Chapter V: Part IV: Diplomatic Papers Relating to the Origin of the War, (4)

In the last days of August Joffre had to make his great decision. His right was holding before Nancy, and was soon to make a successful advance, clearing most of eastern Lorraine. His center, stretched across the Champagne country from the Argonne to the Oise, had recovered from early reverses and won several considerable local counteroffenses, notably at Guise. But his left was still shaky, his reserves were not yet up and his reconcentration was incomplete. Should he risk all now, or take his army back until his left rested upon Paris? To do this latter would be to surrender more French territory, but it would mean a further exhaustion of the Germans, a further increase in his numbers. The morale of his troops was unshaken. He had suffered defeats, but merely incidental defeats, the real test had not yet come.

THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE

Joffre decided to continue his retreat, and took his army south of the Marne, his left formed by the British resting upon the forts of Paris, behind which he had massed a new army, his center stretching between Paris and Verdun, his right along the barrier line from Verdun to Switzerland. The German armies, already worn down by their exertions and their losses, were now to be attacked by their foe, whom they regarded as already vanquished.

The first phase of the Battle of the Marne was fought northeast of Paris along the Ourcq, which gives its name to the local battle. Kluck had marched past the French capital, going south along its eastern front and leaving only small guards to cover his rear and flank. He had before him the British and on his flank the new Paris army, of the existence of which he was totally ignorant. In Joffre's strategy this army was to strike east while the British struck north, together they were to act like the two blades of a pair of scissors. Between them Kluck was to be destroyed and his rout would expose the flank and rear of all the German forces in France.

The French struck with great promptness, but the British failed to move quickly enough. Kluck extricated himself from between the blades with supreme generalship, brought his main force back against the French, borrowing a corps from Bülow and presently the French were driven back upon Paris. British slowness had wrecked the master stroke of Joffre's strategy.

But in the center the situation was changing. Joffre had issued his famous order to attack upon September 5. The Paris army under Manoury had struck on the 6th, and the French offensive had steadily communicated itself from west to east along the whole line, that is, to the British army, then to the armies of Franchet d'Espérey, of Foch, of De Langle de Cary, of Sarrail. In the French center about September 9, General Foch, commanding still another new army, had begun his attack. By a combination of operations, which remain the most brilliant of the war, he flung a portion of the Germans before him into the marshes of St. Gond and routed the remainder. In this field the Germans now began a retreat which was almost a rout. Meantime, further to the east, Sarrail, holding Verdun, had begun to attack the crown prince, who was in difficulty.

Foch's success was decisive, Kluck and Bülow began their retreat, leaving their own fights undecided. Hausen, who faced Foch, was removed in disgrace, and his army now in bad shape, went back to Châlons and then to the Rheims-Argonne district. The crown prince with difficulty drew his forces out of the lower Argonne and north of Verdun. The French victory in Lorraine had also become absolute, and the Germans were back on the frontier.

But there was lacking to the French the numbers and the strength to make their victory conclusive. They had been outnumbered at the moment of victory, their twenty-two corps facing twenty-seven at the Marne, 900,000 at most against 1,200,000. The fall of Maubeuge had released fresh German troops, who came south, and, reenforcing Kluck, enabled him to stand at the Aisne. The German front was reconstituted, running from the Oise at Noyon to Metz and the deadlock was about to begin, had in fact begun.

The remainder of the western campaign requires little comment. There now followed that operation, well described as "the race to the sea." The French coming east around the right flank of the Germans north of Noyon attempted to reach their rear at St. Quentin and turn them out of France. The Germans endeavored to extend their line westward to the sea and thus secure their flank and, in addition, take possession of the whole French coast from the mouth of the Somme to Belgium.

Neither side succeeded. Instead a line was erected from the Oise due north to the German Ocean at Nieuport, which became the new battle front. Antwerp fallen, the Germans made a supreme effort to shorten and straighten their line by attacking the French, British, and Belgians, who held the extreme left of the allied forces between Nieuport and La Bassée, along the Yser and about Ypres. This struggle lasted for nearly a month, and was desperate in the extreme. For the British it was a gigantic repetition of Waterloo, and they were again asked to hold a position, not now for hours, but for days, under heavy pressure, and in the face of odds such as Napoleon did not possess in the earlier conflict. In the end the line held, German approach to the Channel was blocked, and by December 1 the western war had dropped to trench fighting which still persists along the lines that had been substantially occupied in November, 1914.

