The Price of Glory Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the French army politics and religion had played their baneful rôle in promotion, in Germany the ‘caste’ system had tended to frustrate the rise of brilliant officers of humbler origins, such as Ludendorff. The idiotic sycophancy that surrounded the Kaiser, whereby at war-games the side commanded by His Majesty always had to win with a magnificent encirclement of the enemy, also had its effect. Moreover, the army that moved on France, a million and a half strong, the largest the world had ever seen, was far too big and unwieldy for a man of Moltke’s calibre to command effectively. Its strength lay chiefly in the excellence of its NCOs, in its reservist system (which completely deceived Joffre just as it had deceived Louis Napoleon) and the superiority of its weapons. Whereas the French had only six of the despised St. Étienne machine guns per regiment, the Germans had highly efficient Maxims that were not relegated to the Company Quartermaster. The whole French Army possessed only 300 heavy guns; the Germans had 3,500. The French heavies were mostly elderly 120 millimetre guns built in the 1880’s, with no recuperation system so that they had to run out up a ramp; they were outclassed in every way by the German 210s and 150s. For ‘super-heavy’ artillery, the French had to make do with a few 270 mm. mortars dating back to 1875, while the Germans had brand new 280s that could fire a\ shell weighing nearly 750 lbs. over a distance of six miles. Finally, they had the monster 420 mm. ‘Big Berthas’ that Krupp had produced in great secrecy, which were to pulverise the ‘impregnable’ Belgian forts and which later were to become all too familiar to the defenders of Verdun. 1

CHAPTER TWO
    JOFFRE OF THE MARNE
En avant! Tant pis pour qui tombe
La Mort n’est rien. Vive la tombe
Quand le pays en sort vivant.
      En avant!
    PAUL DÉROULÈDE
    D OWN plunged the avalanche, sweeping away alike the midgets that had been preparing its descent, as well as those that had tried feebly to prevent it. The wind of its passage snuffed out the age of unrivalled prosperity and unlimited promise, in which even poor medieval Russia was beginning to take part, and Europe descended into a new Dark Age from whose shadows it has yet to emerge. For the next four years, it was to seem as if the avalanche were the sole arbiter in the world, with human leaders, political and military, reduced to impotence in the face of a force infinitely greater than anything they had ever foreseen and — in the gentle life of Edwardian Europe — had ever been trained to handle.
    Though, from a point of view of doctrinal and material shortcomings, France entered the war in a condition depressingly similar to that of 1870, this time at least her mobilisation functioned; for which much of the credit must go to Joffre, who had made himself an expert on railways. Nearly two million men were brought into position by 4,278 trains, and of all the trains set in motion only nineteen ran late. It was a remarkable achievement; however, the Germans mobilised even more efficiently. Reservists numbering 1,300,000 poured towards the fronts and Joffre, deceived by the Kaiser’s pledge that there would be ‘no fathers of a family in the first line’, could not believe that reserve formations would take part in the initial battles. The strength of the German armies that the French met in executing their Plan XVII convinced Joffre that the enemy’s main weight lay in front; consequently he was completely taken by surprise by the great phalanx that was swinging round by Liège to hammer him in the back.
    The two huge forces, the German and the French (supported by the four valiant divisions which were all Britain could provide atthe time), met with a crash which will resound down through the centuries. On one side, the great grey, disciplined hordes strode vigorously forward, confident in their numbers and the superiority of their race, singing