Note 16 — Chapter II · A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

“This plan was at once weak and supple. It was feeble because General Joffre, who established it, ‘saw too many things,’ in the words of the Napoleonic warning.... He knew as well as any one the feebleness of his plan. It was imposed upon him. He sought at least to make it supple” (Reinach, op. cit. pp. 58–9).

In an article reviewing this volume (Petit Parisien, June 16, 1916), M. Millerand, who became Minister of War a few days after the events in question, endorsed this opinion: The French Staff “had to foresee, did foresee, the two hypotheses—that of Belgium, certainly, but also that of Lorraine. Hence general dispositions whose suppleness did not escape weakness, a concentration for two ends.” The word “Belgium” here is ambiguous: it is clear that an attack by Western Belgium was not foreseen. The vice of the concentration was not that it faced two ends, “Belgium” and “Lorraine,” but that it essentially faced the end of a Lorraine offensive, whereas what was essentially needed was a northern defensive.

General Bonnal remarks: “The project of offensive operations conceived by Bernhardi in 1911 in case of a war with France deserved close study by us, which would probably have led to modifications in our plan of concentration while there was yet time” (Les Conditions de la Guerre Moderne, p. 115. Paris: De Boccard. 1916).

General Palat writes: “The French concentration was vicious. Better conceived, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of our compatriots from the tortures of the invasion and occupation” (La Revue, Dec. 1, 1917).

“The unknown quantity on the side of Belgium,” says Lt.-Col. de Thomasson, “condemned us at the outset to a waiting strategy. The idea of at once taking the offensive madly overpassed the boldest conceptions of Napoleon” (p. 54). “A well-advised command would have understood that it was folly to launch at once all its army to attack troops of the value of the Germans; that the offensive should have been made only on certain points of the front, with a sufficient numerical superiority, and for this purpose the forces must be economised; that, in brief, the beginning of hostilities could only be favourable to us on condition of a superior strategy such as was shown in the preparation for the battle of the Marne, but not in the initial plan or in the first three weeks of the war” (177–8).