VICTORY OF THE MARNE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 231, 1 December 1916, Page 6 (Supplement)

VICTORY OF THE MARNE.

article written for the New York "Times" by General Malleterre, who was on the staff of General Joffire, and was jwoundted at the Marne, emphasises toch's part in the battle. General Malleterre was a professor at the Ecole Militaire before the war, and is a recognised authority on military subjects:— "On the sth September, 1914, the armies of the Republic, in retreat since the 22nd August, after the check of their general offensive, had flowed south of the Marne and of the Argonne. " Their main front was between Paris and Verdun. Their right wing formed a sort of oblique flank in Lorraine from Verdun to Nancy and the Vosges. The Belgian army was shut up in tho entrenched camp at Antwerp, and the small English army supported the extreme left of the French line, nearest Paris. The German armies, upheld by a formidable confidence, drunk with victory and with pride, surged towards Paris, which the French Government had just left, and which seemed tc them rrr anable of serious resistance, j "For the Germans, as for the neutral powers, the defeat of France seemed an accomplished fact. It ap- ' peared that the German plan must succeed, as it had been foreseen and prepared by the strategists of Berlin. ; "On the 6th of September General Joffre addressed to his armies the famous order of the day, which was destined to change the face of things. A fow words, sublime in their brevity and j their simplicity, were to suffice f cr turning Fortune towards Justice:—'\t the moment of engagement in a battle : on which depends the safety of our ' country it is necessary to remind all j that the time 'has passed for looking ' behind, that all efforts should be used in attacking .and driving back tile en- j emy. A group which can advance i o further should, cost what it may, keep the ground conquered and die upon it rather than retreat. In the present circumstances no faltering can be tol- | frated.' j "At the appeal of its chief the French ' army lowered a threatening head and threw itself forward. The Germans, I surprised, stopped, sustained' the un- ■ expected shock. This was the battle of bhe Marne, which was to last six days, j On the 12th September came the vie- I tory of the Marne. And tli'e commander in «h*«f completed his order of the lay of 6th September:—'The vigorous resumption of the offensive resulted in success. All, officers and soldiers, you have responded to my appeal, and yo i deserve thanks of our country.' | "The victory of the Marne was in event which, from a military stanlpoint, is without precedent in history, ft was not a victory like Austerlite, ' Jena or Waterloo, since the war continued and still continues. But it had ( a moral significance which made the i certitude of victory, so to speak", pass from one camp to the other. : "At the hour of writing these lines, ■ when on the two battle fronts thu struggle continues under forms which seem contrary to modern conceptions of a great war and w'lth a Violence apparently increasing with time, the victory of the Marne remains the dominant fact. I "A victory is ordinarily the result ef a lucky thought, of a clever mn'i- ! Oeuvre, of a daring execution. It confirms the superiority of a chief and his soldiers. Many victories have appeared to be surprises of hazard; chance, lucky or unlucky, must always be considered. Buv history recognises that, the great successes come to those who have merited them. _ j " Studied only from the point of view t if strategy and tactics, the victory of tho Marne already may be considered as one of these gallant battles where, by the respective valour of the combatants, the advantage has suddenly : turned to the side which at first seemed beaten. Examples of this son have not lacked in the annals of war ; I Praisa may in the future be given mora freely to the very wise and very op- ; portune retreat of our armies after [ the first engagements had proved that ,ve were badly matched against very superior forces. 1 "It is certain that, in tearing his j :roops from the clinch and pressure of ;he German offensive and in bringing ;hem, with a singular perspicacity, on :o the lines of the Marne and th'; seine, between the entrenched camps )f Paris and of Verdun, General Joffre ias given proof of the master qualities' >f resolution and of sang iron! whicil . •haraeterise a great I "Supported by Paris and Yerdun ind the fortified lines of Loraine, our trmies could regain their breath, renfor.ee and fortify themselves, and reiist steadily the assault of the 2,000,000 : jrcrmans who had invaded French ter■itory. One might have been content luring some time with this powerful t lefensive while waiting for the English :o bring up new troops and the Rus- i iian offensive to manifest itself in Po- j and. The trick was far from lost. : iVhat has happened since on the Aisne vould probably have happened on the Seine and on the Marne. « "The siege and fall of Paris, of rhic-h a momentary fear seized public ipinion, was in reality impossible ;n ho presence of an army whose left ring was supported by the capital, and rhich could at any moment intervene , or its defence. ' "Besides, the Germans, in spite of icing hypnotised by The dream of enering Paris, avoided approaching it, tnd at first thought only of completng the defeat and destruction of tlio amies fighting in retreat before them, t has been said since that this mistake if General von Kluck, in turning from 'nris and inarching against our left, j ras the initial cause of the German Meat. _ 1 "By all good military logic, he could lot have acted otherwise, but, de- ! eived by preceding successes and doubtless mis-informed as to what was .assing at Paris, von Kluck Vuieved i a new and easy victory and that, here would always be time to return 0 Paris. Succeeding events disproved js calculations; but the fault, goes aek to tho German General Staff, who ad understood neither the danger to "hich it exposed the Gorman armies , 1 converging them in a too narrow Dace between two fortresses, nor the (tensive force and manoeuvring cap- , city inherent, in the French arniv. j Tt- was not without reason, in fact, ' iat General Joffre stopped the move- j lent of retreat on tho line fixed 'y i iin self, under the protection of the ' 1 sterior forts of the entrenched cant!) ; f Paris. He prepared, with the r~r- J son, a. new army, and called to him j le army eotps of Lorraine. And wile i j 1 a fith September, ho sprung lii« of- , •nsive. he already enclosed the hodv , « ' the five German armies before him • 'tween two <lnak attacks the one com- , 1 g from Paris on the army of Von ' hick, the other, from the Argonne, I a the army of the Crown Prince. 1

