jiorth ward for 150 miles. But Verdun was 
already .attacked upon three sides, and the 
southernmost of its outer forts was within a few 
hours of destruction. 
From Verdun, thus with difficulty resisting 
and forming, at the moment, a pivot round which 
the French line bent, that line sp.gged in a great 
semicircle across the Barrois country, just south 
of the Argonne Forest, south of Vitry, and the 
great bend of the Marne, up to the countrv just 
north of Melun, whence, to the neighbourhood of 
Paris, it was continued by the British Armv as 
far as the Marne, and bevond this river by"^ the 
newly-formed Sixth French Army. 
It is obvious from the shape of such a line 
that the decisive action, which had now been 
forced upon the French, could no longer take the 
form of envelopment round by the west ; that the 
enemy would rather attempt to pierce the line at 
one or more points between Verdun and Paris. 
The line so pierced, its left, or western, portion 
would be isolated and could be dealt with at 
leisure and in detail. Its main portion further to 
the right turned after the breaking of the line, 
would be pressed back against its frontier limb 
eastward and suffer ultimate envelopment and 
destruction. The enemy effort, therefore (from 
this decisive date, September 2 to 4, which marks 
the end of his great advance), had for its task the 
breaking of the Allied line between Verdun and 
Paris. 
In the way in which he set about this task, 
his blunders in the accomplishment of it, the 
corresponding opportunities seized by the French 
and the consequent retirement imposed upon the 
Germans, has turned, probably, the history of tlie 
whole war; certainly that of this, its first year. 
It is known to history as '• The Battle of the 
Marne." 
SvfPUment lo La.vd and Watck. Auzvst 14, 1915. 
3* 
The first manifestation of the enemy's design 
appeared upon September 5, upon which day'' a 
movement upon the extreme right or western end 
of the German line was remarked by the aero- 
planes of the Allies, and had been in progress 
perhaps two daj's. 
It was discovered that this extreme right, 
known to the Germans as the First Army (uifder 
the command of Von Kluck), was ^turning 
at right angles to its former direction 
of advance, no longer facing south-west to- 
wards Paris, but south-east, and was for the 
greater part on the march and in column. Its 
object was, combined with the Second German 
Army upon its immediate left to bring at a point 
about 30 or 40 miles from the Paris end of the 
line an overwhelming weight of men that should 
there break the line. The blow would have fallen 
presumably towards the end of September 6, and 
would have fully developed on September 7, 
while all along the great sagging curve as far as 
Verdun, the Third, Fourth, and Fifth German 
Armies were to exercise their full pressure upon 
the French troops opposed to them. 
This movement upon the part of Von Kluck 
and the westernmost army of the German line 
obviously involved what is called " a march across 
the enemy's front." This is alwavs a veiy 
dangerous manoeuvre, because while onie"s men are 
on the march they are not ready for fighting, and 
if one's enemy spreads out parallel to ones march, 
himself ready for fighting, and attacks one's 
marching columns before they have time to deploy, 
those marching columns would be destroyed. 
A vast amount of discussion has turned upon 
Von Klucks motives or excuses for this exceed- 
ingly rash action. Whatever thev were he 
thought the risk could be run, and suffered the 
consequences of his miscalculation. The French 
Commander-in-Chief, after conferring with the 
British Field-Marshal, attacked Von Kluck as 
he was passing by in column during the whole 
course of September 6, and the German plan 
fell to pieces. Von Kluck was, of course, himself 
bound to a precipitate retreat, which he conducted 
with admirable skill and with comparatively 
small loss, but which entailed the corresponding 
retreat of every German armv in succession east- 
ward right away to the ' Argonne and the 
pivot point of Verdun. Von ' Khick's retire- 
ment was protected on its exposed or extreme 
western side by a rear guard, which he had left 
along the right bank of the little River Oureq. 
This rearguard withstood the attack of the 
Sixth French Army opposed to it, and of the 
increasing numbers drawn from the " mass of 
manoeuvre," or reserve, in the neighbourhood of 
Paris, and the resistance was sufficiently pro- 
longed to enable the First German Army to retire 
to the line of the Aisne. Along the course of that 
river and on across the Plain of Champagne, 
through the middle of the Argonne, and so to the 
neighbourhood of Verdun, the German line 
stretched when, by the 13th of September, it stood 
to check the pursuit. The enemy had prepared 
defensive positions along this line. They were 
well cho.sen, and already sufficient to afford opi)or- 
tunities for defence. Those positions, following 
first the heights north of the Lower Aisne, after- 
wards a low roll of land across the district of 
Champagne, run from just south of Noyon aniA 
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