GERMAN FAILURE

Such briefly was the history of the first German venture, the effort to dispose of France. So far as its main object was concerned it failed absolutely. It failed because Joffre met the German thrust with a parry which turned it aside. French military power was not destroyed, it was not even shaken. France was not eliminated by a crushing defeat as Austria had been eliminated at Austerlitz in a similar conflict.

The victory had been won because Joffre had deliberately held his forces in hand and avoided a decisive issue, until he had brought the Germans to his own battle field. He had avoided a German net which might have encircled a portion of his armies, as Bazaine had been encircled at Metz; he had declined to consider political conditions and fight as MacMahon had been compelled to fight at Sedan. With inferior numbers, with smaller resources in heavy artillery and transport, with a handicap of inferior subordinates, who in Alsace and in the Ardennes, as well as at Charleroi, had by their incompetence imperiled his first plans, he had won a campaign. That the success was not conclusive cannot be charged to him, Sir John French's failure along the Grand Morin, as other critics assert, or Manoury's excess of zeal at the Ourcq, by enabling Kluck to avoid Joffre's embrace, possibly saved the Germans from a general disaster.

The Battle of the Marne denied Germany the continental supremacy which Austerlitz prepared for Napoleon. It saved France, gave Great Britain time to raise her volunteer armies, mobilize her industries. To win it France had put in her last ounce of available strength, and there was needed for her, too, time to reorganize her armies, and prepare to conduct a long war. She was not able and she has not yet been able to turn Germany out of that twenty-fifth of French area, which Germany holds, and has held since October, 1914.

But in every sense this Battle of the Marne was one of the few really decisive battles of all human history. It was a French victory, organized by French genius and won by French soldiers. The British contribution was slight, just as the British numbers were insignificant. It was not due to Belgian resistance, as has been so frequently asserted in the past, and the determining phase was the wonderful fight of Foch at Champenoise, after the Paris army had failed against Kluck.

AGAINST RUSSIA

The character of the German operations against Russia in the opening days of the war was determined by the decision to attack France. Necessarily all troops save that minimum which represented the barest margin of safety were sent to the west and there was left to a small force the duty of defending the East Prussian marshes. Germany counted upon the slowness of Russian mobilization to give her six weeks of immunity on her eastern frontier. She expected in that time to dispose of France, and she believed that at the end of it Russia would still be engaged in concentrating her masses. Both calculations were wrong.

But the main reliance of Germany in the east was Austria, whose whole force, save for one or two corps borrowed by Germany to defend Alsace and four corps sent against Serbia, was available for the invasion of Russian Poland. If Austria could organize a resistance that would last for six weeks, Germany was prepared to do the rest. This she expected of Austria, and again her calculations were wrong.

A glance at the map serves to explain the opening moves in the eastern campaign. Russian Poland projects into Austro-German territory, and is nearly encircled by German East Prussia and Austrian Galicia. Russian mobilization had therefore to take place not at the frontier, but behind the Vistula and the armies, once concentrated, advanced from the Niemen, west of Kovno, from Warsaw, from Brest-Litovsk on the Bug and from the Rowno-Dubno-Lutsk fortresses west of Kiev. Thus the military as contrasted with the political frontier of Russia was behind the Vistula, the Niemen and the Bug.

The Austro-German plan contemplated a defensive fight on the north, in East Prussia, and an offensive campaign from the south, aimed at Lublin and Brest-Litovsk. The Russians on their side planned an immediate invasion of East Prussia from Warsaw and Kovno and a far more considerable offensive into Galicia from the Rumanian boundary to Rowno. The objective of the northern operation was the conquest of the whole of Prussia east of the Vistula, that of the southern the capture of Lemberg and the conquest of all Galicia. Combined, these two movements would abolish the Polish salient and give the Russian right flank the protection of the Baltic, the left the cover of the Carpathians. Only then could there be any safe advance by the center through Poland upon Posen and Breslau and thence upon Berlin.

Russian mobilization was more rapid than Russia's allies could have hoped for and it wholly confounded the Germans. While the Battle of the Marne was still two weeks off Russian forces were sweeping west from the Niemen and approaching Königsberg, a second army was striking north from Warsaw. East Prussian populations were fleeing before the invaders and a German disaster seemed imminent.

