ct bodies on many
roads, each seemingly a force by itself and each a part of the whole,
which could be a dependable whole only when every part was ready,
alert, and where it belonged! Nothing can be left to chance in a battle-
line three hundred miles long. The general must know what to
depend on, mile by mile, in his plans. Millions of human units are
grouped in increasingly larger units, harmonized according to set
forms. The most complex of all machines is that of a vast army, which
yet must be kept most simple. No unit acts without regard to the
others; every one must know how to do its part. The parts of the
machine are standardized. One is like the other in training, uniform,
and every detail, so that one can replace another. Oldest of all trades
this of war; old experts the French. What one saw was like
manoeuvres. It must be like manoeuvres or the army would not hold
together. Manoeuvres are to teach armies coherence; war tries out
that coherence, which you may not have if someone does not know
just what to do; if he is uncertain in his role. Haste leads to confusion;
haste is only for supreme moments. In order to know how to hasten
when the hurry call comes, the mighty organism must move in its
routine with the smoothness of a well-rehearsed play.

Joffre and the others who directed the machine must know more than
the mechanics of staff-control. They must know the character of the
man-material in the machine. It was their duty as real Frenchmen to
understand Frenchmen, their verve, their restlessness for the
offensive, their individualism, their democratic intelligence, the value
of their elation, the drawback of their tendency to depression and to
think for themselves. Indeed, the leader must counteract the faults of
his people and make the most of their virtues.

Thus, we had a French army's historical part reversed: a French army
falling back and concentrating on the Marne to receive the enemy
blow. Equally alive to German racial traits, the German Staff had
organized in their mass offensive the elan which means fast
marching and hard blows. So, we found the supposedly excitable
French digging in to receive the onslaught of the supposedly
phlegmatic German. When the time came for the charge--ah, you can
always depend on a Frenchman to charge!

Those reserves were pawns on a chessboard. They appeared like it;
one thought that they realized it. Their individual intelligence
and democracy had reasoned out t