ical order: the Battle of Metz, the Austrian
operations against Russia, and, lastly, the great victory of
Tannenberg in East Prussia, before concluding this volume with a
summary of the whole situation in those first days of September, just
before the tide turned.

THE BATTLE OF METZ.

The Battle of Metz, though quite subsidiary to the general operations
of the war, and upon a scale which later operations have dwarfed, will
be mentioned with special emphasis in any just account of the great
war on account of its moral significance.

It took place before the main shock of the armies; it had no decisive
effect upon the future of the campaign; but it was of the very highest
weight, informing the German mind, and leading it into that attitude
of violent exaltation on which I shall later insist in these pages,
and which largely determined all the first months of the war, with
their enormous consequences for the future. For the action in front of
Metz was the first pitched battle fought in Western Europe during our
generation, and to an unexpected degree it fulfilled in its narrow
area all the dreams upon which military Germany had been nourished for
forty years. It thrilled the whole nation with the news, at the very
outset of hostilities, of a sharp and glorious victory; it seemed a
presage of far more to come. The Battle of Metz was the limited
foundation upon which was rapidly erected that triumphant mood that
lasted long after the tide had turned, and that matured, when bad
blundering had lost the victory in the West, into the unsoldierly,
muddled hope that could fail to win, and yet somehow not lose, a
campaign.

We have seen that the disposition of the French armies at the moment
when the shock was being delivered through Belgium involved along the
frontiers of Alsace-Lorraine the presence of considerable forces.
These, once the operative corner had taken the shock, formed part of
the mass of manoeuvre, and were destined in large part to swing up in
aid of the men retreating from the Sambre.

But in the very first days of the war, before the main blow had
fallen, and when the French General Staff were still in doubt as to
precisely where the blow _would_ fall, considerable bodies had been
operating in Alsace and over the Lorraine frontier. The whole range of
the Vosges was carried in the second week after the British
declaration of war--that is, between 10th August and 15th August.
Mulhouse was occupied; upon