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Thus, in sum, the battle of the Marne was decided by a jar and a crack. The jar administered by Maunoury's attack on the Ger man right flank causing a crack in a weak joint of the German line, and this physical crack in turn producing a moral crack in the German command.
The result was a strategic but not a tactical defeat and the German right wing was able to re-knit and stand firmly on the line of the Aisne. That the Allies were not able to draw greater advantage from their victory was due in part to the comparative weakness of Maunoury's flank attack and in part to the failure of the British and the French 5th Army (now under Franchet d'Esperey) to drive rapidly through the gap while it was open. Their direction of advance was across a region inter sected by frequent rivers, and this handicap was intensified by a want of impulsion on the part of their chiefs. It seems, too, that greater results might have come if more effort had been made as Gallieni urged, to strike at the German rear flank instead of the front, and to direct reinforcements to the north-west of Paris for this purpose. This view is strengthened by the sensitiveness shown by the German command to reports of landings on the Belgian coast, which might threaten their communications. The alarm caused by these reports had even led the German command to contemplate a withdrawal of their right wing before the battle of the Marne was launched. When the moral effect of these phan tom forces is weighed with the material effect—the detention of German forces in Belgium—caused by fears of a Belgian sortie from Antwerp, the balance of judgment would seem to turn heavily in favour of the strategy which Lord Roberts had advo cated in vain. By it the British expeditionary force might have had not merely an indirect but a direct influence on the struggle, and might have made the issue not merely negatively but posi tively decisive.
But, considering the battle of the Marne as it shaped, the fact that 27 Allied divisions were pitted against 13 German divisions on the decisive flank is evidence, first, of how completely Moltke had lapsed from Schlieffen's intention; second, of how well Joffre had re-concentrated his forces under severe pressure; third, of how such a large balance afforded scope for a wider envelopment than was actually attempted. The frontal pursuit was checked on the Aisne before Joffre, on Sept. 17, seeing that Maunoury's attempts to overlap the German flank were ineffectual, decided to form a fresh army under de Castelnau for a manoeuvre round and behind the German flank. By then the German armies had re covered cohesion and the German command was expecting and ready to meet such a manoeuvre, now the obvious course.
On the Aisne was re-emphasized the preponderant power of defence over attack, primitive as were the trench lines compared with those of later years. Then followed, as the only alternative, the successive attempts of either side to overlap and envelop the other's western flank, a phase known somewhat inaccurately as the "race to the sea." This common design brought out what was to be a new and dominating strategi cal feature—the lateral switching of reserves by railway from one part of the front to another. Before it could reach its logical and lateral conclusion, a new factor intervened. Antwerp, with the Belgian field army, was still a thorn in the German side, and Falkenhayn, who had succeeded Moltke, determined to reduce it while a German cavalry force swept across to the Belgian coast as an extension of the enveloping wing in France.
We must pause here to pick up the thread of operations in Belgium from the moment when the Bel gian field army fell back to Antwerp, divergently from the main line of operations. On Aug. 24 the Belgians began a sortie against the rear of the German right wing to ease the pressure on the British and French left wing, then engaged in the opening battle at Mons and along the Sambre. The sortie was broken off on the 26th when news came of the Franco-British retreat into France, but the pressure of the Belgian army (six divisions) led the Germans to detach four reserve divisions, besides three Landwehr brigades, to hold it in check. On Sept. 7 the Belgian command learnt that the Germans were despatching part of this force to the front in France ; in consequence King Albert launched a fresh sortie on Sept. 9—the crucial day of the battle on the Marne. The action was taken, unsolicited by Joffre, who seems to have shown curiously little interest in possibilities outside his immediate battle zone. The sortie led the Germans to cancel the despatch of one division and to delay that of two others to France, but the Belgians were soon thrown back. Nevertheless the news of its seems to have had a distinct moral effect on the German command, coinciding as it did with the initiation of the retreat of their ist and 2nd Armies from the Marne. And the unpleasant reminder that Antwerp lay menacingly close to their communica tions induced the Germans to undertake, preliminary to any fresh attempt at a decisive battle, the reduction of the fortress and the seizure of potential English landing places along the Belgian coast.