The Guns of August (17 page)

Why did it have to be handed over at all? Admiral von Tirpitz, the Naval Minister, had plaintively asked the night before when the declaration of war was being drafted. Speaking, he says, “more from instinct than from reason,” he wanted to know why, if Germany did not plan to invade Russia, was it necessary to declare war and assume the odium of the attacking party? His question was particularly pertinent because Germany’s object was to saddle Russia with war guilt in order to convince the German people that they were fighting in self-defense and especially in order to keep Italy tied to her engagements under the Triple Alliance.

Italy was obliged to join her allies only in a defensive war and, already shaky in her allegiance, was widely expected to sidle out through any loophole that opened up. Bethmann was harassed by this problem. If Austria persisted in refusing any or all Serbian concessions, he warned, “it will scarcely be possible to place the guilt of a European conflagration on Russia” and would “place us in the eyes of our own people, in an untenable position.” He was hardly heard. When mobilization day came, German protocol required that war be properly declared. Jurists of the Foreign Office, according to Tirpitz, insisted it was legally the correct thing to do. “Outside Germany,” he says pathetically, “there is no appreciation of such ideas.”

In France appreciation was keener than he knew.

O
NE PRIME OBJECTIVE
governed French policy: to enter the war with England as an ally. To ensure that event and enable her friends in England to overcome the inertia and reluctance within their own Cabinet and country, France had to leave it clear beyond question who was the attacked and who the attacker. The physical act and moral odium of aggression must be left squarely upon Germany. Germany was expected to do her part, but lest any overanxious French patrols or frontier troops stepped over the border, the French government took a daring and extraordinary step. On July 30 it ordered a ten-kilometer withdrawal along the entire frontier with Germany from Switzerland to Luxembourg.

Premier René Viviani, an eloquent Socialist orator, formerly chiefly concerned with welfare and labor, proposed the withdrawal. He was a curiosity in French politics, a Premier who had never been Premier before, and was now Acting Foreign Minister as well. He had been in office barely six weeks and had just returned the day before, July 29, from a state visit to Russia with President Poincaré. Austria had waited until Viviani and Poincaré were at sea to issue her ultimatum to Serbia. On receiving this news the French President and Premier had eliminated a scheduled visit to Copenhagen and hurried home.

In Paris they were told German covering troops had taken their places a few hundred meters from the frontier. They
knew nothing as yet of the Russian and Austrian mobilizations. Hopes still flourished of a negotiated settlement. Viviani was “haunted by a fear that war might burst from a clump of trees, from a meeting of two patrols, from a threatening gesture … a black look, a brutal word, a shot!” While there was still even the least chance of settling the crisis without war, and in order to leave the lines of aggression clear if war came, the Cabinet agreed upon the ten-kilometer withdrawal. The order, telegraphed to corps commanders, was designed, they were told, “to assure the collaboration of our English neighbors.” A telegram informing England of the measure went out simultaneously. The act of withdrawal, done at the very portals of invasion, was a calculated military risk deliberately taken for its political effect. It was taking a chance “never before taken in history,” said Viviani, and might have added, like Cyrano, “Ah, but what a gesture!”

Withdrawal was a bitter gesture to ask of a French Commander in Chief schooled in the doctrine of offensive and nothing but the offensive. It could have shattered General Joffre as Moltke’s first experience of the war shattered him, but General Joffre’s heart did not break.

From the moment of the President’s and Premier’s return, Joffre had been hounding the government for the order to mobilize or at least take the preliminary steps: recall of furloughs, of which many had been granted for the harvest, and deployment of covering troops to the frontier. He deluged them with intelligence reports of German premobilization measures already taken. He loomed large in authority before a new-born Cabinet, the tenth in five years, whose predecessor had lasted three days. The present one was remarkable chiefly for having most of France’s strong men outside it. Briand, Clemenceau, Caillaux, all former premiers, were in opposition. Viviani, by his own evidence, was in a state of “frightful nervous tension” which, according to Messimy, who was once again War Minister, “became a permanent condition during the month of August.” The Minister of Marine, Dr. Gauthier, a doctor of medicine shoved into the naval post when a political scandal removed his predecessor, was
so overwhelmed by events that he “forgot” to order fleet units into the Channel and had to be replaced by the Minister of Public Instruction on the spot.

