Chapter VI Joffre in Action
Fléchier’s panegyric of Turenne might have been written for Joffre, for it expresses his traits with a curious exactitude. Said the eloquent Bishop of Nîmes of the Marshal: “He was accustomed to fight without anger, to conquer without ambition, to triumph without vanity.... Bolder to act than speak, resolute and determined within when apparently embarrassed, there was never a man wiser or more prudent, who conducted war with greater order and judgment, who had more precautions and more resources, who was more active and more reserved, who better managed things for his ends and who showed more patience in allowing his enterprises to mature. He took measures that were almost infallible, divining not only what the enemy had done, but what he planned to do; he could be unsuccessful but he was never surprised. And, finally, this system was the source of many successful gains. It kept alive that union of the soldiers with their chief which renders an army invincible; and it spread amongst the troops a spirit of energy, of courage and confidence, which enables them to suffer everything.”
There is no feature of this admirable portrait which does not fit the man. Joffre belongs to the same noble line and recommences, it has been said, the same victory on the same theatre with new forms. The history of Alsace will enshrine the two names, for both captains fought there with skill and courage. Turenne’s defence of the province occurred almost two hundred years before its cession to Germany as part of the spoils of the victors. If, like other men, Joffre has faults he has also the qualities of greatness. He possesses strength of soul and knowledge formed by study and reflection, and is yet without pedantry. He does not allow himself to be guided by sudden flashes of inspiration, nor does he invent new methods; he prefers a solid system, founded on poise of mind and body and reinforced by calm and consistent attention. Thus he brings to his task a clear and even temperament and a profound and searching judgment. Possessing, perhaps, more character than personality, he has less imagination than clairvoyance and mental vigour, and the fact is an assurance to those he commands. He has the temper to succeed, and is a constant traveller by that road. Slowly his career has unfolded itself, and, at each stage, his nature has deepened and his love of country assumed a warmer tone.
Not a gay and debonair officer, born with title and fortune, he is the son of a working man, who has planned his own career and risen by merit to the top. I do not propose to catalogue Joffre’s virtues, or to offer an estimate of his strategy—that must be left to other pens, equipped with the knowledge that staff histories bring, but his career possesses contours that, in their flowing curves, express the beauty and harmony of his life. A “masterpiece of will power and equilibrium,” he has known how to inspire the devotion of his soldiers, and this is not the least of his claims. His ability to extract to the utmost the allegiance of those who serve and to make appeal to their secret sympathies is one of his most precious talents. His character, laborious and unobtrusive, free from ambition, solicitous for the common welfare, has given him an irresistible hold upon hearts, so that men’s hands stretch out at the moment of action and he is surrounded and enveloped by an atmosphere of good-will incalculably precious for concerted action. And the women, who Joffre says, are sublime, give him stoically their husbands and sons, rivalling in courage those who lay down their lives. And Joffre, by a mysterious predestination, became the instrument of that sacrifice, limitless during the war. And he never called in vain, for, at his first demand, up rose valiant youth ready and joyous to die for the sweet sake of France. He seems to have the art of communicating that secret vibration of the soul, which moves crowds, without so much as opening his lips. It is a southern gift, belonging to the sunny lands where life runs richly and deeply. And for this reason, perhaps, the south has become the region of great generals. By their inventions and manoeuvres they express that species of brimming talent which turns some into poets and plastic workers, others into men of action, statesmen, or charmers of the public ear upon stage and platform. His even temper that takes no umbrage at rival reputations, that seeks in everything only the good of the cause and its strict utility, is the right armour for the martial figure. His silence, like his calm, has its positive and its negative side. It does not spring from lack of thought, but from seriousness and contemplation, just as the other is a proof not of insensibility, but of a considered system of control. Nor is his unshakable determination the sign of obstinacy or a purblind view, but a bright weapon forged in the recesses of the heart as a defence against adversity and as the ready instrument of achievement. Rarely has a man by such simple means, with no eloquence or artifice, with no advertisement, pose, or pretension, reached such a pinnacle of authority at once subtle and conceded and giving confidence to every one.
When President Poincaré presented the Generalissimo with the highest military reward—the Military Medal—he drew a living portrait of the man: “You have shown in the conduct of your armies qualities which were not for an instant belied, a spirit of organisation and order and method, of which the beneficent effects were extended from strategy to tactics; a cold and prudent wisdom, which knows how to guard against the unexpected; strength of mind that nothing can shake; a serenity of which the salutary example spreads abroad confidence and hope.”
