Meeting the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

much anticipated. Both countries had worked out detailed plans for the mobilisation and deployment of millions of men in the event of conflict. The French had their plan XVII, which envisaged an immediate attack on, and the recovery for France of, the disputed lands of Alsace and Lorraine. The Germans had their Schlieffen Plan, which anticipated the French strike. In response to this, a relatively small German force would be sent to engage and draw on the French forces, while a much larger force would be sent north through neutral Belgium in order to sweep south on Paris, simultaneously trapping French forces between German armies marching south-east and those already in action in Alsace and Lorraine. Given such a scenario, the French army would be quickly annihilated.
    The Schlieffen Plan did not take into account the rapid deployment of a British force on the left flank of the French Fifth Army, an army that was urgently transferred from the eastern frontier to hold back the Germans sweeping through Belgium. In the event, the British Army sent just four divisions of infantry and one division of cavalry to the continent, a paltry number in comparison with the huge conscript armies of France and Germany; two further British divisions would arrive within days. Nevertheless, the embarkation of 70,000 men, with all the required artillery and transport, was a triumph of planning and logistics and, although small in number, the professional soldiers of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) were a far more forbidding force than their token numbers suggested.
    Although Germany had attacked France through neutral Belgium, most Germans believed that Britain, with problems of her own in Ireland, would stand aside. With Germany already at war with Russia and France, it appeared to Berlin that Britain had fallen on her ‘friend’ merely because it deemed the time propitious. It would not take much, or long, for this view to be transformed into a conviction that Britain had instigated the war all along. The Reverend Williams learnt on ‘unimpeachable authority’ that, so staggered was the Kaiser at the news of Britain’s declaration of war, he was kept from fainting by the quick appearance of a glass of champagne. Whatever the truth, the American ambassador in Berlin, James Gerard, witnessed the public reaction and it was of almost uncontained ‘rage’. A crowd attacked the British Embassy and almost every window was broken, with mounted police making scant effort to protect the legal sanctity of the building and grounds. Shouts of ‘May God punish England’ rang out.
    The German press gave vent to the public fury. Lady Harriet Jephson was trying to leave Altheim but, without money or a return ticket home, she was stuck. In her daily diary she recorded the war from the moment that a young clerk had ‘literally hissed’ at her that England had declared war and shop window signs declaring ‘English spoken here’ were removed.
     
     
Next came the Press announcements, ‘England who poses as the guardian of morality and all the virtues, sides with Russia and assassins!’ Abuse of Sir Edward Grey, of our Government, and all things English, follows . . . The German press is full of the most virulent abuse of England, ‘treacherous,’ ‘Hypocritical,’ ‘lying,’ ‘cowardly,’ ‘boastful,’ there is no bad name they don’t call her! Russia and France and Belgium get no lashings of scorn and fury and hatred such as England does!
     
    Twenty-three-year-old Edward Sibbe was working in the manufacturing town of Chemnitz, when an elderly businessman, who had previously been friendly, stopped him in the street.
     
He enquired whether the English had gone mad, and I told him that I had not observed any traces of insanity when I left home. He then asked me why we had declared war on Germany, and I explained to him that I personally had had very little to do with it. He then got excited, and informed me, that if he ever saw me