In the President, however, intelligence, experience, and strength of purpose, if not constitutional power, were combined. Poincaré was a lawyer, economist, and member of the Academy, a former Finance Minister who had served as Premier and Foreign Minister in 1912 and had been elected President of France in January, 1913. Character begets power, especially in hours of crisis, and the untried Cabinet leaned willingly on the abilities and strong will of the man who was constitutionally a cipher. Born in Lorraine, Poincaré could remember as a boy of ten the long line of spiked German helmets marching through Bar-le-Duc, his home town. He was credited by the Germans with the most bellicose intent, partly because, as Premier at the time of Agadir, he had held firm, partly because as President he had used his influence to push through the Three-Year Military Service Law in 1913 against violent Socialist opposition. This and his cold demeanor, his lack of flamboyance, his fixity, did not make for popularity at home. Elections were going against the government, the Three-Year Law was near to being thrown out, labor troubles and farmers’ discontent were rife, July had been hot, wet, and oppressive with windstorms and summer thunder, and Mme. Caillaux who had shot the editor of
Figaro
was on trial for murder. Each day of the trial revealed new and unpleasant irregularities in finance, the press, the courts, the government.

One day the French woke up to find Mme. Caillaux on page two—and the sudden, awful knowledge that France faced war. In that most passionately political and quarrelsome of countries one sentiment thereupon prevailed. Poincaré and Viviani, returning from Russia, drove through Paris to the sound of one prolonged cry, repeated over and over,
“Vive la France!”

Joffre told the government that if he was not given the order to assemble and transport the covering troops of five army corps and cavalry toward the frontier, the Germans
would “enter France without firing a shot.” He accepted the ten-kilometer withdrawal of troops already in position less from subservience to the civil arm—Joffre was about as subservient by nature as Julius Caesar—as from a desire to bend all the force of his argument upon the one issue of the covering troops. The government, still reluctant while diplomatic offers and counter-offers flashing over the wires might yet produce a settlement, agreed to give him a “reduced” version, that is, without calling out the reservists.

At 4:30 next day, July 31, a banking friend in Amsterdam telephoned Messimy the news of the German
Kriegesgefahr,
officially confirmed an hour later from Berlin. It was
“une forme hypocrite de la mobilisation”
Messimy angrily told the Cabinet. His friend in Amsterdam had said war was certain and Germany was ready for it, “from the Emperor down to the last Fritz.” Following hard upon this news came a telegram from Paul Cambon, French ambassador in London, reporting that England was “tepid.” Cambon had devoted every day of the past sixteen years at his post to the single end of ensuring England’s active support when the time came, but he had now to wire that the British government seemed to be awaiting some new development. The dispute so far was of “no interest to Great Britain.”

Joffre arrived, with a new memorandum on German movements, to insist upon mobilization. He was permitted to send his full “covering order” but no more, as news had also come of a last-minute appeal from the Czar to the Kaiser. The Cabinet continued sitting, with Messimy champing in impatience at the “green baize routine” which stipulated that each minister must speak in turn.

At seven o’clock in the evening Baron von Schoen, making his eleventh visit to the French Foreign Office in seven days, presented Germany’s demand to know what course France would take and said he would return next day at one o’clock for an answer. Still the Cabinet sat and argued over financial measures, recall of Parliament, declaration of a state of siege, while all Paris waited in suspense. One crazed young man cracked under the agony, held a pistol against a
café window, and shot dead Jean Jaurès, whose leadership in international socialism and in the fight against the Three-Year Law had made him, in the eyes of superpatriots, a symbol of pacifism.

