ng from outside the angle, as from the arrows NNN; (3)
containing within itself, protected by its ring of fortifications,
passages, PP, for traversing the two natural obstacles, {~GREEK SMALL
LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~} and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, which meet at the point {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER BETA~}.

[Illustration: Sketch 38.]

There you have the elements of the position in which the advance
corner of the great French square was situated just before it took the
shock of the main German armies. The two lines AB and BC are the French
and British armies lying behind the Sambre, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}, and the Middle Meuse, {~GREEK SMALL
LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, respectively; but the line
of the Sambre ceases to protect eastward along the dotted line {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~} beyond the point up to
which the river forms a natural obstacle, while from K to B the line is
protected by the river Sambre itself. The more formidable obstacle,
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, represents the
great trench or ravine of the Meuse which stretches south from Namur.
The town of Namur itself is at B, the junction of the two rivers; and
the fortified zone, SSS, is the ring of forts lying far out all round
Namur; while the passages, PP, over the obstacles contained within that
fortified zone, and accessible to the people _inside_ the angle from M,
but not to the people _outside_ the angle from NNN, are the bridges
across both the Sambre and the Meuse at Namur.

All this is, of course, put merely diagrammatically, and a diagram is
something very distant from reality. The "open strategic square" in
practice comes to mean little more than two main elements--one the
operative corner, the other a number of separate units disposed in all
sorts of different places behind, and generally denominated "the
manoeuvring mass." If you had looked down from above at all the French
armies towards the end of August, when the first great shock came, you
would have seen nothing remotely resembling a square.

[Illustration: Sketch 39.]

You would have seen something like Sketch 31 where the bodies enclosed
under the title A were the operative corner; various garrisons and
armies in the field, enclosed under the title B, were the manoeuvring
mass. But it is only by putting the matter quite clearly in the
ab