The genius of Hindenburg, who now appeared upon the eastern battle ground, saved the situation. Gathering in all his available forces and leaving the Russian army coming from the Niemen almost unopposed, he caught the Warsaw army in the swamps about the frontier in the last days of August and, thanks to his generalship and heavy artillery, destroyed a Russian army. Tannenberg was a great victory and it saved East Prussia. The Niemen army had to retreat rapidly to escape destruction. At the time, it was asserted that the Russian invasion had compelled the Germans to draw upon their western front to meet the thrust and thus to weaken their armies in advance of the decisive battle. This is not now believed to be true, but there is no doubt that it drew reserves who might otherwise have gone to the west or to the south.

Tannenberg was a victory which filled the world with its splendor, but it merely disguised for the moment the far more considerable Austrian disaster to the south. One Austrian army had crossed the frontier and approached Lublin, another had advanced east from Lemberg. Upon the Lemberg army the full weight of the Russian thrust now fell and the army was promptly routed, driven through Lemberg and west of the San or across the Carpathians. The force that had approached Lublin was thus left in the air and succumbed to a series of disasters, which culminated in the terrible defeat of Rawa-Ruska. Meantime the Austrian troops, which had invaded Serbia were routed in the Battle of the Jedar, which preceded the other Austrian disasters and was, in fact, the first considerable triumph for the Allies in the whole war.

AUSTRIAN PERIL

Austria was now in dire straits and her whole military structure seemed on the point of crumbling. Russian armies flowed west through Galicia and approached Tarnow, Przemysl was isolated, tens of thousands of prisoners, innumerable guns and vast quantities of stores fell to the victors. While the great German attack upon France was failing, Russia seemed on the point of achieving against Germany's ally what Germany had failed to achieve against France.

Germany was now compelled to intervene. At the moment when she was organizing her final effort in the west and sending her best troops to hack their way to Calais, she had to divert other troops to the east. Hindenburg undertook a new offensive, this time from the Silesian frontier, and pushed with great rapidity to the very suburbs of Warsaw. He only failed by a narrow margin, Siberian troops coming up just in time to save the Polish capital, and Hindenburg, now outnumbered, conducted a swift and orderly retreat to the frontier. But his intervention had disorganized the Russian campaign in Galicia and Russian armies there had been compelled to retreat and send reenforcements north.

Hindenburg's retreat was a signal for a fresh Russian advance, this time the czar's forces reached the gates of Cracow and began to crowd through the Carpathian passes and sweep down into the Hungarian Plain. Przemysl was again invested, Russian troops for the first time entering German territory west of the Vistula. It was necessary for Germany to intervene again.

This time Hindenburg was more successful. He had retreated upon Cracow and Breslau; gathering up his armies he transported them rapidly to the north by strategic railways, brought them back into Poland south of the Vistula, interposed between the Russians and Warsaw and very nearly repeated at Lodz his great success of Tannenberg. But this time the Russians after desperate fighting won clear, and fell back to the lines in front of Warsaw, which they were to hold for so many months. At the same time they retreated in Galicia from before Cracow to Tarnow and stood behind the Dunajec River. Austria was saved again, but having, in her extreme peril recalled some of her corps from an army engaged in a new invasion of Serbia, that army was routed and well-nigh destroyed.

GERMANY'S SECOND OFFENSIVE

From December to April the eastern campaign lacked decisive circumstances. In the north Hindenburg won a new and splendid victory at the Mazurian Lakes, expelling a Russian army which had renewed the invasion of East Prussia. In the south the Russians steadily pushed the Austrians back into the Carpathians, took Przemysl with more than 125,000 prisoners, and as spring came seemed on the point of crowning the Carpathians and descending into the Hungarian Plain.

But the Germans were already organizing their second great offensive. They were raising new armies, collecting fresh stores of ammunition and preparing for a thrust against Russia as gigantic as that against France, with the deliberate purpose of eliminating Russia from the war. There was no longer any chance of a Napoleonic success in Europe. But if Russia were eliminated, they could still hope to win a peace that might leave them Belgium. Some portion of their plans was spoiled almost as the spring campaign opened, by the entrance of Italy on the Allies' side, but Italy came too late to save Russia from the disasters that had begun.

The German plan of campaign was simple. Hindenburg was to strike east and south from East Prussia at the Russian lines along the Niemen-Bobr-Narew. Mackensen, having pushed the Russians out of Galicia, was to strike north through Lublin and toward Brest-Litovsk. A new army was to invade Courland and aim at Riga. It was the German hope that the main Russian masses would be caught and enveloped by Hindenburg and Mackensen, that Poland would be taken and all its garrisons, and the bulk of the Russian military power be destroyed.