A white-faced aide broke in upon the Cabinet at nine o’clock with the news. Jaurès killed! The event, pregnant with possible civil strife, stunned the Cabinet. Street barricades, riot, even revolt became a prospect on the threshold of war. Ministers reopened the heated argument whether to invoke
Carnet B,
the list of known agitators, anarchists, pacifists, and suspected spies who were to be arrested automatically upon the day of mobilization. Both the Prefect of Police and former Premier Clemenceau had advised the Minister of Interior, M. Malvy, to enforce
Carnet B.
Viviani and others of his colleagues, hoping to preserve national unity, were opposed to it. They held firm. Some foreigners suspected of being spies were arrested, but no Frenchmen. In case of riot, troops were alerted that night, but next morning there was only deep grief and deep quiet. Of the 2,501 persons listed in
Carnet B,
80 per cent were ultimately to volunteer for military service.

At 2:00
A.M.
that night, President Poincaré was awakened in bed by the irrepressible Russian ambassador, Isvolsky, a former hyperactive foreign minister. “Very distressed and very agitated,” he wanted to know, “What is France going to do?”

Isvolsky had no doubts of Poincaré’s attitude, but he and other Russian statesmen were always haunted by the fear that when the time came the French Parliament, which had never been told the terms of the military alliance with Russia, would fail to ratify it. The terms specifically stated, “If Russia is attacked by Germany or by Austria supported by Germany, France will use all her available forces to attack Germany.” As soon as either Germany or Austria mobilized, “France and Russia, without previous agreement being necessary, shall mobilize all their forces immediately and simultaneously and shall transport them as near the frontiers as possible .… These forces shall begin complete action with all speed so that Germany will have to fight at the same time in the East and in the West.”

These terms appeared unequivocal but, as Isvolsky had anxiously queried Poincaré in 1912, would the French Parliament recognize the obligation? In Russia the Czar’s power was absolute, so that France “may be sure of us,” but “in France the Government is impotent without Parliament. Parliament does not know the text of 1892 .… What guarantee have we that your Parliament would follow your Government’s lead?”

“If Germany attacked,” Poincaré had replied on that earlier occasion, Parliament would follow the Government “without a doubt.”

Now, facing Isvolsky again in the middle of the night, Poincaré assured him that a Cabinet would be called within a few hours to supply the answer. At the same hour the Russian military attaché in full diplomatic dress appeared in Messimy’s bedroom to pose the same question. Messimy telephoned to Premier Viviani who, though exhausted by the night’s events, had not yet gone to bed. “Good God!” he exploded, “these Russians are worse insomniacs than they are drinkers,” and he excitedly recommended
“Du calme, du calme et encore du calme!”

Pressed by the Russians to declare themselves, and by Joffre to mobilize, yet held to a standstill by the need to prove to England that France would act only in self-defense, the French government found calm not easy. At 8:00 next morning, August 1, Joffre came to the War Office in the Rue St. Dominique to beg Messimy, in “a pathetic tone that contrasted with his habitual calm,” to pry mobilization from the government. He named four o’clock as the last moment when the order could reach the General Post Office for dispatch by telegraph throughout France in time for mobilization to begin at midnight. He went with Messimy to the Cabinet at 9:00
A.M.
and presented an ultimatum of his own: every further delay of twenty-four hours before general mobilization would mean a fifteen-to twenty-kilometer loss of territory, and he would refuse to take the responsibility as Commander. He left, and the Cabinet faced the problem. Poincaré was for action; Viviani, representing the antiwar tradition, still hoped that time
would provide a solution. At 11:00 he was called to the Foreign Office to see von Schoen who in his own anxiety had arrived two hours early for the answer to Germany’s question of the previous day: whether France would stay neutral in a Russo-German war. “My question is rather naïve,” said the unhappy ambassador, “for we know you have a treaty of alliance.”