THREE BIG CRISES.

Marlborough Express, Volume LII, Issue 285, 20 November 1918, Page 3

THREE BIG CRISES.

FRENCH GENIUS TRIUMPHS. MIGHTY OFFENSIVE WRECKED Following is the concluding portion of Mr Frank Simonds's article: CHIEF FIGURES OF MAKNE NOW LEGENDARY. All tha German's failures havo been repetitions oi! tho Marne; all his opportunities ]iav> bee l i.hro-vn away in the samo fashion. It is only four ye.irs since the Maine was fought, but :t has ulivady become remote and most of its chief figures legendary. Joffrc is a Marshal and a memory. Moltko tho younger is dead—perhaps of a broken heirt. Kluck, Bulow, Hausen, have disappeared from the battle line. If the Grown Prince remains, it is as a battered figurehead. On the French side Gallieni, who recognised the moment and the opportunity when Kluck exposed his flank to Paris, is dead. Maunoury, who delivered the first bio v, ::s blind and retired. Franchet d'Esporey is in Greece. Sarrail ha'j disappeared. Castlenau still commands on the Nnncy fi-ont; only Foch remai.ns a present power—but what a power! At the very bottom of tilings the first battle of the IVlarne was the* test befrn een two civilisations—between the civilisation of the savage heart and the scientific brain and the civilisation which is the Common heritage of tho western and democratic nations. The contrast w>is as great, the issue as unmistakable, at the Marne as ab Marathon, the German idea as deadly ■. to western civilisation as was the Persian, the victory in France and within the hearing of Paris as significant in human history as that other triumph, the news of which wus, according to legend, biought to Athens by a .messenger who could run the short distance in a few hours. FRENCH MIND MASTERS FOE'S MILITARY MACHINE. P nd, by comparison with the Marne, all the other battles of this war have been lesser events. Even the epic of Verd in compares only in its human qualities. The reason is simple; at no time since the first Maine has there been the same obvious menace of supreme disaster following defeat. For forty-four years the German planned and prepared—th> sum total of his genius and his resources avis expressed in this drive from Liege to Meaux— from the German frontier to the environs of Paris—and the sum total was insufficient in the faje of French genius and French deletion. After the Marne the -German sought to reconstruct his edifice—his material resources were enormous. He could com© agaii and yet again to the western front with superior ni-Tiiber-* and superior weapons, but his military genius' was insufficient. Joffre had beaten Molbke, Petain defeated Falkenhayn, Foch overwhelmed Ludendorff—the Freuea mind wi,s invariably the master of the German machine. Even when the events upon the actual battlefield are of such transcendent interest, it is therefore worth while no.v on this annivpv.snry to look backward four years. If the Gem:ana had prevailed on this1 day, .or'-th© next, four 'years' ago, Pan' 3— Frr. nee—would have fallen. We know now Russia, would have gone Rwiftlv instpnd of slowly to rtri". Britain -within her 'islands would hnve been wife from invasion, but' t-he Continent would have laid at the Kaiser's fe^h and all tho g^nrdiose nlnns of Mitteleuroprr would have boon worked out. while there wns left on tho> mainland of Europe not | a national -will to oppose the' German. Wo in America, would not have been nwakened Until toe late. Britain would have had alone to defend the safety of her Empire at Suez and on the Persian Gulf while the menace of the submarine grew. We are winning the war now. Had Russia stood fast the aid Britain brought in 1916 and 1917 would have been enough, and the French eontributir/n at the Marne and at Verdun would have' sufficed. After the Russian def action civilisation waited upon America. Britain and France could hold, but no moje. BLOW REVEALS- FALLACY OF GERMAN REASONING. Our first divisions at tl?e second Marne gave Foch what Joffre never had at the first battle—a strategic reserve of fresh trocpr,. The first battle was won by exhausted troops on the verge of complete physical collapse. But tho first thousands of fresh American manhood arrived for the second, and from July 18 to the present hour the German retreat has continued. In all its major details the second battle o\" the Marne repeated the first. German .strategy was again based upon German psychological decisions. France, Ludendorff reasoned, as Moltko had reasoned, was beaten, destitute of reserves, :"ncapable of a return to- the offensive— therefore the west flank once more along the tiny bufc memorable "Ourcq stream way offered to the Fi'eneh. and ence- more a French counterstroke ruined the German strategy and revealed the utter fallacy <if tlie Geimon reasoning. The " German could understand, a machine, but not n man, arul in tho final hour the man ■m-:;4-nr O (] the machine. That tins should luvva twice happened :,t the Marne is one of the rarest of nil the coincidences of written history. All over the United States there hns Irn-n held a, double celebration— ih>> observation of the anniversary of Lai'ayotto and of the Ma-ne. The tribute of ail America was laid at the feet of oa" oldest Ally, a benefactor in the present us in the earlier century. .But as we approach the point whore tho end of tho war settlement1;, may against be discussed it seems to me these details which affect Franc? must bo viewed in ho light of tho Mnrm> nml wh-it it meant to us, to nil civilised -nen and women, for nil oi; whom German victory woukl have- been a peril personally and for their children. F\l A iVCH INCO MP LTVrR WITH - OUT LOST TERRAIN. Fi-ancc sawd us at tho- Mt'.rne, but Franco romiins in part in tho '•nomy'n hands. The German still holds regions and provinces soiled in 1914 and ill 187 L Wiliout botli li'iM'C-e is incomplete, indefensible, and li-:-r moral r-laim to Flanders and to Chanmiunio :"s no stronger than hoy m'oiul title to Alsace and Loilr.ii'ic. Wo sir:'- to erect new front- j icrs against ;ui old barbarism, and j wo mu:>t err.'ct them ii. such fashion I ii.s to make certain that if the need °voi' conH\s again Frai'o. can again hold tho gatewfiy—- not this time at the Marnn, but at th? Rhine.

