As the Germans rapidly advanced, their offen-
sive ran out of steam. General Gallieni, appointed
to defend Paris, now conceived of a counter-
stroke. The Germans had wheeled in before Paris.
Joffre and Gallieni halted the retreat and counter-
attacked. The outcome was the battle of the
Marne, won by the French during the period 6
to 13 September. Now it was the Germans’ turn
to withdraw; they halted 100 kilometres from
Paris having established a firm defence. The
battles spread and raged to the west, all the way
to Flanders, in a ‘race to the sea’ as the armies
attempted to outflank each other. The British,
French and Germans suffered heavy casualties in
these epic struggles around Ypres. By the end of
November 1914, the machine gun, the trenches
and barbed wire finally proved the strength of the
defensive. The western front was now dead-
locked. The French had already suffered heavy
casualties in the fighting in north-west France,
with 380,000 killed and 600,000 wounded. This
was matched by casualties on the German side.
Yet it was only the beginning. The war in the west
would from now on be won not by superior strat-
egy, nor by movement and rapid encirclement,
but by the slow process of attrition. The Great
War had turned into the first ‘industrial war’ to
be won as decisively on the home front produc-
ing ever vaster quantities of guns and munitions,
as in the field.
In Britain the Liberal government of Asquith at
first preserved most civic freedoms. There was no
conscription. Two million men volunteered in
response to Kitchener’s appeal for a New Army.
But soon there were doubts whether the war could
be won by peacetime-style government. In the
spring of 1915 the government was being blamed
for a shortage of munitions. Asquith strengthened
the government by bringing in the Conservatives;
Labour, too, was found a place. A small War
Committee took over a tighter direction. Lloyd
George, the new minister of munitions, built up a
network of control over raw materials and manu-
facturing industry. War supplies improved and
national economic planning was seen to work,
which after the war boosted the claims of the
socialists. The war could not be fought in the tra-
ditions of previous victorious struggles. That
became clear when conscription for military ser-
vice was introduced early in 1916. Even so 1916
did not bring the expected victory. The politi-
cians sought a new leader to direct the war with
more ruthless purpose and energy. In December
1916 the fiery and charismatic Welshman, Lloyd
George, replaced Asquith and headed a coalition
government for the remainder of the war.
During the years of the war the individual lost
many rights as hope of a quick victory vanished. In
accepting state direction, organised labour coop-
erated with the national government, and a polit-
ical ‘truce’ was proclaimed in Britain as in other
belligerent countries. Due in no small measure to
Lloyd George’s skill, the dominant style was that
of cooperation rather than coercion, of preserving
constitutional parliamentary government rather
than resorting to authoritarian rule.
In France President Poincaré called for a ‘sacred
union’ in defence of the fatherland. Patriotism for
the anti-clerical republic was sanctified. Political
and social issues which had rent the republic before
were now subordinated in face of the common
enemy invading France for a second time.
Symbolically the veteran socialist leader, Jean
Jaurès, who had so fervently denounced militarism
and had worked for Franco-German reconcilia-
tion, was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic on the
very eve of the war. He, too, would have joined
with his fellow socialists in the defence of France.
For France, invaded and losing large tracts of
the country right at the beginning of the war, it
could not be ‘business as usual’ – the inappropri-
ate words of calm coined by Winston Churchill
across the Channel – because from the start
France was in imminent danger of defeat. That is
why the French were the first to establish a gov-
ernment of national unity representing all parties
from left to right.
Although the war was fought on French soil,
and the loss of industrial north-western France was
serious, the French improvised war production and
relied on financial and material aid from Britain
and the US. Shortages of food and of necessities
sent prices soaring. Increasingly authoritarian
control of production, allocation of labour and
distribution had to be undertaken by the state.
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