A Popular History of The Great War/Volume 1/Page 135

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THE VIVIANI MINISTRY


shown themselves two days before in the regions of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing had appeared on the preceding day in the region of Douai." This was incomprehensible. Why did the communiqués speak no more of the great battle announced a week previously? How had the enemy managed to cross the frontier and advance so far? But soon the gravity of the situation was such that it became impossible to leave the country and the capital any longer in ignorance of the danger which nothing now seemed able to avert. Those only had information who found in English, Italian or Swiss journals the German communiqués, which the French press was forbidden to publish.

But this knowledge was confined to a very small number of persons in the more cultivated classes, and the bulk of the public had no idea of what was happening. All at once, falling brusquely in the midst of this uncertainty compounded of hope and anguish, like a stone dropped in a pool, appeared a short communiqué saying: "The situation from the Somme to the Vosges remains the same as yesterday." It is impossible to describe the consternation caused by this piece of news from end to end of France. The Germans had reached the Somme! That meant Amiens, 8o miles from Paris—at the very moment when it had been hoped that they had been crushed by the Franco-British forces. The deception was cruel. One painful question tortured every heart: Are we already defeated?

The government had been reconstituted two days before into a coalition ministry, presided over by M. Viviani, and including MM. Delcassé, Briand, Millerand, Ribot and two socialists, MM. Marcel Sembat and Jules Guesde. These statesmen inspired the country with confidence, and their presence in power undoubtedly contributed to reassure the population.

Those who lived in Paris during the fortnight which preceded the battle of the Marne will never forget their experience. Everyone now knew that the Germanic hordes were pouring like a waterspout on Paris. It was knowm also that the entrenched camp of Paris had been in an utterly neglected state at the beginning of the war, and that it could not have been put in a state of adequate defence in the course of the three preceding weeks. The fate of Belgian towns proved that the double girdle of forts surrounding Paris was unable, even had the forts been furnished with the most powerful artillery, to prevent the Germans from entering the town.

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