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Updated: June 9, 2025
In the first place, they have so well got that German lesson! The supply of shell and gun is so abundant, also of fresh troops in reserve thanks to "Papa" Joffre's frugality with human lives; the first, second, third lines on ad infinitum to Paris are so carefully fortified, so alertly held against any "drive"! And the troops are so fit!
Is any greater contrast possible than between so implacable, patient, reasonable and above all things capable a being as General Joffre and the rhetorician of Potsdam, with his talk of German Might, of Hammer Blows and Hacking Through? Can there be any doubt of the ultimate issue between them? There are stories that sound pleasantly true to me about General Joffre's ambitions after the war.
Gratitude for his great gifts and great character filled every heart to overflowing. His country had no honor great enough to express its sense of his service to France. Yet it was felt that for the operations of the future, the interests of France and of her allies would be best furthered with another strategist in command of the armies in the field. Joffre's retirement was therefore effected.
As a matter of fact it did not delay the oncoming Germans a day, for they invested it and drove past in their fierce assault upon Joffre's lines. Enormously outnumbered, the French were broken and forced to retreat. They left General French's right flank in the air, exposed to envelopment by von Kluck who was already reaching around the left flank.
An even better alternative might have been to revert to Joffre's original plan, which had failed in August on the Saar, to thrust forward against the Crown Prince and threaten the left of the Germans and the communications of their forces in Belgium and northern France.
Joffre's vaunted plan that had inspired us through the dolorous startled days of retirement was, it appeared, a fact, and not one of those bright fancies that the Staff invents for our tactical delectation. Spuggy returned. He had left us at Bouleurs to find a bicycle in Paris. Coming back he had no idea that we had moved. So he rode too far north. He escaped luckily.
The Germans are tapping against the wall, looking for weak spots. By the 5th, however, when General Joffre's New Year's message appears, in which he tells his armies that the enemy is weakening, that enemy suddenly grows more active and energetic. German artillery fire increased in violence throughout Flanders, Artois, Champagne, and the Vosges.
I am sure that I wrote some weeks ago how puzzled I was when I read Joffre's famous ordre du jour, at the beginning of the Marne offensive, to find that it was dated September 6, whereas we had seen the battle begin on the 5th.
The first feature of the French plan, therefore, was to lend color to the German belief that the armies of the Allies were disheartened and thereby to induce the attacking forces to join the issue quickly. The second part of the French plan lay in General Joffre's decision not to do the expected thing.
In the Battalion, Owens was called "Julius Caesar," and the men never knew whether he was explaining the Roman general's operations in Spain, or Joffre's at the Marne, he jumped so from one to the other. Everything was in the foreground with him; centuries made no difference. Nothing existed until Barclay Owens found out about it. The men liked to hear him talk.
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