those
Russians. Now the rapid sweep of the German right wing under von Kluck
had given the enemy a vulnerable flank which, in a certain situation,
might admit disaster. The peril of his western flank must have made the
enemy sensitive to the least draught coming from there.

It is on such frailties as this that the issue of battle depends, and the
fate of empires. War, as a means of deciding our luck, is no more
scientific than dicing for it. The first battle of the Marne holds a
mystery which will intrigue historians, separate friends, cause hot
debate, spawn learned treatises, help to fill the libraries, and assist
in keeping not a few asylums occupied, for ages. If you would measure it
as a cause for lunacy, read Belloc's convincing exposition of the battle,
and compare that with le Goffic's story of the fighting of the Ninth
Army, under General Foch, by Fere Champenoise and the Marshes of St.
Gond. Le Goffic was there.

Why did fate tip the beam in the way we know? Why, for a wonder, did the
sound of gunfire recede from Paris, and not approach still nearer? I
myself at the time held to an unreasonable faith that the enemy would
never enter Paris, in spite of what Kitchener thought and the French
Government feared. Yet when challenged I could not explain why, for I was
ill, and the days seemed to be biassed to the German side. To have heard
the guns of the Marne was as though once one had listened to the high
gods contending over our destiny.

Historians of the future will spell out le Goffic on the fighting round
the Tower on the Marshes at Mondement. It was the key of the swamp of St.
Gond, the French centre. The Tower was held by the French when, by every
military rule, they should have given it up. At length they lost it. They
won it again, but because of sheer unreason, so far as the evidence
shows, for at the moment they regained it Mondement had ceased to be
anything but a key to a door which had been burst wide open. Foch, by the
books, was beaten. But Foch as we know was fond of quoting Joseph de
Maistre: "A battle lost is a battle which one had expected to lose." In
this faith, while his battalions were reduced to thin companies without
officers, and the Prussian Guard and the Saxons were driving back his
whole line, Foch, who had sent to borrow the 42nd Division from the
general on his left, kept reporting to Headquarters: "The situation is
excellent." But the 42nd had not yet arrived, and he continued t