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On June 5, von Hindenburg, with an army of 125,000, began his march toward Trenton, and General von Kluck, who had arrived with the second expedition, started for Boston with an equal force. This left 50,000 German troops in Brooklyn to control New York City and to form a permanent military base on Long Island. General Wood's position was terribly difficult.
What Rupert of Hentzau meant by what I had seen on the road was that, having seen the Count de Schwerin, who commanded the Seventh Division, on the road to Ath, I must necessarily know that the army corps to which he was attached had separated from the main army of Von Kluck, and that, in going so far south at such speed, it was bent upon an attack on the English flank.
I remembered how Von Kluck was trapped like a rat, in the couloir of the Ourcq, by the genius of Gallieni, and the glorious coöperation of General Manoury and the dear British "contemptibles" under General French. It was a desperate adventure that to try and take the Germans in the flank; and Gallieni's advisers told him there were not soldiers enough in his command to do it.
Immediately the commander in chief decided to attack, and issued on the evening of September 4 the series of general orders, given as an appendix to this volume, which announced the big offensive and eventually turned the tide of battle. That morning of the 8th, then, saw General von Kluck in full retreat. His frontal attack on General d'Espérey had failed and the Fifth French Army had advanced.
Meanwhile the French and British generals more effectually concealed their armies in the forests, doing so with such skill that their movements were unmarked by the German air scouts. All that day General von Kluck moved his forces, leaving his heavy artillery with about 100,000 men on the steep eastern bank of the Ourcq and taking 150,000 troops south across the Marne toward La Ferté Gaucher.
As soon as General von Kluck, turning momentarily from the road to the French capital and bending his march to the southeast, laid bare his right wing, General Joffre vigorously launched against his flank the entire army of General Manoury. The brilliant offensive of this army achieved success from the beginning; it threw back the German forces.
"Gott im Himmel, shall I get this army back to a stronger line or shall I risk all on a fight in the open, against those French and British guns and almost equal odds?" The failure of the German centre was the gravest disaster, and threatened von Kluck with the menace of an enveloping movement by the Allied troops which might lead to his destruction, with the flower of the Imperial troops.
I know an officer with von Kluck's army who received the Iron Cross, First Class, for special information he had given to von Kluck which facilitated his progress through Belgium. Any German spies who may be working in England to-day have no great difficulty in communicating with Germany, though communication is slow and expensive. They can do so by many routes and many means.
To make sure of saving Paris as the Germans swung their mighty flanking column through Belgium, Joffre had to draw in his lines. The Germans came over the hills as splendidly as the French had gone. They struck in all directions toward Paris. In Lorraine was their left flank, the Bavarians, meant to play the same part to the east that von Kluck played to the west.
The plan of the Germans was to hold the north of France with the army of Von Kluck while the Crown Prince moved from Luxemburg straight to Paris. This was theatrical, dramatic, and Kaiserlike; but the French would not consent. They persisted in holding Verdun and defeating the armies of the Crown Prince.
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