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.  Meanwhile, the initial French offensive which had been launched in the region of the Vosges had resulted in the temporary capture of Muelhouse, and had then been abandoned in order to face the threatening disaster from the north.

It was thought advisable to wait until the concentration of the English Army was completed, then, to comply with an obvious rule of strategy which says, “Always close with your enemy when and wherever he shows himself, in order to discover and hold him to his dispositions,” a general advance was made along the whole centre and left of the Allied line.  The line swung forward, and perhaps some day one of the handful of men who know will tell exactly what was the object of this movement.  Was it meant to join battle in all seriousness with the enemy, and to drive him from Belgium, or was it just a precautionary measure to hold and delay him?  Probably the latter.  The Allied Generalissimo had probably made up his mind to the fact that the first battle—­the battle in Belgium—­was already lost by the Allies’ lateness in concentration.  Regarded in this light the battle in Belgium was undoubtedly the greatest rear-guard action in History.