His popularity is as great a factor in his success as his science and military skill. It is born of acts of consideration which, in the opening phases of the war, came to the common knowledge and gave him an immense hold over his men. This or that journal recorded incidents which showed his kindness and humanity. He stayed awhile on his way to the Front to talk to a wounded “poilu,” to ask him about his services, his health, and his family; and a poor woman, who had written to him begging that her son might be placed in a less exposed position, for she had lost three since the war began and this one was her sole support, received from Joffre the reply that she had done enough for the country and could have back the lad. A dozen instances of the sort, repeated here and there, created such an atmosphere of good-will that allegiance was created in advance, and Joffre swayed his army by sheer affection.
The soldier, in the light of Joffre’s humanity, understood delay; he became reconciled to the monotony of trench life, for a forward move, he knew, would cost limitless lives. No, it was better for the war to drag on at this slow game of “nibbling” the enemy than to allow a generation of young lives to be offered to the insatiable god. France could not afford to be lavish with the blood of her children, since the future of the race was as paramount as the fortune of the war.
There were some who said that Joffre’s cautiousness was overdone; that the war would have been quickened had he shown greater initiative and greater energy in seizing more sharply the occasions for an offensive. The elements for such a judgment are wanting to us all, but at least this parsimony of life earned him the sublime confidence and esteem of his troops, as completely as his fearlessness in disciplining those who failed in the higher command. The fact that he was impartial, that he was ready, if need be, to chastise his friends, produced a feeling of security invaluable in such a case. The whole country felt that here was a man for whom France had been looking, imbued with a sense of justice, who stood fast to principles, and feared not to apply them. And in valour, as Emerson has said, is always safety. When the army heard that a hundred and fifty Generals had been placed en disponibilité, because of failure in the field, then it realised that Joffre would brook no obstacle to his success.
In a famous interview which he gave to the editor of a provincial newspaper—a lifelong friend—Joffre declared that Charleroi was lost largely owing to the failure of the Generals engaged in it. It was not so much a question of effectives, he insisted, as inferiority in the higher command. “Long before the war, I saw that a great number of our Generals were fatigued; certain seemed unfitted for their duty and below its requirements. I had the intention to rejuvenate the higher command, but the war came too soon. And there were others in whom I had confidence who justified it, but imperfectly.” Energy must go with knowledge and experience, he insisted. “Some were my best friends; but if I am fond of my friends, I am still fonder of France.” The words have become linked with Joffre, and so closely represent him that they deserve to be graven on the monument that must one day be his when he has laid aside his sword.
It was this implacable search for efficiency that gave Joffre such pre-eminence in the army. Yet he is scarcely the type to appeal to the romantic side of popularity. He is rarely represented on horseback, he waves no sword, in figure he looks like a comfortable farmer rather than the traditional soldier; he spends long hours at an office table, and is suspected of moving armies through a telephone. But his appearance—sound, robust, suggestive of common sense—accords with his manner and his methods on campaign. His life in the midst of the terror and tumult of war is as simple as his routine at the Ministry in times of peace. There was no fuss or parade about Headquarters, even in the most acute phases of the conflict. Everything passed as calmly as if a simple game were being played with counters engaged, instead of thousands of human lives. Joffre directed the huge machine from a bare room furnished with a common deal table, a map or two, a black board, and three cane-bottomed chairs. The privileged visitor who saw him for a few moments found himself faced by a man with the dark undress uniform of the Engineers, with no decorations upon the jacket save the three stars on the sleeve which marked his rank. His conversation, unless the moment warranted expansion, was scarcely more than monosyllabic. A simple “yes,” or “no,” sufficed; why waste time, when moments were precious? And you went from the room conscious of having met a great personage, impressive by silence, masterful by the flash of keen but kindly blue eyes, from beneath protruding eyebrows. In a neighbouring room was a low murmur of voices on the telephone—officers talking to the Front or receiving news therefrom—and above their heads a mast carrying wires stretched into space tingling perpetually with live whispers of battles, and armies in movement.
