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ng from outside the angle, as from the arrows NNN; (3) containing within itself, protected by its ring of fortifications, passages, PP, for traversing the two natural obstacles, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~} and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, which meet at the point {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}. [Illustration: Sketch 38.] There you have the elements of the position in which the advance corner of the great French square was situated just before it took the shock of the main German armies. The two lines AB and BC are the French and British armies lying behind the Sambre, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}, and the Middle Meuse, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, respectively; but the line of the Sambre ceases to protect eastward along the dotted line {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~} beyond the point up to which the river forms a natural obstacle, while from K to B the line is protected by the river Sambre itself. The more formidable obstacle, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}, represents the great trench or ravine of the Meuse which stretches south from Namur. The town of Namur itself is at B, the junction of the two rivers; and the fortified zone, SSS, is the ring of forts lying far out all round Namur; while the passages, PP, over the obstacles contained within that fortified zone, and accessible to the people _inside_ the angle from M, but not to the people _outside_ the angle from NNN, are the bridges across both the Sambre and the Meuse at Namur. All this is, of course, put merely diagrammatically, and a diagram is something very distant from reality. The "open strategic square" in practice comes to mean little more than two main elements--one the operative corner, the other a number of separate units disposed in all sorts of different places behind, and generally denominated "the manoeuvring mass." If you had looked down from above at all the French armies towards the end of August, when the first great shock came, you would have seen nothing remotely resembling a square. [Illustration: Sketch 39.] You would have seen something like Sketch 31 where the bodies enclosed under the title A were the operative corner; various garrisons and armies in the field, enclosed under the title B, were the manoeuvring mass. But it is only by putting the matter quite clearly in the ab
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