August lo, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
19 
Truth, notwithstanding, Is so much stronger than 
falsehood, that in spite of all official and semi-official 
attempts to bar the way it has spread more and more 
amongst a public now becoming less credulous. As a 
result there has arisen a new version, the Legend oj 
1916, of which we will now speak. 
The Legend of 1916 
It was bound to come out sooner or later, that the main 
forces of both belligerents had been engaged in the battle 
of the Marne, and the instructed German public would 
conclude without much difficulty that an engagement 
resulting in a German withdrawal and an Allied advance 
had been a German defeat and an Allied victory. It was 
precisely this opinion that had to be eliminated, in the 
interest of the prestige of the mihtary leaders. All the 
German power of resistance rests in a firm conviction 
of the invincibility of the Generals and the army ; and 
at a time as critical as the present, when these same 
(ienerals are demanding enormous and increasing sacri- 
fices at Verdun, it is of the utmost importance that this 
conviction should stand firm and that no knowledge of a 
previous occasion, at the very beginning of the war, 
upon which they had been thoroughly beaten, should 
lead to even the slightest suspicion that these sacrifices 
might be of no avail. The problem, therefore, was to 
avow the battle that could no longer be disavowed, and 
to acknowledge the retreat that was quite manifest, but 
to present both in such a light as to appear a victory of 
German strategy. 
Let us once again summarise the facts. After the 
defeats on the northern French frontier, the Allied 
armies had made a rapid retirement. Their right wing 
pivoted about Verdun while their left wing was falling 
back upon the support of the entrenched camp of Paris. 
On September 5th they were aligned, from east to . 
west as follows : 
3rd Army, General Sarrail, south of Verdun and the Argonne, 
facing west and north-west. > 
4th Army, General Langle de Carry, astride the upper Marne 
near V'itry-le-Francjois, facing north-west and north. 
7th and 5th Armies, Generals Foch and Fanchet d'Esperey 
south of the middle Marne facing north with their backs 
to the Seine. ■ 
The British army, Field Marshal French, south of the Grand 
Morin, a tributary on the left bank of the Marne, facing 
nortfi-east. .,■-•, 
The 6th Army, General Maunoury, at Paris, ready to take up a 
line facing east, north of the lower Marne. 
Facing these . five Allied armies were aligned fiv6 
German armies from, east to west, as follows : 
Around Verdun and in the Argonne, facing General Sarrail, 
the 5th Army imder the German Crown Prince. ■ 
Near Vitry-le-Francois, facing (General Langle de Carry, the 
4th Army, under the Duke of Wurttemberg. 
Around Sommesous facing General Foch's right wiiig, the 
3rd Army under General von Hausen. 
Towards the marshes of St. Gond and Esternay, facing Foch's 
left wing and General d'Espery's right wing the 2nd Army 
under General von Bulow. 
On the Grand-Morin and astride the Marne near Meaux, 
facing d'Esperey's left wing and Marshal French, and 
exposing its right flank- to General Maunoury, was the 
1st Army, under General von Kluck. . ' ' ■ 
The latter had crossed the Marne with his cavalry and with 
four out of his five army-corps, leaving the 4th Reserve 
Corps north of that river, upon the Ourcq, facing towards 
Paris. ■ 
On September 5th in the afternoon, General Maun- 
oury 's troops attacked this Army Corps, whereupon the 
Commander of the ist Garnian Army, appreciating the 
threat to his flank and his rear, left. part of his forces 
to face the British and the French 5tlv Army and with- 
drew the remainder to the north of the river. 
This first retirement was followed by a second ; General 
Maunoury having recei\'ed reinforcements, von Kluck 
had to call up the rest of his army which had been holding 
the British. He was thus able to counter-attack the 
6th French Army, but soon found his left flank menaced 
by (ieneral French, whose troops had followed his with- 
drawal across the Marne. 
