THE MARNE BATTLE

Evening Star, Issue 23382, 27 September 1939, Page 10

THE MARNE BATTLE

DEFEAT DF GERMANS ADVANCE TO PARIS STEMMED A DECISIVE STROKE The days of September 6 to 9 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Marne, called by the late Marshal Foch the “ miracle of the Marne ” —and from his position it must indeed have seemed so, says a writer in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald.’ it was a decisive victory for the Allies, for which the opportunity was presented to them by the mistakes of the German High Command—an opportunity first realised by a French commander, who, removed from the heavy and confused fighting of the previous days, was in the bfcst position to see the picture clearly. If the British Expeditionary Force of four divisions had not continued its retreat (in pursuance of Joffre’s general direction) after it had left the Marne behind it; if von Kluck, on the outside of the wheeling German right wing, had not turned too impetuously, fascinated by the idea of rolling tho whole French army up against the Swiss border ; if tiro armies on both sides had not been exhausted by long marches so that at the decisive moment either side might have adapted itself more rapidly to altered circumstances the great battle, for which Marshal Jolfre was preparing to stand on the Seine and the Aube Rivers, might have fixed the fighting front in France on a vastly different line from that it eventually took.

THE “ MIRACLE” HAPPENS. i But the “ vanishing ” of the small British Army deceived von Kluck into thinking his right flank and Paris might be ignored until he had more leisure; the German Supreme Command had lost touch with its army commanders, and these were inspired largely by their own ambitions; the realisation at German headquarters of mistake and danger came too late; and then, when yon Kluck and von Bulow (of the next German army on his left) essayed to carry out the orders hurriedly sent them, these, armies were so badly placed that their manoeuvres opened a gap some 30 miles wide between them. The French forces advancing out from Paris, and the British, turning back from south-east of Paris towards the Marne again, in order to co-operate with them, had not the strength of numbers or the physical freshness to deliver any sledge-hammer blow. But the stroke they did deliver to the confused German right wing was sufiicient; and the French troops in the centre of the swaying Paris-Verdun line, especially those of Foch near the St. Gond marshes, bewildered and halfdefeated by fatigue and heavy fighting, were amazed to find the enemy pressure suddenly relieved. The great victory was won by relatively few troops at the far western end of the line, and the extent of the subsequent German retreat was dictated chiefly by the proportions; of their military machine, which required as niuch room to roll backward as it had to roll forward. The “miracle” was the result of a false move on the chessboard; the actual, fighting in the turning battle was small. “In proportion to its scale and its historical effect,” writes Captain Liddell Hart, the British military critic, “no decisive battle has seen less fighting than that of the Marne.”

VON KLUCK’S MISTAKE, In the original German plan, von Kluck’s (the extreme right wing) army was ordered to take a course iu the great wheeling movement through Belgium and northern France, so as to cross the Seine below Paris, that is, north-west. But. von Kluck believed he had shattered and routed the Allies’ entire left wing; ho decided to cut a big corner; and on August 31 he gave orders to his army to avoid Paris, turned south-eastward, and hurried to make contact, as he supposed, with tho French left flank. By early September 3 the full extent of the daring move became apparent to the British and to General Gallieni, the Military Governer of Paris. The latter had already been informed that, “ in the eventual offensive,” of date uncertain, his troops would attack duo west* from Paris., But this was before Joffre knew of vou Kluck’s false step. Gallieni seems to have been the first to realise the opportunity provided by the German march across his front east of Paris. On' the morning of September 4 he urged Joffre that he should attack at once, and Sir John French, in command of the British army, had also been inquiring, vainly, why his troops should leave the Marne behind them. Joffre replied approving Gallieni’s idea, hut suggested an attack to be delivered from the south of the Marne_ and not from the north of it. Gallieni vyas impatient for action, but the British had to be brought up on their right and the army of D’Esperey had to co-operate on their right again. Joffre wanted to make the attack on September 7; Gallieni and the British successfully pressed for the Cth, and on that day the counter-attack began.

EXPLOITING THE GAP. In ignorance of the exact location of vou Kluck’s and von Bulow’s troops, the German High Command’s orders accentuated a bad situation. The former, mostly south of the Marne, were presumed to bo north of it, and were ordered to face westward there. Encountering Mauoury’s troops (from Paris) near Meaux, and finding the left of his rearguard endangered, von Kluck called back two corps from the south of tho Marne, This by so much weakened tho opposition in face of the British, and the weakness was increased by von Bulow’s placidly carrying out his own orders also to pivot facing Paris, from an cast-west to a northsouth front. Von Kluck then called back from this area two more corps to resist Manoury, and thereafter the gap was inevitable and declared.

These two German corps were wasted, marching, throughout September 7 and 8, and by the evening of the latter day the British had crossed two rivers over which the bridges had mostly been destroyed, and were up to the Marne. D’Esperoy. on their right, had followed round the right of von Bulow’s army, making its pivotal manoeuvre. On September 9 the British began bridging the Marne, crossed their first troops, and after noon the Germans, in a hopeless position, began, under orders, a general retirement of their whole right front. That’retirement did not cease until the enemy was pressed back through Amiens and Arras and until, in a continuing race to secure the outer flank, that flank had hcen reformed on the Belgian coast.