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Updated: May 11, 2025
Ever since the news of the descent of von Kluck's hordes upon devoted Belgium, in the fall of 1914, the death grapple in Europe had, of course, been the principal topic of discussion at the post office and around the whist tables at the Setuckit Club, where ancient and retired mariners met and pounded their own and each other's knees while they expressed sulphurous opinions concerning the attitude of the President and Congress.
Von Kluck's name was on the lips of every man, woman and child in the United States of America. Would they crush him? Was Paris safe? What was the matter with England? And then, the personal element came into the situation for Anne and her kind: the names of the officers who had fallen, snuffed out in Belgium and France.
That this was just the effect the Germans planned to produce is shown by General von Kluck's own words. In an interview that he gave me for the London Times, after the occupation of Boston on July 2, 1921, General von Kluck said: "The way to end a war quickly is to make the burden of it oppressive upon the people.
In the village you see a lot of German orders, with their silly notes of exclamation after them, written up on notice boards among the ruins. Ruins and German orders. That turning movement of Von Kluck's near Paris in 1914 was a mistake. Had he not done it we might have had ruins and German orders everywhere.
It was on this day, Tuesday, September 8, 1914, that the British army realizing that it had turned the flank of General von Kluck's southern divisions sent its heavy batteries to the pressure on the banks of the Ourcq. A graphic picture of the artillery side of the fighting on the Ourcq was given by one of the artillery officers detached from the British force.
In a military estimate it proved that forts constructed on the lastest scientific principles, but unsupported by an intrenched field army, crumple under the concentrated fire of long-range, high-power enemy guns. The fall of the northern and eastern Liege forts released Von Kluck's army for its march into central Belgium.
The morrow's tale was similar: most progress was made by the British, who drove the Germans across the Grand Morin at Coulommiers, and thus enabled D'Esperey to do the like with Von Kluck's centre.
The cities that suffered were not isolated units, they were merely knotty points in the lines of battle, and there could be no siege of Paris so long as Joffre's armies kept in line along the Marne or anywhere in contact with the capital. There was therefore no change of plan and no mystery when Von Kluck's right veered in the direction of its advance from south-west to south and then south-east.
I could not help wondering if, as often happens in the game of "snap the whip," von Kluck's right wing had got swung off the line by the very rapidity with which it must have covered that long arc in the great two weeks' offensive. Amélie, who has an undue confidence in my opinion, was terribly disappointed, quite downcast.
But I trust our chiefs and I know that it is only a strategical retirement. Paris will still be ours." Truly it was a strategical retirement and not a "rout," as it was called by the English Press Bureau. But all retirements are costly when the enemy follows close, and the rearguard of Von Kluck's army was in a terrible plight and suffered heavy losses.
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