ABSTRACT
After a wearying march along the old Kent Road under the crushing rays of the fierce July sun, the ragged, dispirited, and weary British army was concentrated in the neighbourhood of Chatham and Maidstone, converging by main roads, byroads, and the railway. It was a monument of improvidence and disorganisation. Two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers were ordered into a 97cul-de-sac to keep a Government in power, and if possible, drive the enemy away from London. And all the time the great Eye of the German army moved everywhere, seeing everything, noting every mistake, making counter-moves on this immense chess-board, directing the mathematical and inexorable march of the Kaiser’s well-drilled legions. Tremendous movements of troops and guns took place behind the hills of Kent and Surrey. Tens of thousands of khaki-clad soldiers moved swiftly and silently like the wheels of some gigantic machine. They stealthily swept up in the form of a great crescent with Chatham as the centre, forming an immense net through which nothing could escape. The extreme right was advanced past Faversham and the crescent passed to the smith of Maidstone and came up through Sevenoaks and Otford. But all was done so swiftly and secretly that no one knew the plan but the members of the German General Staff.