The first blow fell at Gorlice in Galicia in the last days of April. Mackensen, furnished with the greatest train of artillery war had ever seen, burst through the Russian lines along the Dunajec, destroyed Dmitrieff's army, which faced him, almost captured the Russian Carpathian forces and drove the Russians rapidly beyond the San, retook first Przemysl and then Lemberg, thus clearing all but a corner of Galicia.

The main German and Austrian armies were then sent north toward Brest-Litovsk, while Hindenburg began his thrust by attacking Ossowetz and the Niemen-Bobr-Narew barrier of forts. By this time the world knew that Russian ammunition had failed and for many weeks the possibility of a tremendous Russian disaster existed. Step by step the Russians were pushed back. The fall of Warsaw was assured in July and it was not until August that the escape of the Russian garrison was certain. The same problem was raised about Kovno and Brest-Litovsk, but again the Russians won clear. Late in August the final net of the Germans about Vilna was drawn, but for the last time the Russians eluded it.

And with the battle of Vilna the German eastern campaign practically ends. In the north the Russians held Riga and the Dwina line, in the center they were behind the great marshes of Pinsk, to the south they were behind the Styr and Stripa, still holding Rowno, still clinging to a corner of Galicia. They had lost hundreds of thousands of prisoners and many guns. All of Russian Poland, most of Courland, and much other territory had been surrendered. But they had kept their armies intact and were once more in line.

In so far as the German campaign had been designed to free Austrian soil and relieve the pressure upon Austrian and German fronts in the east, it had been a shining success. It had served, too, to restore German prestige in the Balkans. But it had come too late to keep Italy out, and it had not eliminated Russia.

Unless the Germans were prepared to repeat the fatal Napoleonic march upon Moscow, there was now nothing for them to do but abandon their eastern campaign for the winter, to dig in and hold until the spring permitted new operations. But this offered to the Russians a period of recuperation and rest. In the spring they would have new armies and fresh artillery. These circumstances were the measure of the German failure in their second offensive. In their first they had set out to dispose of France and had suffered defeat at the Marne. In the second they had undertaken to put Russia out, and after a long series of victories, Russia had escaped and was now beyond their grasp.

From the military point of view the Russian failure was even more serious than the French, because it came a year later, and at the hour when the superior numbers and resources of the enemies of Germany were already beginning to tell.

THE THIRD GERMAN OFFENSIVE

The two preceding German campaigns had been based on purely military considerations. The first was a true Napoleonic conception designed to grasp a Napoleonic opportunity. The second was partly imposed upon Germany by Russian success and Austrian failure. There was no longer a question of destroying the opponents in order, it was a question of eliminating one and then finding a basis for peace with the others. The third German campaign, that in the Balkans, was political quite as much as it was military. It was designed to provide Germany with some profit for her great sacrifices and her great losses, but it was no longer a question of the conquest of any considerable foe.

By the operations of British sea power, Germany had now practically lost her colonial empire. It was certain that with peace she would not again be permitted to make use of British colonies or ports, as she had done before. Her overseas commerce with belligerents and their colonies was bound to be ruined, even if peace came soon, for the period of the war it was, of course, abolished.

The entrance of Turkey on the German side had opened for the Germans a new field for industrial exploitation, if there could once be opened a road from the Danube to Constantinople. This field would be beyond the reach of sea power. Once Germany had taken actual command at Constantinople, once the railroad from Hamburg to the Bosphorus was open, it was possible to threaten Britain in Egypt, and perhaps ultimately in India by the Bagdad and Mecca railways.

Such a threat, coupled with one more successful campaign, might exercise a decisive influence upon the minds of the people of the allied countries, and in opening a road to the Golden Horn, Germany might find the path to peace. Already there was apparent willingness in Berlin to evacuate Belgium and northern France, only from Russia did Germany now insist upon tribute in the form of conquered provinces. But until the road to Constantinople was open, until the Serbian nuisance was abolished, peace could not be considered.

Turkey, too, was calling for aid. Early in the year the Anglo-French fleets had tried to force the Dardanelles. Their failure had been followed by a land attack at Gallipoli, which had so far failed, but Turkish ammunition and artillery was inadequate for a sustained fight, and there was needed German aid. To lose the Dardanelles was to see Turkey conquered, Russia provided with munitions, and the whole German dream of expansion to Asia Minor destroyed.