This was the nerve centre of the army: a plain building, commodious, simple, effective, strictly utilitarian. Here a large force of officers and assistants did the bidding of the chief; here every morning, and again in the late afternoon, conferences were held between the Generalissimo and his staff. The inner council consisted of three brilliant specialists in strategy, gunnery, and transport. With these he concerted the common measures of the day, the preparation to deliver or parry attacks. When large and general problems were afoot others of the Etat-Major were called in; or, it may be that a meeting of representatives of the Allies, over which he presided with great authority, called for his wisdom and perspicacity. But each day passed with great regularity. Joffre lived in an unpretentious villa near his Headquarters, which changed according to the exigencies of his work. After his breakfast, over which he wasted no time, he went afoot to his office, saluted on the way by soldiers and civilians. To the former he would say: “Bon jour, mon brave!” to the latter, he would vary the address to: “Bon jour, mon ami!” Children are attracted by him, and raise their caps or curtsey to gain a smile. Sometimes a little boy preceded him shouting, to Joffre’s infinite amusement: “Vive notre Général!” Thus greeted as a symbol of united France, as the redeemer of the country, Joffre passed into his Headquarters and was soon plunged in the problem that absorbed him every hour. Whilst he slept that calm sleep of his, wires had flashed with news of victory or defeat or with the common incidents of the Front. “If it is good news, it will keep until the morning,” said Joffre when recommending his officers to respect his rest; “if the news is bad, you know what to do; everything has been prepared.” In this way he gained a full night’s repose, whatever the happenings between the parallel lines of combatants, or in the savage thrust of midnight raids and assaults. And he slept on calmly keeping fresh his energies for the morrow.
And now, when he enters his office, his first duty is to call for the reports of the night. These he studies closely, and they are then classified according to the armies to which they belong, in cardboard covers of different colours. Thereupon takes place the conference to which I have alluded; and then Joffre, having finished his morning’s work at a time when most men are beginning it, goes out upon a long and solitary tramp through the countryside. He gives himself freely to his meditations, knowing that none of the inhabitants, whom he crosses on his path, will dare to disturb him. Either he thinks of a knotty question presented by some new move of the enemy, or his mind fashions one of those electrifying Orders of the Day which have become world-famous. “The time for looking back has ceased... die rather than yield ground.” That order, given on the eve of the battle of the Marne, has become as celebrated as Nelson’s signal. Like most men who keep their thoughts rigidly to themselves, his occasional utterances are full of a strange force. And Joffre’s Orders of the Day have reached a high order of eloquence and exalted passion.
The events of the day may call Joffre to the Front, whither he goes in a fast motor-car. On the way he will lunch at a village auberge and scandalises the proprietor, who has prepared, perhaps, a royal feast—if he knew in advance the honour to be done him—by the plainness of his fare. A simple omelette, a little fruit and cheese for a Generalissimo! Boniface is bouleversé! It is incredible! With pious industry a journalist compiled Joffre’s menus during the battle of the Marne. They were the simple meals of any bourgeois; a plate of roast meat, preceded by soup or hors d’oeuvre and followed by vegetables and fruit, constituted the repast. Notwithstanding this sobriety, the General does not disdain the pleasures of the table; like every good Southerner, he is something of a gourmet, but on campaign he exercises a rigid self-restraint.
The same disregard for personal discomfort pervades all his arrangements. When the battle of the Marne raged, the proprietor of a château at Bar-le-Duc, whence Joffre directed operations, placed his house at the Commander-in-Chief’s disposal. Joffre gave the finest rooms of the house, overlooking a calm and beautiful garden, to the officers of his suite; he himself, took a front room facing the Boulevard, and subject, of course, to the street noises; he thinks nothing of these things. His dinner at eight o’clock, after the day’s work—for he resumes touch with the details of Headquarters towards the end of the afternoon—is just as simple as the lunch, and Joffre never varies from this strict régime. Thanks to its regularity, he is able to sustain, without physical change or faltering, the heavy burden of his rôle.
Joffre belongs to the African school of soldier, against whom is reproached an impetuous bravery without science or system, and only possible against an enemy untrained, ill-equipped, and ignorant of tactics. It was thought that men were unfitted to fight against a civilised enemy after their contact with the rude warriors of the desert and jungle; but by a curious coincidence, Joffre, Galliéni, Marchand, Gouraud, and Bailloud (Sarrail’s lieutenant in his retreat through Macedonia), all learned their business of soldiering in the waste places of the earth, in overcoming the obstacles of rebellious Nature or the treachery of tribes. But Joffre has shown, as others have shown, that this contact with difficulties brings out the man and educates, strengthens, and vitalises him. Often the faults of others have been placed on the broad back of the Generalissimo. He has been accused of ignoring the German intentions to invade France through Belgium. What was his Intelligence Department doing that they did not know? But Joffre and his staff were well aware of the plan, and they knew also the different stages of the march. But what they had not reckoned upon was the rapid fall of the forts of Liège and Namur before the heavy guns of the invaders. That the Germans possessed siege artillery was a matter of common knowledge in France; but alas! to meet it was involved a large expenditure which Parliament would not sanction. That is the reason of it. “Cherchez la politique” is the answer to the shortage in heavy ordnance and in armoured aeroplanes.
