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Marching into position on Sept. 5, French Moroccan troops accidentally collided with Kluck's cavalry and reserves. Kluck sent corps after corps to reinforce them, opened a hole between the First and Second German armies through which British and French troops, advancing on schedule, poured the next day. The Second German Army retreated north and east, separated further from Kluck's men, who were now being attacked from the rear. Three days later, faced with disaster, the whole German front withdrew, retreated 60 miles in five days, abandoned the attack on Paris, lost the chance of a lightning victory and with it the World War.
Reputation. The War made no big military reputations at the time. "Papa" Joffre was kicked upstairs as early as 1916 and General Foch was bitterly criticized for misjudging enemy strength and strategy. The British high command shifted from Sir John French to Sir Douglas Haig. The Germans fired Moltke, then tried Falkenhayn and finally brought from the East old Paul von Hindenburg, who lost his war. But a few younger men in secondary posts came through the ordeal with reputations not only untarnished but so brightened that now, a quarter of a century after Armageddon 1914-18, it is they to whom their countrymen have given their arms to command in the war-darkened world of 1939.
The U. S., for instance, has such a man in its new Chief of Staff George Marshall, who, as chief of staff of the First Army, ably disposed the troops in the greatest battle in which the U. S. ever participated, the Meuse-Argonne. British Chief of the Imperial General Staff Lord Gort showed no great strategic ability in France but some incredible heroism, for which he won a V. C. But by far the most outstanding War-trained officer now in high command is Maurice Gustave Gamelin. At 66 he is the head of what, by almost unanimous acclaim, is today the world's finest military machine, one which he did much to create. His responsibilities are not only national but international. Supreme Commander of all French armed forces, a title not held by any soldier of France since Napoleon I, he is also slated to become commander-in-chief of the armies of France, Great Britain and their allies in the event of war with the Axis.
The eyes of Europe are naturally upon General Gamelin, and last week they followed him to the south of France. To the east the Italians were holding their greatest peacetime maneuvers, an exercise calculated to show what they would do if General Gamelin ever undertook to do what Napoleon did in 1796, strike through the Maritime Alpine passes and sweep across the Po Valley (see p. 19).