It was necessary, too, to provide the German people with a new victory. They had been bitterly disappointed that the Russian campaign had not brought peace, or, at the least, the elimination of Russia. A new and relatively cheap success, the conquest of the Balkans, would fire their imagination and again stimulate their hopes for a victorious peace. In addition, Bulgaria now beckoned to the Germans. Her army was at the disposition of the two kaisers, but there was plain peril that if the coming were too long delayed, the Allies might succeed in persuading Ferdinand to cast his lot with the camp that now offered him Serbian Macedonia and Turkish Thrace, and were suggesting the further _pourboire_ of Greek Kavala.

Accordingly Germany decided to go south, having gone west and east without finding peace or decisive victory. She had available for this operation troops no longer needed against Russia since the campaign on this front had died out, and she had to command it, the great Mackensen, whose fame now rivaled that of Hindenburg, whose victories had regained Galicia. "Constantinople and Peace" became the new German watchword, just as "Paris and Peace" and "Warsaw and Peace" had been in preceding months.

And at the outset of this third campaign it is perhaps appropriate to point out that Germany was now to achieve that complete military success that had been denied to her in France and Russia, she was to win a victory in the military sense which was beyond cavil, but she was this time to lose the political profit she had hoped, because she had mistaken the importance in the minds of her enemies of the Balkan field and fatally overestimated the war weariness of the peoples that opposed her. At the Golden Horn she was to find not peace, but the necessity for new campaigns.

THE SERBIAN PHASE

On the military side the Serbian campaign was the simplest of operations. For many months the Serbian forces had been posted south of the Danube and the Save and east of the Drin, looking over their frontiers into Hungary and Bosnia. Behind them from the Danube at Belgrade to the Ægean at Saloniki ran the Orient railroad, by which they were munitioned. At Nish halfway to the sea, the line drew near to the Bulgarian frontier and sent a branch off, which passed through Bulgaria and reached Constantinople.

The Saloniki railway was the life line of Serbia, it was also the natural route for a retreat, if the Austro-German attack became too heavy. But it was fatally exposed, should Bulgaria enter the war against Serbia. In the Treaty of Bucharest, Greece and Rumania had undertaken to join Serbia should she be attacked by Bulgaria, and the mission of Greece was to cover the Saloniki railroad as far north as it was necessary to join hands with the Serbians.

Now, while the Bulgarians were beginning to mobilize and the Austro-German hosts were gathering to the north, Serbia appealed to her former allies to keep their agreement. Both declined, and their refusal was fatal. The Allies had relied upon Greek promises, and had failed to collect any considerable force at Saloniki. They had trusted Bulgaria and refused to let Serbia attack her neighbor before Bulgarian mobilization was complete. Once Bulgaria had mobilized the doom of Serbia was settled.

What happened was this: The Germans forced the passage of the Danube north and east of Belgrade and came south along the broad Morava River Valley, driving the Serbs before them. Thanks to the heavy artillery of the invaders Serbian resistance was impotent. The Austrians, meantime, crossed the Drin and came east from Bosnia. Think of Serbia as a rectangle and you can visualize two sides of the figure as closing in on the center, which was the heart of Serbia.

At the appointed moment the Bulgarians struck west from a third side of the rectangle, speedily crossed the Belgrade-Nish-Saloniki railroad, and thus cut off the true line of Serbian retreat, that upon Saloniki.

Very early in the campaign the Bulgars seized Uskub, thus interposing a wedge between the small Anglo-French force at Saloniki and the Serbs about Nish to the north of Uskub. Meantime a desperate concentration was taking place at Saloniki, and an Anglo-French force, commanded by Sarrail, was being pushed up the Saloniki railroad toward Uskub to open a road to the Serbs to join their allies. The operation suggested that successfully conducted in Flanders in the opening months of the war, which enabled the Belgian army to escape from Antwerp and join their allies in Flanders.

But this operation failed. The French came north to the outskirts of Veles, twenty miles from Uskub, just too late to save the Serbians, who now fled west to Monastir and south to Montenegro and Albania. As a fighting force the Serbs were eliminated, the wrecks of their armies barely escaping to the Adriatic and Ægean coasts at Durazzo and Saloniki. Bulgarian troops forced the Katchanik gorges and took Prisrend, and German and Austrian forces entered the ill-omened Plain of Kossovo and overran the ancient Sanjak of Novibazar.

Before the storm that was now moving south, the French and British retreated upon Saloniki, and presently began to construct about this Greek city lines and defenses recalling those Wellington built at Torres Vedras before Lisbon to restrain the flood of Napoleonic invasion in the Iberian peninsula. The conquest of the Balkan peninsula, save for Greece, was now as complete as Napoleon's own success in Spain had been more than a century before.

