And at this culminating moment the Russian pressure began to produce substantial effects. Honour must ever be done to the Tsar and Russian nation for the noble ardour and loyalty with which they hurled themselves into the war. A purely Russian treatment of their military problem would have led the Russian armies into immediate withdrawals from their frontiers until the whole of their vast mobilisation was completed. Instead of this, they added to a forward mobilisation an impetuous advance not only against Austria but into Germany. The flower of the Russian army was soon to be cut down in enormous and fearful battles in East Prussia. But the results of their invasion were gathered at the decisive point. The nerve of the German Headquarters failed. On August 25 two army corps and a cavalry division of the German right were withdrawn from France. On August 31 Lord Kitchener was able to telegraph to Sir John French: ‘Thirty-two trains of German troops were yesterday reported moving from the western field to meet the Russians.’[50] Awful was the responsibility of General Joffre and the French High Command for the decision which must now be taken. To turn too late was to risk the demoralisation of the armies. To turn too soon was to court another and this time a final defeat. And how compute the balance of all the agonies and pressures simultaneously operating and reciprocally interacting which should determine the dread issue? Whatever the mistakes of the opening phase, however wrong the tactical and strategic conceptions which had induced them, immortal glory crowns the brows of those who gave the fateful signal, and lights the bayonets of the heroic armies that obeyed it. On September 6, being the thirty-seventh day of mobilisation, all the French armies between Verdun and Paris, together with the British Army and the French forces in Paris and to the north of Paris, turned upon their pursuers and sprang at their throats. The Battle of the Marne had begun. * * * * * I may now be permitted to descend to a small scale of events, and to refer to an incident which has caused both stir and controversy.