Moreover, Von Emmich knew that General Leman and the Third Belgian Division had been far away the day before. Every hour, undoubtedly, brought them nearer; every hour rendered the element of surprise less valuable. Wherefore, as an advocate of the German theory of war which declares that any place can be rushed, no matter how strongly defended, if the attacking force be large enough and sacrifice of life is not counted, Von Emmich hurled his men forward ruthlessly and regardlessly into a revelry of carnage. If Germany was staggered at her dead, the commander of the Army of the Meuse did not show it that day. From morning until evening the iron-gray infantry charged, were mown down, fell back and charged again. Wave after wave of men swept up those slopes, never to return. The human tide seemed endless. For not one moment, in all that day, did the billows of soldier victims cease to pound forward to their bloody doom; for not one moment, in all that day, did the Belgians, though with smoke-bleared eyes and dropping from exhaustion, fail to answer. Since morning there had been no respite, not even for a meal. At evening, the piles of German dead and wounded rose five feet high in long lines over the rolling landscape. When night fell upon the Fifth of August, German power had suffered a severe blow. That first day's fighting of the war in the west had shown that 22,500 Belgians, though hastily mobilized, could hold back 120,000 Germans, prepared to the last detail. It disproved, forever, the German theory that masses of men can overcome machine-gun-fire by sheer weight of numbers. It displayed that the German system of firing from the hip, instead of from the shoulder, resulted in bad marksmanship and a reckless waste of ammunition. It revealed that the German soldier fights with dogged and relentless driving force in a mass, but is weak as an individual and will not face cold steel. Most important of all, it shattered the reputation of the Kaiser's generals for infallibility and of the Kaiser's army for invincibility. The first day's fighting was a German defeat. That, at least, stood out clear. To cap the triumph, two Belgian counter-attacks had been successful. German outposts were scattered by an assault on the heights of Wandre, the Garde Civique cut up and practically destroyed an attacking force near Boncelles, while the Belgian Lancers covered themselves with glory when, with one squadron, they charged upon six squadrons of German cavalry and put them to rout.