In due course of time an Austrian army repeated the operations of the Germans, this time succeeding in reducing the strongholds of Montenegro, which had defied the Turk through long centuries. Mount Lovetcen, the peak which looks down upon Cattaro and commands the inner bay, was at last taken, Scutari followed, northern Albania was overrun, Nicholas followed Peter into exile. All Macedonia was taken and the Allies forced out of Serbia, which had become an entirely conquered country. To complete the conquest of the Near East there was needed nothing but a successful siege of Saloniki, but this required preparation and the rebuilding of destroyed railroads, and so the Allies found respite in this Ægean port for a brief time.

Such was Germany's third campaign. Her victory enabled her to send munitions to Constantinople, and insured the failure of the allied attack at the Dardanelles. Only a few weeks later the allied armies evacuated the Gallipoli Peninsula; thus testifying to the decisive character of the German operation. Still later Turkish reenforcements, doubtless drawing upon German sources for munitions, defeated another British expedition almost under the walls of Bagdad and drove it in retreat down the Tigris, ultimately surrounding it at Kut-el-Amara, a hundred miles to the south.

Again, there came immediately forecasts of another Turkish thrust at Suez, under German direction, a first attack having failed in the previous winter. Whether Germany actually obtained any considerable stock of provisions or foodstuffs may be doubted by her succor, but it is clear that her campaign had enabled her to make use of many thousands of Turkish troops, who were waiting only for arms, it had given her control of the Bulgarian army, a small but efficient force, and it had provided an eventual means of attacking the British Empire by land, once the advance upon Egypt could be organized.

This last circumstance is worth noting, for the time had now arrived when the Germans perceived that Great Britain had so far escaped injury, was the single one of the larger powers who had drawn profit without terrible loss from the war and was becoming the determining force in the allied camp, because its resources were still unexhausted and its armies only just coming into the field, while German numbers were approaching a positive decline. If Germany could reach Suez, conquer Egypt, using Turkish armies and German genius and munitions, she would deal a heavy blow to the British Empire, and she might compel the British to listen to proposals for peace, which were now contemptuously thrust aside by London.

In sum, the Serbian campaign saved Turkey, disposed of Serbia, enlisted Bulgaria, opened the road to the Near East and to subsequent attacks upon Egypt and perhaps upon India, but it did not bring peace, and it did not inflict any immediate injury upon any one of Germany's larger foes, only Serbia and Montenegro actually suffered serious loss, and the destruction of their armies was but a detail in a world war.

ITALY

For the purposes of a summary it is unnecessary to review in detail the Italian operations. They have no distinctive challenge to the reader. Italian statesmanship imposed upon the Italian high command a task which made immediate victory impossible, and assigned to Italy the useful but inglorious rôle of occupying some 400,000 Austrian troops, and thus contributing to the strain imposed upon the Central Powers and to the hastening of the moment when exhaustion might be expected to set in.

Had Italy decided to enter the war at the moment when Russia was destroying Austrian armies in Galicia in September and October of 1914 she would almost unquestionably have supplied the necessary numbers to bring a speedy and decisive defeat for the Central Powers. Again, had she selected the moment when Russian armies were at the crests of the Carpathians, and Przemysl had just fallen, she would have probably made the German offense against Russia impossible, brought Rumania in with her, and produced the collapse of Austria. Bulgaria would not have enlisted with the Central Powers, Greece would almost certainly have attacked Turkey, and the Balkan campaign would not have taken place.

But German diplomacy averted the second peril, and Italian alignment with Austria and with Germany in the Triple Alliance made an attack at the opening of the war unthinkable. When Italy did come in, the German victory in Galicia had been won, Russia was in retreat, the allied defeat before the Dardanelles forts and the Russian disasters had produced a profound effect in Balkan capitals, and Austria was able to find the troops to meet and check the Italian advance almost at the frontier. Since that time the Italian operations have been merely trench conflicts, and Italy has nowhere penetrated a score of miles into Austrian territory, nor has she taken Trieste, Trent, or even Gorizia.

If one desires a parallel for the Italian operations it is to be found in the later phases of the Peninsula War against Napoleon. This field was never of decisive importance, but it did require the attention of several of Napoleon's best marshals, and drew off thousands of French soldiers needed by the great emperor in the campaigns in eastern Germany, where his fortunes were finally decided. What Wellington did, the Italians under Cadorna have been imitating in their own peninsula, and their service to their allies has thus been very considerable.

