st toll of death.

The great strategical plan of the Germans, which had displayed itself
throughout the entire operations on the western theatre of war from the
very first gun of the campaign, came to its apex on this September 3,
1914. If the allied armies could develop a strong enough defense to halt
the German offensive at this point, and especially if they could develop
a sufficiently powerful counteroffensive to strike doubt into the
confident expectations of the armies of the Central Powers, then the
strategical plan had reached a check, which might or might not be a
checkmate, as the fortunes of war might determine. If, on the other
hand, the stand made by the Allies at this point should prove
ineffective, and if the counteroffensive should reveal that the German
hosts had been able to establish impregnable defenses as they marched,
then the original strategic plan of the attackers must be considered as
intact and the peril of France would become greatly intensified.

It is idle, in a war of such astounding magnitude, to speak about any
one single incident as being a "decisive" one. Such a term can only
rightly be applied to conditions where the opposing powers each have but
one organized army in the field, and these armies meet in a pitched
battle. None the less, the several actions which are known as the
Battles of the Marne may be considered as decisive, to the extent that
they decided the limit of the German offensive at that point. The German
General Staff, taking the ordinary and obvious precautions in the case
of a possible repulse, chose and fortified in the German rear positions
to which its forces might fall back in the event of retreat. These
prepared positions had a secondary contingent value for the Germans in
view of the grave Russian menace that might call at any moment for a
transfer of German troops from the western to the eastern front.

The Battle of the Marne stopped the advance of the main German army on
that line, forcing it back.

[Illustration: Battle of the Marne--Beginning on September 5, 1914.]

The scene of the battle ground is one of the most famous in Europe, not
even the plains of Belgium possessing a richer historical significance
than that melancholy plain, the Champagne-Pouilleuse, upon whose
inhospitable flats rested for centuries the curse of a prophecy, that
there would the fate of France be decided, a prophecy of rare
connotation of accuracy, for it refrained from stating