The French General Staff apparently thought that the German attack would come from the two frontiers and would seek to envelop the French Army in its tentacles, and thus conclude with one swift, tremendous blow a campaign more disastrous than that of 1870. It seems clear, also, that M. Barthou’s success in carrying the Three-Years Law was an important factor in the resolution of Germany to invade France by Belgium rather than by the East. The new legislation had given great strength to the "cover," and thus there was little chance of passing that way. Probably had Germany attacked France by the East, England would never have been brought in and her rôle would have been confined to protecting the French coasts by her fleet. Thus, M. Barthou might properly contend that the mere fact that the Three-Years Law was voted determined the action of Germany and enlisted the support of England. We have shown that Joffre by his system of making war and his qualities of heart and head is the ideal democratic chief. Obviously, there is little of the Napoleonic temper in his strategy, which is made up of prudent vigour and discernment rather than of brilliancy or spontaneity. Some urge that Joffre should have made his stand upon the Aisne rather than upon the Marne, since the latter line was better defended by Nature, but his reserves were not sufficiently accessible. In any case, conditions have altered since Napoleon’s day, and even the Corsican’s great faculty of improvisation scarcely would have found scope in twentieth-century conditions. None the less, Joffre’s dispositions at the battle of the Marne, when he drew the enemy to his own battle-ground and supported his line at each end with the forts of Paris and of the East were strictly in the style of the Master. And by his very victory he proved the martial qualities of the French, since with the aid of the English they administered a sharp repulse to an enemy flushed with success and organised and equipped in a manner superior to the Home forces. Until the story is disproved, I shall continue to think that the battle of the Marne would have been definitive and the enemy driven from the soil of France had Joffre possessed an adequate supply of munitions. We have taken the Generalissimo to the edge of the great battle: let us now give a few particulars of his chief collaborator. *CHAPTER VII* *THE SECOND IN COMMAND*