The reader must picture to himself, not a stream or a torrent, but a veritable sea of men, inundating our country from Holland to Luxemburg, a million and a half to two million soldiers! The defensive plans of Germany’s opponents had not allowed for the inrush of such an avalanche through Belgium. At the outset of the war, according to an official Note issued by the Republican Government, the whole of the French forces were disposed over against the German border, from Belfort to the Belgian frontier.
The first condition of success for so daring an offensive was secrecy. The secret was well kept. The high German command did all it could to throw foreign military attachés off the trail and to encourage them in false notions. Among their various methods of hoodwinking the stranger, we may probably include the way in which the permanent stations of the twenty-five army corps were distributed. The map showed us ten of them massed together in Alsace-Lorraine, the Palatinate, and the Grand Duchy of Baden, as if ready to hurl themselves on France from that quarter. Along the Belgian and Dutch frontiers only one corps was stationed, and its command lived a long way off, at Coblentz. With so meagre a contingent, the chances of an attempt to enter Belgium seemed remote indeed. Yet the corps of Westphalia, of Hanover, of Holstein even, could be brought up to the western frontier in a very short time by the numerous railway lines. It was the two former, with that of Coblentz, that crossed the Meuse and attacked Liège, under General von Emmich, Commandant at Hanover, a leader of high repute. Assuredly the Staff did not await the order for a general mobilization before concentrating this vanguard at Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle.
From the first days of the Austro-Serbian dispute, the Belgian Government was on the watch. It did not shrink from taking the precautionary steps required in a country that Nature has left unsheltered. On 29th July, the Belgian army was put on the maximum peace footing. Two days later there was a general mobilization, and 180,000 men were called to the colours. Thanks to these prompt measures, the storm did not take us off our guard, although it came at such short notice.