g at ease, now in bitter want; all commerce
at an end, all careers ruined; industry at a standstill; thousands
upon thousands of workingmen without employment; working women;
shop girls, humble servant girls without the means of earning their
bread, and poor souls forlorn on the bed of sickness and fever
crying: 'O Lord, how long, how long?'--God will save Belgium, my
brethren; you can not doubt it. Nay, rather, He is saving
her--Which of us would have the heart to cancel this page of our
national history? Which of us does not exult in the brightness of
the glory of this shattered nation? When in her throes she brings
forth heroes, our mother country gives her own energy to the blood
of those sons of hers. Let us acknowledge that we needed a lesson
in patriotism--For down within us all is something deeper than
personal interests, than personal kinships, than party feeling, and
this is the need and the will to devote ourselves to that most
general interest which Rome termed the public thing, Res publica.
And this profound will within us is patriotism."

Meanwhile there was a slight offset to the German successes. Russia had
overrun Galicia and the Allies had conquered the Germany colony of
Togoland in Africa. But on August 26 the Russians were severely defeated
in the battle of Tannenburg in East Prussia. This was offset by a
British naval victory in Helgoland Bight. (August 28.)

So great had become the pressure of the German armies that on September
3 the French government removed from Paris to Bordeaux. The seriousness
of the situation was made manifest when two days later Great Britain,
France and Russia signed a treaty not to make peace separately. Then it
became evident to the nations of the earth that the struggle was not
only to be a long one, but in all probability the most gigantic in
history.

The Germans reached the extreme point of their advance, culminating in
the Battle of the Marne, September 6-10. Here the generalship of Joffre
and the strategy of Foch overcame great odds. The Germans were driven
back from the Marne to the River Aisne. The battle line then remained
practically stationary for three years on a front of three hundred
miles.

The Russians under General Rennenkampf were driven from East Prussia
September 16. Three British armored cruisers were sunk by a submarine
September 22. By September 27 General Botha had