The Guns of August (11 page)

B
RITAIN’S JOINT MILITARY PLANS
with France were begotten in 1905 when Russia’s far-off defeats at the hands of the Japanese, revealing her military impotence, unhinged the equilibrium of Europe. Suddenly and simultaneously the government of every nation became aware that if any one of them chose that moment to precipitate a war, France would have to fight without an ally. The German government put the moment to an immediate test. Within three weeks of the Russian defeat at Mukden in 1905, a challenge was flung at France in the form of the Kaiser’s sensational appearance at Tangier on March 31. To Frenchmen it meant that Germany was probing for the moment of “Again” and would find it, if not now, then soon. “Like everyone else I had come to Paris at nine o’clock on that morning,” wrote Charles Péguy, the poet, editor, mystic, Socialist-against-his-party and Catholic-against-his-church, who spoke, as nearly as one person could, for the conscience of France. “Like everyone else I knew at half-past eleven that, in the space of those two hours, a new period had begun in the history of my life, in the history of this country, in the history of the world.”

Of his own life Péguy was not speaking vainly. In August 1914 he was to volunteer at forty-one for military service and be killed in action at the Marne on September 7.

Britain, too, reacted to the challenge of Tangier. Her military establishment was just then being thoroughly overhauled
by Lord Esher’s Committee. It included, besides himself, the turbulent First Sea Lord, Sir John Fisher, who had been reforming the navy by a series of explosions, and an army officer, Sir George Clarke, known for his modern ideas on imperial strategy. The “Esher triumvirate” had created a Committee of Imperial Defence to govern policy pertaining to war, of which Esher was permanent member and Clarke was secretary, and had endowed the army with a pristine General Staff. Just at the time when the Kaiser was nervously riding a too spirited white horse through the streets of Tangier, the Staff was engaged in a theoretical war game based on the assumption that the Germans would come through Belgium in a wide flanking movement north and west of the Meuse. The map exercise proved to the Director of Military Operations, General Grierson, and to his assistant, General Robertson, that there was little chance of stopping the Germans unless British forces “arrived on the scene quickly and in strength.”

At that time independent action in Belgium was what the British contemplated. Mr. Balfour, the Conservative Prime Minister, at once asked for a report on how soon a force of four divisions could be mobilized and landed in Belgium in the event of a German invasion. In the midst of the crisis, while Grierson and Robertson were over on the Continent examining the terrain along the Franco-Belgian frontier, Balfour’s government lost office.

Nerves on all sides were stretched tight in the expectation that Germany might take advantage of Russia’s catastrophe to precipitate war in the coming summer. No plans for common Anglo-French military action had yet been made. With Britain in the throes of a general election and ministers scattered about the country campaigning, the French were forced to make an unofficial approach. Their military attaché in London, Major Huguet, made contact with an active and eager intermediary, Colonel Repington, military correspondent of
The Times,
who, with a nod from Esher and Clarke, opened negotiations. In a memorandum submitted to the French government, Colonel Repington asked, “May we take it as a principle
that France will not violate Belgian territory unless compelled to do so by previous violation by Germany?”

“Definitely, yes,” the French replied.

“Do the French realise,” asked the Colonel, intending to convey a warning as well as a prognosis, “that any violation of Belgian neutrality brings us into the field automatically in defense of our treaty obligations?” No British government in history ever committed itself to take action “automatically” upon an event, but the Colonel, with the bit in his teeth, was galloping far ahead of the field.

“France has always supposed so,” was the somewhat dazed answer, “but has never received an official assurance.”

By further leading questions, the Colonel established that France did not think highly of independent British action in Belgium and believed that unity of command—for France on land and Britain at sea—was “absolutely indispensable.”

Meanwhile the Liberals had been elected. Traditionally opposed to war and foreign adventure, they were confident that good intentions could keep the peace. Their new Foreign Secretary was Sir Edward Grey, who suffered the death of his wife a month after taking office. Their new Secretary for War was a barrister with a passion for German philosophy, Richard Haldane, who, when asked by the soldiers in Council what kind of army he had in mind, replied, “A Hegelian army.” “The conversation then fell off,” he recorded.

Grey, warily approached by the French, indicated he had no intention of “receding” from any assurances his predecessor had given to France. Faced with a major crisis in his first week of office, he asked Haldane if arrangements existed for the British to fight alongside the French in the event of an emergency. Haldane looked in the files and found none. His inquiry disclosed that to put four divisions on the Continent would take two months.

Grey wondered if talks between the General Staffs might not now take place as a “military precaution” without committing Great Britain. Haldane consulted the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Despite party affiliation, Campbell-Bannerman was personally so fond of things French
that he would sometimes take the Channel steamer over and back in one day in order to lunch at Calais. He gave his assent to Staff talks, though with some misgivings about the stress laid on “joint preparations.” He thought that coming, as they did, “very close to an honorable understanding,” they might destroy the lovely looseness of the Entente. To avoid any such unpleasantness Haldane arranged for a letter to be signed by General Grierson and Major Huguet, stating that the talks did not commit Great Britain. With this formula safely established, he authorized the talks to begin. Thereupon he, Grey, and the Prime Minister, without informing the rest of the Cabinet, left further developments in the hands of the military as a “departmental affair.”

From here the General Staffs took over. British officers, including Sir John French, a cavalry general who had made a great name in the Boer War, attended the French maneuvers that summer. Grierson and Robertson revisited the frontier in company with Major Huguet. In consultation with the French General Staff, they selected landing bases and staging areas along a front from Charleroi to Namur and into the Ardennes, predicated on a German invasion through Belgium.

