en warned many hours
before five o'clock in the afternoon.

To what the delay was due we are again as yet in ignorance, but
probably to the confusion into which the unexpected fall of Namur and
the equally unexpected strength of the enemy beyond the Sambre and the
Meuse had thrown the French General Staff.

At any rate, the news did come thus late, and its lateness was of
serious consequence to the British contingent, and might have been
disastrous to it.

The second piece of news, on the other hand, was the saving of it; and
that second piece of news was the information that Sir John French had
in front of him not one German army corps, and possibly part or even
the whole of a second, but at least three. As the matter turned out,
the British contingent was really dealing first and last with four
army corps, and the essential part of the news conveyed was that the
extreme western portion of this large German force _was attempting to
turn the flank of the whole army_.

It was not only attempting to do so, it was in number sufficient to do
so; and unless prompt measures were taken, what was now discovered to
be the general German plan would succeed, and the campaign in the
West would be in two days decided adversely to the Allies--the same
space of time in which the campaign of 1815 was decided adversely to
Napoleon in just these same country-sides.

It is here necessary to describe what this German plan was.

The reader has already seen, when the general principles of the open
strategic square were described on a previous page, that everything
depends upon the fate of the operative corner. This operative corner
in the present campaign had turned out to be the two French armies,
the 4th and the 5th, upon the Lower Sambre and the Meuse, and the
British contingent lying to the left of the 5th on the Upper Sambre
and by Mons.

If the operative corner of a strategic open square is annihilated as a
military force, or so seriously defeated that it can offer no
effective opposition for some days, then the whole plan of a strategic
square breaks to pieces, and the last position of the inferior forces
which have adopted it is worse than if they had not relied upon the
manoeuvre at all, but had simply spread out in line to await defeat
in bulk at the hands of their superior enemy.

Now there are two ways in which a military force can be disposed of by
its opponent. There are two ways in which it can be--to use the rather