It would take too long to tabulate the various attempts to extort money from Deputies for the national defence. But though the attenuated credits cannot be laid to the charge of the General Staff, it is true that experts were divided on the use that could be made of the heavy siege-pieces which the Germans thrust into battle. Such cumbersome weapons would prove white elephants said some in authority, and protested that they could not “hold” the infantry. However that may be, Joffre was faced with the difficulty that the Germans, instead of entering France by the eastern gate, where forts and “cover” combined to make the task supremely difficult, chose the easier road by Belgium and through the Luxembourg. Yet it was obviously impossible to tell by which route the enemy would enter. Joffre was forced to watch them all, to secure contact at each point, to feel the enemy, and then retreat towards his reserves. This, indeed, was the plan more or less successfully carried out. But the fact that Belgium was the main path of the invasion caused a rapid transposition of forces at the last moment, for the bulk of the army had to swing from the east to the north, and the process took time. Here, again, the Germans were at an advantage, for they had systematically built railways to the edge of the Luxembourg and in Alsace-Lorraine, so that their mobilisation was startlingly rapid.
Joffre was certainly unprepared for the speed with which the enemy brought into play his reserves. This was due to the cunning use which he made of his strategic railways, but also to a perfidious advance in the date of mobilisation. The army was already on a war footing when France had begun her work of assembling troops. And so Joffre was handicapped by many things, by lack of rapid railway transit, of heavy cannon and of the minute preparation and prevision which extended to the years preceding his appointment. Germany had prepared for war whilst France was thinking of peace and dreaming of progress in art and letters and general culture, anticipating a universal brotherhood, pathetically chimerical in the face of the armaments across the Rhine. Politics were greatly responsible for the inferiority of France in the opening weeks of the war. The troops assembled on the Franco-Belgian frontier had not at once the value of the invading force. They were wanting in numbers, in the perfection of their equipment and in the intensity of their training. Though Joffre had justly condemned incompetence in high places, it is also true that France was overweighted by the masses of a highly trained enemy which placed all its reliance upon the strength and rapidity of the first blow.
The Socialist doctrine would have substituted popular élan and the fierce revolutionary spirit for what it held to be the sterile stupidity of a long and intensive military preparation. And again, the Socialist movement in Germany proved a snare and delusion to many of the faith in France. Was it possible that war could come when millions of the masses in each nation were vowed to peace? The nation was deceived—perhaps it wanted to be deceived. In any case, it was much more interesting to concentrate upon human progress, to let the mind dwell upon the delightful prospect of the millennium, when there will be no more war, and when an era of peace and tranquillity and of mutual co-operation will have been ushered in, than to linger upon a picture of militarism bound up with cannon and its human food.
The French General Staff apparently thought that the German attack would come from the two frontiers and would seek to envelop the French Army in its tentacles, and thus conclude with one swift, tremendous blow a campaign more disastrous than that of 1870. It seems clear, also, that M. Barthou’s success in carrying the Three-Years Law was an important factor in the resolution of Germany to invade France by Belgium rather than by the East. The new legislation had given great strength to the “cover,” and thus there was little chance of passing that way. Probably had Germany attacked France by the East, England would never have been brought in and her rôle would have been confined to protecting the French coasts by her fleet. Thus, M. Barthou might properly contend that the mere fact that the Three-Years Law was voted determined the action of Germany and enlisted the support of England.
We have shown that Joffre by his system of making war and his qualities of heart and head is the ideal democratic chief. Obviously, there is little of the Napoleonic temper in his strategy, which is made up of prudent vigour and discernment rather than of brilliancy or spontaneity. Some urge that Joffre should have made his stand upon the Aisne rather than upon the Marne, since the latter line was better defended by Nature, but his reserves were not sufficiently accessible. In any case, conditions have altered since Napoleon’s day, and even the Corsican’s great faculty of improvisation scarcely would have found scope in twentieth-century conditions. None the less, Joffre’s dispositions at the battle of the Marne, when he drew the enemy to his own battle-ground and supported his line at each end with the forts of Paris and of the East were strictly in the style of the Master. And by his very victory he proved the martial qualities of the French, since with the aid of the English they administered a sharp repulse to an enemy flushed with success and organised and equipped in a manner superior to the Home forces. Until the story is disproved, I shall continue to think that the battle of the Marne would have been definitive and the enemy driven from the soil of France had Joffre possessed an adequate supply of munitions.
We have taken the Generalissimo to the edge of the great battle: let us now give a few particulars of his chief collaborator.