A TRIUMPH OF THE FRENCH SPIRIT,

, strategy ana tactics tiiereiore, play , a great part in this admirable counteroffensive. And it is with reason that, , Joffre has been called the victor of the Marne. "But there were other factors in determining this victory. The officers and men who responded to the voice of the supreme chief, transmitting to them the cali of-the country in danger, had just undergone the hardest of ordeals —the ordeal of defeat, the ordeal of retreat, the ordeal of hunger. I "One of the chiefs who by his enl orgy contributed most to the victory. General Foch, has said since that lie won the battle with ghosts of soldiers. It is absolutely true, and there is the marvel! It needed only one hour and • a few phrases written by a firm and 1 imperious hand to raise suddenly these half fallen armies, these harassed men, i 1 smashed, almost spent, and to sweep I them forward again as if carried by a temnest,. j "'I have seen them at work; I bear witness . And from one end of the immense line to the other it was the same desperate and irresistible effort. Their I bodies were feeble, bleeding; but their ! hearts and their souls were firm and vibrant. ■ "Throughout those terrible days, through the grapeshot, the soldiers, fallen exhausted, the chief passed, ; raising them, sending them again to the attack. Without respite they marched and fought in a sort of grievous and heroic dream; and they compelled the victory. : "One must penetrate deeper in tho analysis of such a return of fortune. I have related the act of the Command- ! er-in-Chief and how General Joffre the ' previous day, almost unknown by the j majority, by a few phrases possessed himself of aH these soldier hearts, .stalked by extinction, j "I will not paiiif tTie portrait of . Joffre here. He is too well known now by all the world, lhe pencil land the brush can only show faintly the inner . flame hiden by such natures under ap- : pearanees often heavy and tranquil. | "And the same spirit flamed in each of 11s. Nothing could quench it, for it was fed at that sacred and eternal ' source, the love of country. This love created the victors of the Marne as It will create the victors of to-morrow. | " This was Germany's great error, to underestimate the power of reaction of i our soldiers and of our race. She does not understand now, and never will, the real causes of the victory of the Marne, any more than she will understand her defeat. | "The Germans felt so certain of victory, they were so convinced' of "their racial and military superiority, tlnafc they are still asking themselves i';ie I reason for such a sudden failure of equilibrium. They had forged the most formidable war machine that had ever | existed. They had joined the most scientific and complete destructive 1 forces to the policy of domination purI sued by their world' politics. They had calculated everything, foreseen everything, prepared everything, to crush the two adversaries whose alliance was opposed te Germany's excess of power. They counted, later, a'ter the deftt"t of France and of Russia, on bullying | isolated England, and adjusting Europe and the world as they wished. ! " All has been said on the origin and beginning of the war. It broke, without doubt, at the moment when it was least expected. It was with stupor that Europe learned that the war began by the violation of neutral Belgium. With all their foresight, Getmany did not dreana that England | could intervene. j " In spite of this first disappointment, and the still greater one caused 1 y the heroic resistance of Belgium, tho General staff at Berlin pursued invan- ; ably the plan of offensive first con- ' ceived. It threw the heaviest bodies moiro than forty" army corps—about , 2,000,000 men—against the French army, thinking in some weeks to ren- , der it impotent, push it into the inj terior. take Paris, destroy it if need- • ful; then, this great stroke accomplished, bring the greater part of oho ! victorious troops against the Russians in Poland, j "It was the famous strategic shuttle , founded on the length of time, more than a month, separating the Russian and French mobilisations'. Its realisation had been admirably prepared for by the magnificent network of railroads disposed by Germany between the Rhine and the Vistula. I "During the first battles, in Belgiitm, 'in the Ardennes, and in Lorraine, the German plan seemed to suc--1 ceed. We still remember with poignant emotion those tragic days dur- . Tug which our soldiers and our Allies recoiled before the tempest of iron and fire preceding the German columns. I For it is remarkable that in these firstencounters our troops ceded not to ■ t- , tacks of German troops, who hcsitat- | ed to engage our infantry, but to the ! unprecedented avalanche of projectile 1 ? which fell upon them continuously, often with no indication of their source. "The German artillery performed, t.o to speak, the office of advance guard; ( the infantry advanced only under cover of this moving curtain of explosives, which drove back slowly our surprised and disconcerted troops. It was a triumph for the heavy hovrttzers jvh'ich Germany some years ago introduced into her campaign artillery, rightly counting on their effect upon our army, which lacked them. "They knew only too well in fact, the weaknesses of our military organisation, and that, although voting the law of three years' military service, the French Parliament bad not given soon enough the indispensable credits for its application for the perfecting of war material. "It appears that. Germany (pushing to insanity her conviction iliat the French Army, 111 spite of the unexpected strength bronchi by the incorp- . oration of the class of P.U.'i, carried the seal's of parly d'visions, and was inferior technically and materially 1 > tho German Army) dei ided for tlm brutal attack. Then-lore, what a surprise for the head quarter*, and tor ! the army chiets, when, after a noun- j triumphant inarch which brought tlieni | iti fifteen days to the .Maine. they | found before them a. nanny decided again to battle, and which re- i fused to be impressed by the crash of ! the great shells, which already thee ! called irreverently 'fat pots.' The cannon of 75 milli-mctres was to show its real power and prove its superiority. "Those soldiers rose from their own ashes! What, then, was the power that rendered them all at once victorious, inasmuch as it seemed certain +hnt they had neither the same materials as their conquerors of the day before? "We always come back to this extraordinary moment, this unlooked-for | crisis of the batle of the Marne, to this