I'Yemh province).* stole?;! in 1871 linvo liocn the foundation of German sh-atotjy in 1914. Without

Metz and Strassburg, (iormany could not have undertaken the Belgian adventure Without the risk of certain ruin. French iro?i has supplied Germany with the essential n.ate^»J> for her onslaught, and RheinW Cathedral has been destroyed by th 3 shells made of iron found on French soil. Without this ore a new German attack would have been, impossible.

And there is yet another aspect to the case. The loss of her provinces—hers by every el aim, hers by the will of the people who inhabited them, hers by the volunt uy decision of men of other generations in certain cases—was for Franco- n moral oven moo than a. nntoriil blow. A boate i Franco suffersd over more than forty years with a (loop sense of the injury other nations hod done the French y.eople- by consent iv.fr to this spoliation. And now, when F'rar.-r-e has so much added to the debt all civilised mankind owes hor, new when the fourth anniversary of tho Marae tring, such powerful reminders of the French contribution, now is the fime- for Britain and for America, to resolve that France shall emerge f.om the strugle. which will bo won, thanks to tho French sacrifice and devotion, in tho tim.> before Britain and America could prepare, restored to her rightful limits and hc-r proper extent. MAPvNE GAVE GERMANY HER MORTAL WOUND. We do not know what s-art of Germany we shall face in the future, but we do know that in all future time France will remain the guardian of the gateway, and for that reason the gateway must be made strong. To-day me-i and women are thinking of contemporary battles . and contemporary events, and the first battle of tho Marne is already a thing remote, -like Valmy—almost like Marathon. Yet I make no excuse for dealiug with it rather than with contemporary struggles, because I believo that the. outcome of the war win decided on the battlefield between Paris and Verdun between September .5 and September 10, 1914. Ever since that period the German has sought by ev?ry frantic and calculated device to abolish the decision then had that ho. could not overthrow Western civilisation or supplant Western democracy by the Prussian gospel of force. We have trembled before each attack. Wo have seen each attack fail, and now as we enter the final phase of the war, at last possessed of tho numbers a.nd the material necessary for the tusk,' we are but exploiting the victory of the- Marne, carrying out the logical and ineluctable decision made on September 9, in the late afterr.con, when Foeh attacked westward of La Fore Charripenoi>:e and by his sv-ceess insured a German retreat from the Oise to the Memo. But the genius was not the genius of Foch-or of Joffre—it was the genius of France, and the victory was the victory of tho civilisation France like ourselves, held to: the civilisation France had already twice saved, against the Huns at" Chalons and against tho Saracens at Poitiei-s. Like Marathon, the battle of the Mania did not overwhelm the common enemy immediately, but, like Marathon, its wound was mortal.