The Battle of the Rivers. Edmund Dane
known as Pan-Germanism.
"The military origin of the new German Empire," says M. Simon, "is of vast importance; it gives that Empire its fundamental character; it establishes its basis and its principle of existence. Empires derive their vitality from the principle to which they owe their birth."
The fact is of vast importance because, just as the British Empire had its origin in, and owes its character to, the embodiment of moral force in self-government, so the German Empire had its origin in, and owes its character to, the embodiment of material forces in armies, and existed, as General von Bernhardi says, for the employment of that force as and whenever favourable opportunity should present itself.
The political inspiration and purpose being clear, how was that purpose, as regards France, most readily and with fewest risks to be realised?
It was most readily to be realised by seizing Paris. As everybody is aware, the Government of France is more centralised than that of any other great State. Paris is the hub of the French roads and railways; Paris is also the hub of French finance; Paris is at once the brain and the heart of the country; the place to which all national taxes flow; the seat from which all national direction and control proceed. It was believed, therefore, that, Paris occupied, France would be stricken with political paralysis. Resistance might be offered by the provinces, for the area of France is roughly equal to the area of Germany, but the resistance could never be more than ineffectual.
Such was the plan on its political side. What were its military features?
A political plan of that character plainly called for a swift and, if possible, crushing military offensive. Rapidity was one of the first essentials. That affected materially the whole military side of the scheme. It meant that to facilitate mobility and transport, the equipment of the troops must be made as light as possible. Hence all the usual apparatus of field hospitals and impedimenta for encampment must be dispensed with. It meant that the force to be dispatched must be powerful enough to bear down the maximum of estimated opposition, and ensure the seizure of Paris, without delay. It meant again that the force must move by the shortest and most direct route.
If we bear in mind these three features—equipment cut down to give mobility, strength to ensure an uninterrupted sweep, shortest route—we shall find it the easier to grasp the nature of the operations which have since taken place. The point to be kept in mind is that what the military expedition contemplated was not only on an unusual scale, but was of an altogether unusual, and in many respects novel, character.
The most serious military problem in front of the German Government was the problem of route. The forces supposed to be strong enough Germany had at her disposal. Within her power, too, was it to make them, so far as meticulous preparation could do it, mobile. But command of the shortest and most direct route she did not possess.
That route we know passes in part through the plain of northern Belgium, and in part through the parallel valley of the Meuse to the points where, on the Belgium frontier, there begin the great international roads converging on Paris. All the way from Liége to Paris there are not only these great paved highways, but lines of main trans-continental railroads. The route, in short, presented every natural and artificial facility needed to keep a vast army fully supplied.
Here it should be recalled that two things govern the movements of armies. Hostile opposition is one; supplies are the other. In this instance, the possible hostile opposition was estimated for. It remained to ensure that neither the march of the great host, as a whole, nor the advance of any part of it should at any time be held up by waiting for the arrival of either foodstuffs, munitions, or reinforcements, but that the thousand and one necessaries for such an army, still a complex list even when everything omissible had been weeded out, should arrive, as, when, and where wanted.
Little imagination need be exercised to perceive that to work out a scheme like that on such a scale involves enormous labour. On the one side were the arrangements for gathering these necessaries and placing them in depots; on the other were the arrangements for issuing them, sending them forward, and distributing them. Nothing short of years of effort could connect such a mass of detail. If hopeless confusion was not almost from the outset to ensue, the greatest care was called for to make it certain that the mighty machination would move successfully.
A scheme of that kind suited the methodical genius of Germany, and there can be no doubt that the years spent upon it had brought it to perfection. It had been worked out to time table. Concurrently, arrangements for the mobilisation of reserve troops had become almost automatic. Every reservist in the German Army held instructions setting out minutely what to do and where and when to report himself as soon as the call came.
Now this elaborate plan had been drawn up on the assumption of an invasion of France by the route through Belgium. That assumption formed its basis. Not only so, but the extent to which the resources of Belgium and North-east France might, by requisitioning, be drawn upon to relieve transport and so promote rapidity, had been exactly estimated.
It is evident, therefore, that the adoption of any other route must have upset the whole proposal. In any other country the fact of the Government devoting its energies over a long period of time to such a scheme on such a footing would appear extraordinary, and the more extraordinary since this, after all, was only part of a still larger plan, worked out with the same minuteness, for waging a war on both frontiers.
The fact, however, ceases to be extraordinary if we bear in mind that the modern German Empire is essentially military and aggressive.
Obviously, the weak point of plans so elaborate is that they cannot readily be changed. Neither even can they, save with difficulty, be modified. Even in face, therefore, of a declaration of war by Great Britain, the plan had to be adhered to. Unless it could be adhered to, the invasion of France must be given up.
Bearing in mind the labour and cost of preparation, the hopes built upon the success of the invasion, and the firm belief that the opposition to be expected by Belgium could at most be but trifling, it ceases to be surprising that, though there was every desire to put off that complication, a war with Great Britain proved no deterrent.
Further, the construction by the French just within their Eastern frontier of a chain of fortifications extremely difficult to force by means of a frontal attack, and quite impossible to break if defended by efficient field forces, manifestly suggested the plea of adopting the shorter and more advantageous route on the ground of necessity. In dealing with that plea it should not be forgotten that the State which elects to take the offensive in war needs resources superior to those of the State which elects to stand, to begin with, upon a policy of defence. Those superior resources, save in total population, Germany, as compared with France, did not possess. In adopting the offensive, therefore, on account of its initial military advantages, Germany was risking in this attack means needed for a prolonged struggle. It was necessary in consequence for the attack to be so designed that it could not only not fail, but should succeed rapidly enough to enable the attacking State to recoup itself—and, possibly, with a profit.
The conditions of first rapidity, and second certainty, formed the political aspects of the plan, and they affected its military aspects in regard to first numbers, secondly equipment, thirdly route.
But there were, if success was to be assured, still other conditions to be fulfilled, and these conditions were purely military. They were:—
(1) That in advancing the line of the invading armies must not expose a flank, and by so doing risk delay through local or partial defeat.
(2) That the invading armies must not lay bare their communications. Risk to their communications would also involve delay.
(3) That they must at no point incur the hazard of attacking a defended position save in superior force. To do so would again risk repulse and delay.
Did the plan drawn up by the German General Staff fulfil apparently all the conditions, both political and military, and did it promise swift success? It did.
The plan, in the first instance, covered the operations of eight armies, acting in combination.