The Battle of the Marne

75

Idem, pp. 172–5.

76

Foch, Des Principes de la Guerre.

77

M. Hanotaux (p. 76) regards this last part of the plan as “pure folly,” as “a few thousand resolute men holding the defiles, crests, and cliffs would break whole armies before Nancy was attained.” This appears to be an exaggeration; but it is highly probable that before Nancy, as before Mons and on other occasions at the beginning of the war, the German Armies lost, through the traditional belief in envelopment, what they might have gained by concentration on the central attack.

78

“Choses Vues à Metz,” Revue Hebdomadaire, December 18, 1915. Colonel Feyler quotes from the Lokal Anzeiger of Berlin the following commentary on one of the Kaiser’s earlier appearances at the Front: “The presence of the Emperor demonstrates clearly what a development events have taken.... The Emperor would never have gone into France if those responsible had envisaged the possibility of the German Army being thrown back beyond the frontier. His presence among his troops in enemy country will not fail to produce a deep impression in Germany as well as abroad.”

79

Quoted in Un Village Lorrain en Août—Septembre 1914. Réméréville, by C. Berlet.

80

Lt.-Col. Thomasson, Le Revers, introduction.

81

Professor Friedrich Meinecke, of Freiburg University, in the Frankfürter Zeitung, December 31, 1916.