If they had forced it, however, with von Kluck swinging on the other flank, they might have got around the French army.  Such was the dream of German strategy, whose realization was so boldly and skilfully undertaken.  The Germans counted on their immense force of artillery, built for this war in the last two years and out-ranging the French, to demoralize the French infantry.  But the French infantry called the big shells marmites (saucepans), and made a joke of them and the death they spread as they tore up the fields in clouds of earth.

Ah, it took more than artillery to beat back the best troops of France in a country like this—­a country of rolling hills and fenceless fields cut by many streams and set among thick woods, where infantry on a bank or at a forest’s edge with rifles and rapid-firers and guns kept their barrels cool until the charge developed in the open.  Some of these forests are only a few acres in extent; others are hundreds of acres.  In the dark depths of one a frozen lake was seen glistening from our viewpoint on the Plateau d’Amance.

“Indescribable that scene which we witnessed from here,” said an officer who had been on the plateau throughout the fighting.  “All the splendid majesty of war was set on a stage before you.  It was intoxication.  We could see the lines of troops in their retreat and advance, batteries and charges shrouded in shrapnel smoke.  What hosts of guns the Germans had!  They seemed to be sowing the whole face of the earth with shells.  The roar of the thing was like that of chaos itself.  It was the exhilaration of the spectacle that kept us from dropping from fatigue.  Two weeks of this business!  Two weeks with every unit of artillery and infantry always ready, if not actually engaged!”

The general in command was directing not one but many battles, each with a general of its own; manoeuvring troops across streams and open places, seeking the cover of forests, with the aeroplanes unable to learn how many of the enemy were hidden in the forests on his front, while he tried to keep his men out of angles and make his movements correspond with those of the divisions on his right and left.  Skill this required; skill equivalent to German skill; the skill which you cannot command in a month after calling for a million volunteers, but which grows through years of organization.

Shall I call the general in chief command General X?  This is according to the custom of anonymity.  A great modern army like the French is a machine; any man, high or low, only a unit of the machine.  In this case the real name of X is Castelnau.  If it lacks the fame which seems its due, that may be because he was too busy to take the Press into his confidence.  Fame is not the business of French generals nowadays.  It is war.  What counted for France was that he never let the Germans get near the gap at Mirecourt.