upset by the German attack through Belgium; and second thoughts had
fared little better at Namur. The shortest line of defence after the
Germans had broken through at Liège was one running from Antwerp to
Namur, and the shortest line is imperative for the weaker combatant.
But the Germans were well across it when they entered Brussels, and
with the fall of Namur the hinge upon which depended the defence of
the northern frontier of France was broken. It was to an almost
forlorn hope that the British Army was committed when it took its
place on the left of the French northern armies at Mons to encounter
for the first time since Waterloo the shock of a first-rate European
force. But for its valour and the distraction caused by the Russian
invasion of East Prussia, Paris and possibly the French armies might
not have been saved.

It was a meagre force for so great a responsibility, but far from the
"contemptible little army" it was falsely believed to have been called
by the Kaiser. The men were all volunteers who had enlisted for seven
years' service with the colours as against the three years' service of
the Germans and the French; and on an average they had seen far more
actual fighting than the Germans, who contemptuously dismissed this
experience as colonial warfare. If in the science of tactics and
strategy the British was inferior to the German Army, its marksmanship
and individual steadiness were unequalled; and under anything like
equal conditions British troops proved themselves the better men. But
the conditions were never equal during the first two years of the war
owing to the German superiority in numbers and in artillery; and there
was a third cause of inequality due to the different military systems
of the two countries. Universal service enabled Germany to select the
ablest men--at least from the middle and upper classes--to officer and
command her armies. In England before the war only an infinitesimal