The second miscalculation, of place, was that although the possibility of a German move through Belgium was recognized, the wideness of its sweep was utterly misjudged. The Germans were expected complaisantly to take the difficult route through the Ardennes in order that the French might conveniently smite their communications ! Based on the idea of an immediate and general offensive, the plan ordained a thrust by the 1st and 2nd Armies towards the Saar into Lorraine. On their left were the 3rd Army opposite Metz and the 5th Army facing the Ardennes, which were either to take up the offensive between Metz and Thionville, or, if the Germans came through Luxembourg and Belgium, to strike north at their flank. The 4th Army was held in strategic reserve near the centre and two groups of reserve divisions were disposed in rear of either flank—relegation to such a passive role expressing French opinion on the capacity of reserve formations.
Britain's share in this plan was settled less by calculation than by the "Europeanization" of her military organization during the previous decade. This Continental influence drew her insensibly into a tacit acceptance of the role of acting as an appendix to the French left wing, and away from her historic exploitation of the mobility given by sea-power. At the council of war on the out break, Lord Roberts, summoned from retirement, advocated the dispatch of the expeditionary force to Belgium—where it would have stiffened the Belgian resistance and threatened the flank of the wheeling German mass. But his was a voice crying in the wilderness, and in any case the British general staff, through Gen. Wilson, had virtually pledged themselves to act in direct co-operation with the French. When the general staffs of the two countries conducted their informal negotiations between 1905 and 1914 they little realized that they were paving the way for a reversal of England's centuries-old policy, for a war effort such as no Englishman had ever conceived.
On the Eastern front, the plans of campaign were more fluid, less elaborately worked out and formulated—although they were to be as kaleidoscopic in their changes of fortune as in the Western theatre. The calculable condition was geographical; the main incalculable, Russia's rate of concentration. Russian Poland was a vast tongue of country projecting from Russia proper, and flanked on three sides by German or Austrian terri tory. On its northern flank lay East Prussia with the Baltic sea beyond. On its southern flank lay the Austrian province of Galicia with the Carpathian mountains beyond, guarding the approaches to the plain of Hungary. On the west lay Silesia. As the Germanic border provinces were provided with a network of strategic rail ways whilst Poland, as well as Russia itself, had only a sparse system of communications, the Germanic alliance had a vital advantage, in power of concentration, for countering a Russian advance. But if they took the offensive, the further they pro
gressed into Poland or Russia proper the more would they lose this advantage. Hence their most profitable strategy was to lure the Russians on into position for a counter-stroke rather than to inaugurate an offensive themselves. The one drawback was that such a Punic strategy gave the Russians time to concentrate and set in motion their cumbrous and rusty machine.
From this arose an initial cleavage between German and Aus trian opinion. Both agreed that the problem was to hold the Russians in check during the six weeks before the Germans, it was hoped, having crushed France, could switch their forces east wards to join the Austrians in a decisive blow against the Russians. The difference of opinion was on the method. The Germans, intent on a decision against France, wished to leave a minimum force in the East, and only a political dislike of exposing national territory to invasion prevented them evacuating East Prussia and standing on the Vistula line. But the Austrians, under the influ ence of Conrad von Hotzendorf, chief of their general staff, were anxious to throw the Russian machine out of gear by an immedi ate offensive, and as this promised to keep the Russians fully occupied while the campaign in France was being decided Moltke fell in with this strategy. Conrad's plan was that of an offensive north-eastwards into Poland by two armies, protected by two more on their right, further east. Complementary to it, as orig inally designed, the Germans in East Prussia were to strike south east, the two forces converging to cut off the Russian advanced forces in the Polish "tongue." But Conrad failed to induce Moltke to provide sufficient German troops for this offensive thrust.
On the opposing side, also, the desires of one ally vitally af fected the strategy of the other. The Russian command, both for military and for racial motives, wished to concentrate first against Austria, while the latter was unsupported, and leave Ger many alone until later, when the full strength of the Russian army would be mobilized. But the French, anxious to relieve the Ger man pressure against themselves, urged the Russians to deliver a simultaneous attack against Germany, and got the Russians to consent to an extra offensive for which they were neither ready, in numbers, nor organized. On the south-western front two pairs of two armies each were to converge on the Austrian forces in Galicia ; on the north-western front two armies were to converge on the German forces in East Prussia. Russia, whose proverbial slowness and crude organization dictated a cautious strategy, was about to break with tradition and launch out on a gamble that only an army of high mobility and organization could have hoped to bring off.