and the happier few who had achieved
slumber would snore laboriously. Now and then a man would rise shakily
to his feet and thread his way unsteadily to the door, kicking up
against recumbent forms as he went, and evoking language as murky as the
atmosphere. The Subaltern felt a savage joy in the recriminations and
expletives that filled the air. Like lightning, they relieved the
thunder-pressure of the air.

CHAPTER XXII

STRATEGY AS YOU LIKE IT

Dawn found them already paraded in the farmyard, shivering, and not much
better rested than when they had entered the barn of dreadful memory the
night before. Each day the accumulation of fatigue and nerve-strain
became greater; each day it grew harder to drag the weary body to its
feet, and trudge onwards. Though the tide of victory had turned, though
every yard they covered was precious ground re-won, they longed very
intensely for a lull. The Subaltern felt in a dim way that the point
beyond which flesh and blood could not endure was not very far ahead. As
it was, he marvelled at himself.

During the course of the morning the Captain returned to the Company,
with a little map, and a great deal of information concerning the
strategy of the war, about which everybody knew so little.

To begin at the beginning, he said that the Allies had begun the
campaign under two great disadvantages. The first was their very serious
numerical inferiority in forces that could be immediately used. If
numbers alone counted, the Germans were bound to win until the French
were fully mobilised.

The other disadvantage was the pre-conceived notion that the German
Government would keep its word with regard to the violation of Belgian
neutrality. If this had been observed, it would have been almost a
strategical impossibility to turn the Allied left flank. The attack in
force was expected to be made in the Lorraine area. Consequently, when
it became evident that the main German effort was to be launched through
Belgium, all pre-conceived plans of French concentration had either to
be abandoned, or, at any rate, greatly modified in order to meet the
enemy offensive from an unexpected quarter.

After their unexpected set-back at Liege, the invaders met with little
resistance from the Belgian army, which was, of course, hopelessly
outnumbered, and their armies were rapidly forming up on a line north of
the Sambre, which roughly extended south-east by east to north-west by
west. Meanw