erately held his
forces in hand and avoided a decisive issue, until he had brought
the Germans to his own battle field. He had avoided a German net
which might have encircled a portion of his armies, as Bazaine had
been encircled at Metz; he had declined to consider political
conditions and fight as MacMahon had been compelled to fight at
Sedan. With inferior numbers, with smaller resources in heavy
artillery and transport, with a handicap of inferior subordinates,
who in Alsace and in the Ardennes, as well as at Charleroi, had by
their incompetence imperiled his first plans, he had won a campaign.
That the success was not conclusive cannot be charged to him, Sir
John French's failure along the Grand Morin, as other critics
assert, or Manoury's excess of zeal at the Ourcq, by enabling Kluck
to avoid Joffre's embrace, possibly saved the Germans from a general
disaster.

The Battle of the Marne denied Germany the continental supremacy
which Austerlitz prepared for Napoleon. It saved France, gave Great
Britain time to raise her volunteer armies, mobilize her industries.
To win it France had put in her last ounce of available strength,
and there was needed for her, too, time to reorganize her armies,
and prepare to conduct a long war. She was not able and she has not
yet been able to turn Germany out of that twenty-fifth of French
area, which Germany holds, and has held since October, 1914.

But in every sense this Battle of the Marne was one of the few
really decisive battles of all human history. It was a French
victory, organized by French genius and won by French soldiers. The
British contribution was slight, just as the British numbers were
insignificant. It was not due to Belgian resistance, as has been so
frequently asserted in the past, and the determining phase was the
wonderful fight of Foch at Champenoise, after the Paris army had
failed against Kluck.

AGAINST RUSSIA

The character of the German operations against Russia in the opening
days of the war was determined by the decision to attack France.
Necessarily all troops save that minimum which represented the
barest margin of safety were sent to the west and there was left to
a small force the duty of defending the East Prussian marshes.
Germany counted upon the slowness of Russian mobilization to give
her six weeks of immunity on her eastern frontier. She expected in
that time to dispose of France, and she believed that at the end of
it Russia would