U'Esperey and his neighbour Foch had meanwhile been 
violently attacked by General von Bulow. To begin with 
this atta.::k was fa\-ourable to the (lermans, but von 
Kluck's retreat compromised the whole situation by 
uncovering von Bulow's flank, thereby forcing him also 
to retreat in order to keep in connection with his right, 
which in turn weakened his touch with von Hausen on 
his left. The whole German battle-array was threatened 
with dislocation, and the commander-in-chief was forced 
to order a retreat on the whole front during the night 
of September 9th to the loth. It was a lost battle for 
the Germans. 
So much for history : now for the legend. This has 
been circulated amongst the Cierman public by means of 
various pamphlets, all well advertised in the press, and is 
in substance as follows : 
During the first days of September, when General 
A'on Kluck turned aside from Paris in an attempt to grip 
the French left wing, Marshal von Hindenburg had been 
victorious over the Russians at the battle of Tannenberg. 
The Imperial Staff, however, was luidcr no illusions as to 
the real importance of this victory, decisive though it was. 
knowing that it had only affected a small fraction of 
Russia's forces and that the rest would certainly return 
to the attack ; at the same time it was apparent that the 
Austro-Hungarians, left to themselves, would be in- 
capable of adequate resistance. 
Under these conditions. General Joffrc ordered his 
counter-offensive, and the Germans were faced with two 
alternatives. Either the French and British with their 
black and yellow Colonial troops would develop a nu- 
merical superiority sufficient to enable them to offer 
serious resistance, or else ,the victorious Ciermans in 
pursuit would dangerously extend their lines of communi- 
cation in the West simultaneously with an advance in 
the East. 
In the face of these two possibilities [say the German 
scribes) a plan was conceived so full of genius, so marvellous, 
that only the future will show the greatness thereof — a plan 
that dealt adequately with both alternatives at once. Whilst 
the battle was raging and the German armies everywhere 
asserting their superiority over the Allies, their Commander- 
in-Chief made busy to fortify the line of the river Aisne ; 
this work was complete by 10th September. Thereupon 
orders were issued to the victorious armies to break off the 
engagement. In perfect order, taking with them prisoners 
and trophies, they suddenly disappeared from before their 
surprised adversaries and fell back to occupy the position 
against which the latter were subsequently to break their 
heads. The new front covered the rich lands of northern 
France, Belgium, and the Rhenish plain, where were to be 
found all things necessary for defensive work. Great lines 
of yailway assured communication with the home-land, 
ivhence fresh troops and munitions could be brought up in a 
fete) hours. The British and French had thought themselves 
victors, but they were greatly mistaken. The German 
" defeat " was in truth' a victory, their withdrawal not a 
retreat, but rather a deliberate rupture of the engagement 
iWexecution of a broad-minded strategical decision, carried 
out at the psychological moment. 
Reductio ad Absurdum 
' The story is ingenious but false. One question alone 
will almost suffice to disprove it. Why retire upon the 
Aisne if the enemy was at his last gasp and only needed one 
last blow to complete his destruction ? Either the German 
Armies were really victorious, in which case it was absurd 
to retreat ; or else they were forced to retreat, in which 
case it was absurd to claim the victory. 
This contradiction is the more marked if one considers 
German military doctrine as embodied in their regulations, 
namely, that victory is never complete uniess followed by 
pursuit — that the aim of a battle is not merely to beat the 
enemy, but to destroy him, in order to prevent a renewal of 
the struggle and consequent risks. Yet here, immediately 
after the formidable rush across Belgium and northern 
France, at the moment when it was claimed to be possible 
to destroy the enemy, all doctrine and regulations were 
set aside ! 
But, in fulfilling the victory by the pursuit {says the 
legend) the lines of communication would have been duly 
extended. Strange indeed, for how could these lines 
have been protected better than by destroying an ad- 
versary who was claimed to be on the point of destruc- 
tion. And how long was the threatened extension ? 
From the Aisne to the Marne the average distgince is not 