Nor is it necessary for the purposes of so rapid a review of the main phases of the war to dwell upon the allied failure in the west between the end of the battles of Flanders in November, 1914, and February, 1916. At the beginning of 1915 what were allied hopes and purposes in the west? Unquestionably French and British public believed that with the coming year the Grand Alliance would be able to crush Germany. Unquestionably French and British high commands planned to open the summer with a drive that would clear France and Belgium. As for the Germans, having laid their plans to go to Russia, they asked nothing of their western armies save that the lines should be held.

The French began their spring drive in Artois and in Champagne. The Artois fighting of May and June was exceedingly severe, incidental gains were made, but the British were suddenly disclosed lacking in all proper ammunition, lacking in numbers to support the French offensive, and barely able to hold their own lines about Ypres, after desperate fighting, made memorable by the first use by the Germans of gas as a weapon of offense.

From June until September the western armies stood still, while Britain organized her munition manufactures and continued to send her new troops to the Continent. Kitchener's "million" was not realized until the late fall, instead of the early spring. But when, in the latter days of September, the British attacked about La Bassée, and the French in Champagne, the muddling of British officers cost the Allies a considerable triumph in Artois, and the French victory in Champagne was purely local. Some 30,000 prisoners, 200 cannon, this was the fruit of an offensive which cost the British 60,000 casualties, and the French hardly less than twice as many.

German defense, therefore, fulfilled its mission in the west, German armies were able to drive deep into Russia without having to detach reenforcements to the west. Such offensives as the Allies ventured were either complete failures or merely local successes, without major value. Belgium and northern France were not liberated, and there was, as yet, not even a promise of the crushing of Germany.

ALLIED POLICY

In the brief space that remains I desire to discuss the policy of the nations which are fighting the Teutonic Alliance. The German purpose at the outset of the war has been discussed. Franco-Russian preparation had been made long before the war, and the general plan of the high commands of the two allies worked out without any material interruption. The same is true of the cooperation of the British army. This simply followed out the plans agreed upon years before.

It is not true, as has been frequently asserted, that France or her allies were surprised by the German invasion of Belgium, this had long been foreseen. It is not true, as was believed widely at the time, that Joffre invited disaster by sending the mass of his troops into Alsace-Lorraine, yielding to political and patriotic sentiment. He did nothing of the sort. Such troops as were sent into these provinces fulfilled their mission and contributed to drawing German corps away from the north. The bulk of the French armies and the British Expeditionary Corps were in line along the Belgium frontier from Arlon to Mons when the Germans began their great drive.

The French were surprised in two respects. They had not foreseen the rapidity with which the German heavy artillery would reduce the forts in Belgium, the fall of Namur was the greatest catastrophe of the first period of the campaign, and they had not dreamed that the Germans would be able to mobilize so many troops in so short a period. Joffre had planned to meet the Germans along the Meuse and the Sambre, that is along the French frontier, but when the German advance began, his troops on these fronts were outnumbered by at least two to one, not because the mass of the French troops had been sent to Alsace-Lorraine, but because the French had not foreseen the capacity of the Germans to mobilize their reserves and had little more than their first-line troops ready, while the Germans were making use of Landwehr and even Landsturm formations in the first shock.

Once this fact was clearly established, Joffre resolutely drew his forces back until he was able to put more reserves in the field and thus approximately restore the balance between the two armies. But he was still heavily outnumbered at the decisive moment, winning his great battle with inferior forces. His enemy had reckoned on the traditional eagerness of the French to attack, and had expected to obtain a decisive victory, through superior numbers, in the first days of the war. The impression which the press reports gave in the early days, that the French were driven from defeat to defeat and almost succumbed to the German attack is far from accurate. In point of fact, the French armies, after suffering marked but relatively insignificant reverses at the outset, reverses due to the blunders of the subordinate generals in part, and to the greatly superior German numbers and artillery in the main, were drawn back in obedience to a carefully conceived plan, were denied the opportunity to fight, as they desired, until the exhaustion of German strength, ammunition, and transport, and the increase in French numbers gave the opportunity for a victory. The whole opening campaign was fought on the French side with a very keen recollection of the mistakes of 1870, and the result justified the strategy.

But with the end of the Battle of the Marne both the Allied and the German plans collapsed. Neither side had foreseen clearly the possibility of a battle in which the French might win a decisive victory, yet lack the numbers to enforce the decision absolutely. But the Germans were able to meet the situation promptly and, by preparing a position on the Aisne, to retain a considerable portion of the ground they had occupied in their first rush. Thus in failing to repeat their triumphs of the Franco-Prussian War and of the Seven Weeks' War, they had escaped the disaster of Napoleon at Waterloo, when he, too, had staked all on a single throw.