The “Esher triumvirate,” however, fundamentally disapproved of employing the British Army as a mere adjunct of the French and, after the tension of the Moroccan crisis relaxed, the joint planning begun in 1905 was not pushed further. General Grierson was replaced. The dominant view, represented by Lord Esher, favored action, independent of French command, in Belgium where the holding of Antwerp and the adjoining coast was a direct British interest. In the vehement opinion of Sir John Fisher, British action ought to be predominantly naval. He doubted the military capacity of the French, expected the Germans to beat them on land, and saw no purpose in ferrying the British Army over to be included in that defeat. The only land action he favored was an audacious leap onto Germany’s back, and he had chosen the exact spot—a “ten-mile stretch of hard sand” along the Baltic coast of East Prussia. Here, only ninety miles from Berlin, the nearest point to the German capital that could be reached by
sea, British troops landed by the navy could seize and entrench a base of operations and “keep a million Germans busy.” Apart from this action the army should be “absolutely restricted to … sudden descents upon the coast, the recovery of Heligoland and the garrisoning of Antwerp.” Its plan to fight in France was, in Fisher’s opinion, “suicidal idiocy,” the War Office was remarkable for its ignorance of war, and the Army should be administered as an “annex to the Navy.” Early in 1910 Fisher, at sixty-nine, was simultaneously raised to the peerage and relieved of the Admiralty, but that was to be far from the end of his usefulness.

After the emergency of 1905–1906 had passed, joint military plans with the French made little progress for the next few years. In the interim two men formed a trans-Channel friendship which was to serve as the first cable for the building of a bridge.

Britain’s Staff College was then commanded by Brigadier General Henry Wilson, a tall, bony, ebullient Anglo-Irishman with a face which he thought rather resembled that of a horse. Quick and impatient, Wilson was in a constant boil of ideas, humor, passion, imagination and, above all, energy. When serving at the War Office in London, he used to trot around Hyde Park for exercise before breakfast, carrying with him the morning paper to read whenever he slowed down to a walk. Brought up by a succession of French governesses, he could speak French fluently. He was less interested in German. In January 1909 Schlieffen published an anonymous article in the
Deutsche Revue
to protest certain changes made in his plan by his successor, Moltke. The basic outline, if not the details, of the “colossal Cannae” prepared for the envelopment of the French and British armies was revealed and the identity of the author surmised. When a student at Camberley brought the article to the Commandant’s attention, Wilson returned it with the casual comment, “Very interesting.”

In December 1909 General Wilson took it into his head to visit his opposite number, the commandant of the Ecole Supérieure de la Guerre, General Foch. He attended four lectures and a seminar and was politely invited to tea by General
Foch who, though impatient with the interruptions of distinguished visitors, felt he owed this much to his British counterpart. General Wilson, enthusiastic at what he had seen and heard, stayed for three hours’ talk. When Foch was finally able to escort his visitor to the door and made what he thought were his final goodbyes, Wilson happily announced that he was returning next day to continue the conversation and see more of the curriculum. Foch could not but admire the Englishman’s
cran
and be pleased by his interest. Their second talk opened their minds to each other. Within a month Wilson was back in Paris for another session. Foch accepted his invitation to come to London in the spring, and Wilson agreed to return for the French Staff tour in the summer.

In London when Foch came over, Wilson introduced him to Haldane and others at the War Office. Bursting into the room of one of his colleagues, he said: “I’ve got a French general outside—General Foch. Mark my words, this fellow is going to command the Allied armies when the big war comes on.” Here Wilson had already accepted the principle of unity of command and picked the man for it although it was to take four years of war and the brink of defeat before events would bear him out.

During repeated visits after 1909, the two commandants became fast friends even to the extent of Wilson being admitted into the French family circle and invited to the wedding of Foch’s daughter. With his friend “Henri,” Foch spent hours in what an observer called “tremendous gossips.” They used to exchange caps and walk up and down together, the short and the tall, arguing and chaffing. Wilson had been particularly impressed by the rush and dash with which studies were conducted at the War College. Officer-instructors constantly urged on officer-pupils with
“Vite, vite!”
and
“Allez, allez!”
Introduced to the classes in the Camberley Staff College, the hurry-up technique was quickly dubbed Wilson’s “
allez
operations.”

A question that Wilson asked of Foch during his second visit in January 1910, evoked an answer which expressed in
one sentence the problem of the alliance with England, as the French saw it.

“What is the smallest British military force that would be of any practical assistance to you?” Wilson asked.

Like a rapier flash came Foch’s reply, “A single British soldier—and we will see to it that he is killed.”

Wilson, too, wanted to see Britain committed. Convinced that war with Germany was imminent and inevitable, he strove to infuse his own sense of urgency into his colleagues and pupils and himself became totally absorbed by it. In August 1910 came his opportunity. He was named Director of Military Operations, the post from which General Grierson had originated the Staff talks with France. When Major Huguet at once came to see the new Director to bewail the lack of progress since 1906 on the important question of Anglo-French military cooperation, Wilson replied, “Important question! But it is vital! There is no other.”

Immediately the joint planning took on new impetus. Wilson could see nothing, go nowhere, but France and Belgium. On his first visit in 1909 he had spent ten days by train and bicycle touring the Franco-Belgian and Franco-German frontier from Valenciennes to Belfort. He had found that Foch’s “appreciation of the German move through Belgium is exactly the same as mine, the important line being between Verdun and Namur,” in other words, east of the Meuse. During the next four years he repeated his visits three and four times a year, each time making bicycle or motor tours of the old battlefields of 1870 and of anticipated future battlefields in Lorraine and the Ardennes. On each visit he conferred with Foch and after Foch’s departure, with Joffre, Castelnau, Dubail, and others of the French General Staff.