Fighting France | Page 7

anyone be permitted to enter or leave Paris until sunrise. As a result the capital found itself cut off from the suburbs, and lots of little working girls, who came in for the day from Clichy or Levallois-Perret, couldn't get back to their homes in the evening. They had to camp out under the stars.
"It's very amusing," they said, "here we are just like soldiers."
I even heard one of them say:
"What a pity there isn't always war."
That same night, about eleven o'clock, a heavy sound was heard coming from the direction of the city. Some urchins shouted:
"It's the soldiers. It's the soldiers."
An entire Algerian division was, as a matter of fact, detraining and hurrying to fight before Paris. Behind it followed a long line of taxi-cabs, the famous line of taxi-cabs requisitioned by General Gallieni to carry munitions to the battle field of the Ourcq. They made an incomparable spectacle, that magnificent summer night, in the bright moonlight, the long column of Algerian cavalry, with their shining burnouses, on fiery little horses. Applause burst forth from the mob and reached the soldiers. The women threw kisses at them, but they overwhelmed my men and me with reproaches:
"See," they shrieked at us, "if we had minded you and gone home, we wouldn't have seen them."
* * * * *
Paris, which didn't know about the Battle of Charleroi, knew about the Battle of the Marne. Paris knew about the Battle of the Marne not only on account of the troops who marched through its streets, but because it heard the big guns roar for three days, without stopping, towards the north.
What has not already been written and said about the Battle of the Marne, a conflict which will remain legendary in history? What will not be said and written on that subject in the future?... Some writers will see in it a miracle, others a strategic action engineered by a genius, others a chance stroke of destiny. The truth of the matter is more simple and appealing than any of these explanations and, although the whole truth is not yet known about the fight at the Marne, enough is known to make clear the two or three chief reasons why victory came to France and defeat to Germany, safety to civilization and a repulse to barbarism.
To be sure there was a great deal of strategy in it; and the stroke that was conceived in the master brain of Joffre and carried out by Generals Gallieni and Maunoury--a stroke which consisted in forming a new army on the extreme right of the German hordes to come and hurl itself sharply against these hordes--was a brave and bold maneuver which prepared the way for victory.
But this maneuver would not in itself have sufficed to win the victory if Maunoury had not attacked with an irresistible élan on the extreme left, upsetting the German plan of battle; if Franchet d'Esperey had not supported Maunoury's attack vigorously and succeeded in breaking the German left; if, especially, Foch, at the center, had not performed unheard of miracles in breaking down the enemy's resistance and not allowing his own lines to be broken; if, farther on, de Langle de Cary and Sarrail had not held off the Princes of Bavaria and Prussia before Vitry; if, on the right, de Castelnau had not held until the end the Grand Couronné at Nancy. The first truth is that they were all--Joffre, Gallieni, Maunoury, Franchet d'Esperey, Foch, de Langle de Cary, Sarrail, Castelnau, Dubail, to mention them in the order of the battle line from left to right--absolutely incomparable. As an eye-witness said, "each man was on his own," each man gave the very best there was in his brain, his skill, his mind, his soul, his heart. The battle would have been lost if a single one of them had failed once during the entire seven days it raged. Opposed to the Huns was a chain forged of the finest steel, every link in which met the test for equal and unparalleled resistance. Therein lay the miracle of the Marne!
And the second great truth is that behind these generals, who all showed themselves without equal, were armies which, without exception, had kept intact their fighting spirit, that is, their faith in themselves, in their leaders, in the destiny of their country, in the beauty of the cause for which they fought.... Enough can never be said of the elemental importance that lies in the morale of the fighting men on the battle field. It is lamentable to hear far distant strategists reduce the conflict of two peoples to a problem in tactics or a list of ordnance statistics. It is enough to make angels weep when spectators, at a safe distance, speak of succoring a beaten people by sending them