As it was, the French could never quite make up their minds—­or rather the French parliamentarians could never make up their minds—­upon the amount of money that might wisely be expended in the defence of this neutral border.  There were moments when the opinion that Prussia would be restrained by no fear of Europe prevailed among the professional politicians of Paris.  The fortification of the Belgian frontier was undertaken in such moments; a full plan of it was drawn up.  But again doubt would succeed, the very large sums involved would appal some new ministry, and the effort would be interrupted.  To such uncertainty of aim characteristic of parliamentary government in a military nation was added, unfortunately, the consideration of the line of the Meuse.  Liege and Namur were fortresses of peculiar strength, Antwerp was thought the strongest thing in Europe; and that triangle was conceived, even by many who believed that the violation of Belgian territory would take place, as affording a sufficient barrier against the immediate invasion of France from the north-east.  Those who made this calculation did not forget that fortresses are nothing without their full complement of men, guns, and stores; but they could neither control, nor had they the elements properly to appreciate, the deficiency of organization in a foreign and not military country.

For all these causes Maubeuge, in common with other points along the Belgian frontier less important than itself, was left imperfect.  Even if the ring fortress had remained after 1905 what it had been before that date, and even if modern howitzer fire and modern high explosives had not rendered its tenure one of days rather than months, Maubeuge was not a first-class fortress.  As it was, with fortifications unrenewed, and with the ring fortress in any case doomed, Maubeuge was a death-trap.

The role assigned to the fortress in the original French plan was no more than the support of the retiring operative corner, as it “retreated, manoeuvred, and held the enemy.”  Maubeuge was considered as part of a line beyond which the operative corner would not have to fall before the rest of the square, the “manoeuvring mass,” had swung up.  Hence it was that the French General Staff and its Chief had put within the ring of its insufficient forts nothing more than a garrison of Territorials—­that is, of the older classes of the reserve.

Had the British General accepted the lure of Maubeuge as Bazaine did the lure of Metz in 1870, the Expeditionary Force would have been destroyed.  But it would have been destroyed, not after a long delay, as was the army at Metz, but immediately; for Maubeuge was not Metz, and the fortress power of resistance of to-day is not that of a generation ago.  Maubeuge, as a fact, fell within a fortnight of the date when this temptation was offered to the sorely pressed British army, and had that temptation been yielded to, the whole force would have been, in a military sense, annihilated before the middle of September.