decisive conflict that may be called the victory of the spiritual forces. "The Germans, certainly, thought they possessed this spiritual force as well as their material forces; they thought, even, that they were the sole possessors of it, and for this reason this victory of the Marne will remain incomprehensible to them. " For us, on the contrary, ft is clear enough, it cannot astonish us, for it :s in accordance with our history and our national traditions. It has been called miraculous. Let us put aside heavenly interventions. Itjyas a miracle, yet; but a miracle of the nation's energy and the race's worth. "And the story of the French race is full of such miracles. Must we recall Tolbiac and Clovis, Poitiers and Charles-Martel, Bouvines and Philippe Auguste, Orleans and Jeanne d'Are, and, more recently, Valiny and all the immortal glory of Che armies of the republic?

"But the Germans take no heed of iliese reminders of history. Not only tlicy misunderstand tho history of I'ranee and that of other peoples, but their immense and blind pride accepts only history written to suit them. A trenchant formula dominates their minds. "Deutschland über Alios'— 'Germany above all.' "Convinced that German kultur 15 the ultimate ideal of human civilisation, that might makes right, unconscious of strong French national tradition, they judged that France and her army, debilitated by a regime and by political and social customs of which they sa.w only tho outer manifestations, would be incapable of resisting their implacable spirit of domination.

"They confounded spiritual forces with material ones. They inscribed 'Gott mit nns' at the head of their armies, esteeming that God could not but be their ally. And in a sort of vertigo, which one can only define by that term of 'kolossal,' at once syntlietising and ridiculing their madness, they marched out to conquer the tinfverse! And in spite of their actual reverses, their terrible mental processes remain the same.

"The victory of the Marne, in surprising them and even inspring them with a sort of superstitious admiratio 1 for France, has not enlightened them. Germany is incapable of a return i f conscience, and reason.

"One might admire the savage enorgy with which* they prolong a war whose issue is certain. And yet the* were virtually beaten on the 12th ,if September. "Beaten militarily, because since then all their offensive efforts have failed, as well on the Oriental as on the Occidental front; invested, blockaded, caught between two fires, Germany is no more than a besieged fortress which will capitulate sooner or later.

"Beaten morally, because events have revealed at the same time the defect in their armour and l the weakness of thta power which seemed so formidable; because all eyes are open on tho perfidy and atrocity of their methods of war.

" She has lost her military honour i>y the violation of Belgium, by organised massacre and pillage, by systematic lies and calumny. " Germany, with her acomplice, Austria, lias loosed the most formidable and deadly twar that humanity has ever seen. Justice marches with the Allies; the hour of punishment approaches. "It seemed to us just to make known to the great and noble American na, tion the invincible confidence of Franco in victory, an<T that this victory is befitting a nation whose traditions are formed of right, of truth, 0$ liberty, and of honour.

"And this is why, having fought in my place during these glorious days, I can bear witness that the victory of tho Marne was indeed the victory of spiritual forces over material ones."