184 The Great War were not crushed, the weight of Anglo-French num- bers would throw it back upon the defensive. And so for six weeks nearly the whole German Army had been driven forward with a speed and a carelessness of life unparalleled in the history of Western warfare. In two weeks the masses of von Kluck were pushed from Brussels to the Seine south and east of Paris, more than one hundred and fifty miles. Battles which in other wars would seem great were fought on many fields. In that mass formation which at the cost of thousands of lives, by the sheer weight of numbers broke down all op- position, the German hosts rushed on. But now the six weeks of grace that were allotted to the Germans had passed. Forty-five days after the declaration of war in 1870 Napoleon III sur- rendered at Sedan, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 had been won in six weeks. Six weeks after the out- break of the Great War In 19 14, not, perhaps de- moralized, but unmistakably exhausted, leaving be- hind them their wounded, the litter of all that armies abandon only In precipitate retreat, all the German armies were in retreat, and Paris, from which one week ago the troops were only seventeen miles dis- tant at Lagny — less than five from the outer ring of forts — was sixty miles behind Germans, still re- treating. Meantime, Russia had come up. In this six weeks she had crushed the military power of Austria-Hun- gary. Her victorious armies were now beating