THE MARNE BATTLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 70, 20 September 1939, Page 4

THE MARNE BATTLE

DEFEAT OF GERMANS

ADVANCE TO PARIS STEMMED

A DECISIVE STROKE

The days of September, 6 to 9, mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Marne, called by the late Marshal Foch the "miracle of the Marne" —and from his position it must indeed have seemed so, says a writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald." It was a decisive victory for. the Allies, for which the opportunity was presented to them by the mistakes of the German High Command —an opportunity first realised by a French commander who, removed from the heavy and confused fighting of the previous days, was in the best position to see the picture clearly. If the British Expeditionary Force of four divisions had not continued its retreat (in pursuance of Joffre's general direction) after it had left the Marne behind it; if yon Kluck, on the outside of the wheeling German right wing, had not turned too impetuously, fascinated by the idea of rolling the whole French army up against the Swiss border; if the armies on both sides had not been exhausted by long marches so that at the decisive moment either side might have adapted itself more rapidly to altered circumstances—the great battle, for which Marshal Joffre was preparing to stand on the Seine and the Aube rivers, might have fixed the fighting front in France on a vastly J different line from that it eventually took. THE "MIRACLE" HAPPENS. But the "vanishing" of the small British Army deceived yon Kluck into thinking his right flank and Paris might be ignored until he had more leisure: the German Supreme Command had lost touch with its army commanders, and these were inspired largely by their own ambitions; the .realisation at German headquarters of mistake and danger came too late; and then, when yon Kluck and yon Bulow (of the next German army on his left) essayed to carry out the orders hurriedly sent them, these armies were so badly placed that their manoeuvres opened a gap some thirty miles wide between them. The French forces advancing out from Paris, and the British, turning back from south-east of Paris towards the Marne again, in order to co-operate with them, had not the strength of numbers or the physical freshness to deliver any sledge-hammer blow. But the stroke they" did deliver to the confused Qerman right wing was sufficient; and the French troops in the centre of the -. swaying Paris-Verdun line, especially those of Foch near the St. Gond marshes, bewildered and halfdefeated by fatigue and heavy fighting, were amazed to find the enemy pressure suddenly relieved. The great victory was won by relatively few troops at the far western end of the line, and the extent of the subsequent German retreat was dictated chiefly by the proportions of their military machine, which required as much room to roll backward as it had to roll forward. The "miracle" was the result of a false move on the chessboard; the actual fighting in the turning battle was.small.."ln .proportion,, to its scale and its historical effect," .'writes Captain Liddell Hart, the British, military critic, "no decisive battle has seen less fighting than that of the Marne." YON KLUCK'S MISTAKE. In the original German plan, yon Kluck's (the extreme right-wing) army was ordered to take a course in the great wheeling movement through Belgium and northern France, so as to cross the Seine below Paris, that is north-west. But yon Kluck believed he had shattered and routed the Allies' entire left wing; he decided to cut a big corner; and on August 31 he gave orders to his army to avoid Paris, turned south-eastward, and hurried to make contact, as he supposed, with the French left flank. By early September 3 the full extent of the daring move became apparent to the British and to General Gallieni, the Military Governor of Paris. The latter had already been informed that, "in the eventual offensive," of date uncertain, his troops would attack due west from Paris. ' .;•','. But this was before Joffre knew of yon Kluck's false step. Gallieni seems to have been the first to realise the opportunity provided by the German march across his front east of Paris. On the morning of September 4 he urged Joffre' that he should attack at once, and Sir John French, in command of the British Army, had also been inquiring, vainly, why his troops should leave the Marne behind them. Joffre replied approving Gallieni's idea, but suggested an attack to be delivered from the south of the Marne and not from the north of it. .Gallieni was impatient for action, but the British had to be brought up on their right and the army of D'Esperey. had to co-operate on their right again. Joffre wanted to make the attack on September 7; Gallieni and the British successfully pressed for the 6th, and on that day the counter-attack1 began. EXPLOITING THE GAP. In ignorance of the exact location of yon Kluck's and yon Bulow's troops, the German High Command's orders accentuated a bad situation. The former, mostly south of the Marne, were presumed to be north of it, and were ordered to face westward there. Encountering Manoury's troops (from Paris) near Meaux, and finding the left of his rearguard endangered, yon Kluck called back two corps from the south of the Marne. This by so much weakened the opposition in face of the British, and the weakness was increased by yon Bulow's placidly carrying out his own' orders also to pivot facing Paris, from an east-west to a north-south front.. Yon Kluck then called back from this area two more corps to resist Manoury, and thereafter the gap was inevitable and declared. These tw(s': German corps were wasted, marcping, throughout September 7 and 8, and by the evening of the latter day the British had crossed two rivers over which the bridges had mostly been destroyed, and were up to the Marne. D'Esperey, on their right, had followed round the right of yon Bulow;'s army, making its pivotal manoeuvre.. On September 9 the British began bridging the Marne, crossed their first troops, and after noon the Germans, in a hopeless position, began, under orders, a general retirement of their whole right front. : That retirement did not cease until the enemy was pressed back through Amiens and Arras, and until, in a continuing race to secure the outer flank, that flank had been reformed on the Belgian coast.