It was low because the German fighting men had been led to
believe that they would have to fight no longer, that the great effort
was ended, that there was no French Army to put a stop to their
pillaging and burning. "Tomorrow we enter Paris, we are going to the
Moulin Rouge," von Kluck's soldiers said in their jargon to the
inhabitants of Compiegne. "Tomorrow we will burn Bar-le-Duc,
Poincare's home town," the Crown Prince's soldiers said. What sort of
resistance could such men oppose to Joffre's soldiers? Their spirit,
granting that they had ever had any, was broken beforehand. And that
is another thing that will explain the outcome of the Battle of the
Marne.
* * * * *
What Paris knew very quickly, very completely and very surely were the
details of frightful looting and of the first atrocities perpetrated
by the Germans, who demonstrated a premeditated intention to destroy,
defile and wipe out everything in their path. And Paris was doubtless
the first city in France to comprehend the significance of this war,
which is a war of civilization against barbarism, a sacred war in
which the forces of humanity raise a rampart of human breasts against
the violent reappearance of primitive savagery.
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