nion Jack in
the form of a shield on the under-side of the lower planes of all the
machines.

While the Flying Corps remained at Maubeuge and began to carry out
reconnaissances over Belgium, the little British army had moved up north
to Mons, where it first met the enemy. By the 22nd of August it was in
position, on a front of some twenty-five miles, the First Army Corps
holding a line from Harmignies to Peissant on the east, the Second Army
Corps holding Mons and the canal that runs from Mons to Conde on the
west. On the right of the British the Fifth French Army, under General
Lanrezac, was coming up to the line of the river Sambre.

The original German plan was broad and simple. The main striking force
was to march through Belgium and Luxembourg into France. Its advance was
to be a wheel pivoting on Thionville. Count von Schlieffen, who had
vacated the appointment of Chief of the General Staff in 1906, had
prepared this plan. He maintained that if the advance of a strong right
wing, marching on Paris through Belgium, were firmly persisted in, it
would draw the bulk of the French forces away from their eastern
fortress positions to the neighbourhood of Paris, and that there the
decisive battle would be fought. His successor, von Moltke, believed
that the French, on the outbreak of war, would at once deliver a strong
offensive in Lorraine and so would themselves come into the open, away
from the bastion of the eastern fortresses. He must be prepared, he
thought, to fight the decisive battle either on his left wing in
Lorraine, or on his right wing near Paris, or, in short, at any point
that the initial operations of the French should determine. This was not
the conception of Count von Schlieffen, who had intended to impose his
will on the campaign and to make the enemy conform to his movements.
When he was on his death-bed in 1913, his thoughts were fixed on the
war. 'It must come to a fight,' were the last words he was heard to
mutter, 'only give me a strong right wing.' Von Moltke, though he did
not absolutely weaken the right wing, weakened it relatively, by using
most of the newly formed divisions of the German army for strengthening
the left wing.

The French, when the war came, delivered their offensive in Alsace and
Lorraine as had been expected, but not in the strength that had been
expected. They were held up, and retired, not without loss, to strong
defensive positions covering Epinal and Nancy. Meantime,