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The Transcript appeared that day with a black-lettered proclamation, signed by General von Kluck, to the effect that at the next disorder five hostages would be shot, and six beautiful buildings the State House, the Custom House, the Boston Public Library, the Opera House, the Boston Art Museum, and the main building of the Massachusetts School of Technology would be wrecked by shells.
Whatever the cause of change of plan may have been, important forces attached to or intended for the armies of the Duke of Württemberg and the crown prince were withdrawn to support the armies of Von Kluck and Von Bülow. These forces went to form a unit under General von Hausen, a veteran of Sadowa.
The French Intelligence Service were led to believe and informed the British commander that Von Kluck was advancing upon him with only one corps, or two at the most. Some of General French's cavalry scouting as far toward Brussels as Soignes, during the 21st and 22d, confirmed it. But the British proceeded to prepare for attack immediately on taking position. They set to work digging trenches.
It is by no means certain that even with this assistance could the Sixth Army have silenced the terrible fire of those howitzers, but General von Kluck dared no longer leave his artillery there, it must be taken with him on his retreat, or become valuable booty.
This did not culminate until Wednesday, September 9, 1914, so that the German retreat there was one day later than the final retreat of General von Kluck. The clash between the armies of General von Bülow and of General Foch began, as did the battle wrath along the whole front, at dawn of that fateful Sunday, September 5, 1914.
In France, as in England, everybody knew someone who had seen those Russians. One huge camp, I was told, was near Chartres, and in Paris I was shown Cossack caps which had come from there. That was on the day Manoury's soldiers went east in their historic sortie of taxicabs against von Kluck.
They had arrived in time to attack von Kluck on the banks of the Ourq, obliging him to fall back or be completely overwhelmed.
The British army had been compelled to make a night and day retreat and had narrowly escaped destruction at Cambrai on August 26, 1914, "the most critical day." There was, therefore, the real danger that Kluck might get between Paris and the main mass of the Allied armies, enveloping them and producing a Sedan ten times greater than that which had wrecked the Third Empire.
So that the continuous series of British victories, from August 8th onward, which ended in the Armistice, came as a rather startling surprise to those both here and abroad who, like von Kluck in 1914, had been inclined to make too much of a temporary British retreat.
Now these bodies, though they were mainly of cavalry which were operating thus to the west, had already cut the main line of communications from Boulogne, upon which the British had hitherto depended, and were close enough to the Allied left flank to threaten it with envelopment, or, rather, to come up in aid of von Kluck at A, and make certain what he already could regard as probable his power to get round the British, and turn the whole left of the Allied line.
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