CHAPTER XXII THE FRENCH COUNTER-OFFENSIVE FAILS 'T^HE simplest and therefore the best way to •*- grasp the meaning of the fighting along the broad battle front from the German Ocean to Switzerland, which filled the fourth week of the Great War, is to accept the central unity which lay back of the vv^hole confused and bewildering mass of detail. This unity is discoverable in the French counter-offensive movement. From three different bases Germany had launched armies at Paris. These armies, taking their names from the rivers whose valleys they followed, the Meuse, the Moselle and the Rhine, were moving in a converging direction toward the French frontier. In advance of their reaching the frontier where the French had permanent and considerable fortifications the French General Staff about August 14 sent three armies against them: one from the Lille-Maubeuge line in northern France along the Sambre and Meuse toward Mons, Charleroi and Namur; another from Verdun across the French Meuse into the Ardennes region about Neufchateau; a third from Nancy into German Lorraine between Metz and Strassburg. The obvious purpose of these counter-offensive 1x8