The Guns of August

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Germans had imbibed from 1870 the lesson that arms and war were the sole source of German greatness.

Moltke consoled himself with the thought, as he said in 1913, that “We must put aside all commonplaces as to the responsibility of the aggressor.… Success alone justifies war.”

1905 when Russia’s far-off defeats at the hands of the Japanese, revealing her military impotence, unhinged the equilibrium of Europe. Suddenly and simultaneously the government of every nation became aware that if any one of them chose that moment to precipitate a war, France would have to fight without an ally.

“This insane regime,” its ablest defender, Count Witte, the premier of 1903-06, called it; “this tangle of cowardice, blindness, craftiness, and stupidity.” The regime was ruled from the top by a sovereign who had but one idea of government—to preserve intact the absolute monarchy bequeathed to him by his father—and who, lacking the intellect, energy, or training for his job, fell back on personal favorites, whim, simple mulishness, and other devices of the empty-headed autocrat.

Bethmann, behind his distinguished façade of great height, somber eyes, and well-trimmed imperial, was a man, as Theodore Roosevelt said of Taft, “who means well feebly.”

the heated argument whether to invoke Carnet B, the list of known agitators, anarchists, pacifists, and suspected spies who were to be arrested automatically upon the day of mobilization.

“Good God!” he exploded, “these Russians are worse insomniacs than they are drinkers,” and he excitedly recommended “Du calme, du calme et encore du calme!”

Stokers who ordinarily could not work in the heat and coal dust for longer than two hours at a time were kept shoveling at an increased pace while bursting tubes scalded them with steam. Four died between morning and evening while the pace was maintained.

Though encouraged by extra beer rations, band music, and patriotic speeches by the officers, the men kept fainting from exertion in the August heat until blackened and sweat-soaked bodies lay all over the ship like so many corpses.

The long-desired moment when the French flag would be raised again in Alsace had come. The covering troops, waiting among the thick, rich pines of the Vosges, trembled with readiness. These were the remembered mountains with their lakes and waterfalls and the damp delicious smell of the forests where fragrant ferns grew between the pines.

Rather rashly for a Czarist minister, Sazonov agreed that sweeping political changes must be made if Kaiserism was not to rise from its ashes.

“Do you feel yourself capable of commanding an army?” Joffre asked. “As well as anyone else,” replied Franchet d’Esperey. When Joffre simply looked at him, he shrugged and explained: “The higher one goes, the easier. One gets a bigger staff; there are more people to help.” That being settled, Joffre drove on.