Читать книгу The Great War (All 8 Volumes) - Various Authors - Страница 14

Turning now to the first campaign, the attack upon France, it is to be recognized at the outset that the German purpose was to dispose of France in the military sense for the period of the war by a campaign that should repeat the success of 1870. It was essential that this victory should be achieved before France could profit by Russian activity in the east and before Great Britain could render material military assistance to her French ally. It was equally essential that the blow should be so swift and heavy that it would crush the French before they could equip and organize their great reserves, for whom, thanks to legislative folly and pacifist agitation, there was lacking equipment and arms.

For the accomplishment of this great task, Germany counted upon her superior numbers, the greater speed of her mobilization, and the excess of her population over France to give her a decisive advantage. She counted also upon her advantage in heavy artillery and machine guns, on her organization of motor transport, which was to establish new records in invasion. Only in field artillery, in the now famous "seventy-fives," could France claim any advantage.

In 1870 Sedan had come four weeks after the first German troops had entered France. For the new campaign the Germans allowed six weeks. For this time German high command reckoned that Russia could be mobilized in the east, and that any incidental Russian success in East Prussia or Silesia would be counterbalanced by the tremendous victories to be won in northern France. Paris itself would be a sufficient counterprize for Posen, Breslau, or Cracow.

The time limit, however, imposed certain other conditions. The Franco-German frontier from Luxemburg to Switzerland had been transformed into one long barrier, garnished with detached forts and resting upon the first-class fortresses of Verdun, Toul, Epinal, and Belfort. To pierce such a barrier was not impossible but to break through in three weeks, with the whole French army before the forts and the shortness of the front offering the Germans no opportunity to take advantage of their superior numbers, was recognized as next to impossible.

There was left the roads through Belgium and Luxemburg. To come this way Germany had for more than a decade been constructing strategic railways leading from the Rhine and Moselle valleys to the Belgian frontier, double-track roads that served in a desolate country, but were provided with all the necessary machinery for detraining thousands of soldiers.

Belgium might not consent to suffer this invasion of her territory but the Belgian army was negligible, and the German heavy artillery was known to be adequate to dispose of the antiquated forts of Namur and Liege with brief delay. Once the Germans had passed the Meuse and deployed upon the Belgian plain, they could turn south and pass the Franco-Belgian frontier, which was destitute of real defenses, the few fortresses being obsolete, and thence the road ran down to Paris clear and open.

Conceivably Great Britain might make the Belgian invasion a cause for joining France. But, again, the British army was small, there was the gravest doubt as to whether it would be sent to the Continent at all, and even if it came, it would not redress the balance between the French and German armies. Such being the case, as German high command saw it, Belgium was summoned, and refusing, was attacked, the German armies passing the Belgian frontier in the direction of Liege on August 4, 1914, the day on which Germany declared war upon France, and the forty-fourth anniversary of the invasion of France in the Franco-Prussian War.