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Updated: July 26, 2025
We are living these days in the atmosphere of the great battle of Verdun. We talk Verdun all day, dream Verdun all night in fact, the thought of that great attack in the east absorbs every other idea. Not in the days of the Marne, nor in the trying days of Ypres or the Aisne was the tension so terrible as it is now.
The election of Poincaré, a man of genuine distinction, was a sign of better times. Millerand became Minister of War, and began the reorganization of the army, thus making possible the victory of the Marne. But a petty intrigue led by a group of radicals caused the resignation of this minister at a time when the First Balkan War threatened to engulf Europe. The maneuver was inexcusable.
The news raised the spirits of the soldiers to the highest point, and their impatience was becoming almost uncontrollable, when the order arrived for them to advance, and the troops at once began to cross the six pontoon bridges that had been thrown at different points across the Marne.
The advice of the Spirit of Napoleon about the campaign on land seemed to me, if possible, of lower value than that of Nelson on the campaign at sea. It is hardly conceivable that Napoleon has forgotten where the Marne is. But it may have changed since his day. At any rate, he says that, if ever the Russians cross the Marne, all is over.
But these patriotic and far-sighted men were powerless. The three years' service bill was the utmost result of their endeavors, and for six months after the war began they had not a gun larger than the famous Seventy-fives but those captured at the Battle of the Marne. As for the poor éclopés, there never was a clearer example of the weaker going to the wall and the devil taking the hindmost.
The wedding breakfast took place at the Grand Hotel, Paris, and a hundred guests were invited to partake of a sumptuous collation. But in spite of fine clothes and large dowries, farmers' wives and daughters still attend to the dairies, and, when they cease to do so, doubtless farming in Seine et Marne will no longer be the prosperous business we find it.
Others, of a humorous turn, derived a certain rudimentary amusement in studying the garden marked Reserved for Patients with Insane Delusions, where they found a very excellent relief-model of the battleground of the Marne, laid out by a former inmate who had imagined himself to be General Joffre. But most of them stood about in groups, talking bitterly.
The smashing of Belgium, the dash of the great German army toward Paris, the threatened disaster to the gay capital, the sickening conviction that nothing could check the tide of guns and men,—all these things bore down upon them with a weight that seemed unbearable. And then came the battle of the Marne!
The valorous retreat of the French and their last-ditch stand on the Marne compelled admiration. Moreover, the school histories of the United States with their emphasis upon La Fayette and the aid given by the French in the first fight for liberty proved to be of no small importance in the molding of sympathy.
Every window in the nearby houses was shattered. The people of Lagny took the destruction of their beautiful bridge in good part. They were too grateful for their deliverance from the Germans to grumble about the wrecked bridge. There is no doubt that the German losses in the engagements at the Marne far exceeded those of the Allies and were most severe, in both men and material.
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