In the weeks and months that followed the German defeat at the Marne, allied understanding of the actual nature of the war developed only slowly. Until the coming of spring and the British failure to get men or munitions, the French and the British public, and probably their soldiers, believed that the Germans were shortly to be turned out of France. But with the failure there was at last established the real situation, the war had taken on the character of our own Civil War, it had become a struggle in which the decision would follow the exhaustion of one of the contending forces and the incidental victories of either side could not contribute materially to the ending of the war.

In the Civil War the North was exceedingly slow in learning this lesson and it was not until General Grant at last assumed the command of all the Northern armies that an intelligent policy was adopted. This policy has been summarized as the policy of attrition and it is now generally recognized as the policy on which the enemies of the Central Powers rely for ultimate success. Grant's own statement of this policy was as follows: "To hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be left to him nothing but submission." By this policy Grant won his war.

Now the allied policy, which it is necessary to recognize, to understand the war as it is viewed by one of the two contending forces, is this: The Allies are satisfied that the German numbers have begun or are beginning to fail. They fix at around 8,000,000 the total man power of Germany at the outset, using all means of computation including their own experience. They figure that at the end of the first eighteen months Germany had lost permanently not less than 3,500,000, possibly 4,000,000. They know that it requires upwards of 3,000,000 men to hold Germany's present lines and about 1,000,000 to perform other necessary services.

Now no such wastage has to be faced by the Allies as a whole. France is in the German situation, but Great Britain is still possessed of large numbers of men and her losses are under 600,000, while her population together with that of her colonies is above 60,000,000, whites alone being considered, against Germany's 67,000,000. Russia's man power is practically limited only by the ability to equip and munition. Italy has, as yet, made little draft upon her resources. Austria, on the other hand, has suffered more heavily, proportionately figured, than Germany.

Within a time that can be approximately fixed, the Allies believe that Germany will have either to shorten her lines or underman them. If she undermans them she will face the peril that overtook Lee about Richmond, when, as he said, his lines were stretched so thin, they broke. If Germany shortens her lines, this will be a confession of defeat and will deprive her of the conquered territories. Meantime the entire strategy of the Allies is summed up in Grant's grim words, and as Grant kept up his hammering on all the fronts of the Confederacy so the Allies are keeping up their pressure.

But attrition of men is only half; there is the question of food and of money. Command of the sea insures the food supply of the Allies and their financial resources greatly surpass those of Germany. Germany is suffering--we have Harden's word for this, because of food shortage, she is suffering from economic paralysis resulting from the blockade and she is suffering from the lack of certain materials needed in war. She is compelled to find money for her other and poorer allies. The enemies of Germany do not expect that she will be starved out or that she will have to surrender for lack of materials to make ammunition. But they do believe that shortage of food, economic pressure, financial difficulties, will go hand in hand with the failure of numbers.

In a word the Allies are fighting a war with many weapons of which the army is only one and the British navy another, perhaps the most effective. They are not fighting to win a campaign and they are not basing their expectation of victory on the incidents in any one field or in any single campaign. The Germans, on the contrary, as we have seen, have undertaken three tremendous campaigns, the first to win an absolute victory on the battle field, a victory which would make the Germany of William II the successor of the France of Napoleon I in Europe; the second to dispose of one of the great foes and thereby win a limited but considerable success; the third to win peace and an incidental opportunity to expand toward the east, the only direction in which expansion cannot be checked by sea power.

The Allies still expect to crush Germany; by crushing Germany they mean bringing her back to her frontiers of 1914, detaching Alsace-Lorraine from her and possibly Prussian territory east of the Vistula. They mean to destroy her fleet, demand indemnities for Belgian and French sufferers, they mean to abolish what they regard as the Prussian menace to peace. They are fighting Germany as Europe fought Napoleon and with the same determination. On the German side the struggle is also being waged in the Napoleonic fashion, Germany is seeking to employ the Napoleonic method and has so far achieved something of the early success of the great emperor.

But the simplest fashion in which to describe the later phases of the conflict is to say that a war of action has become a war of endurance, that Germany has sought and missed a decision on the battle field and her foes are now seeking the decision through economic forces quite as much as military and through casualty lists rather than brilliant campaigns.

THE WAR CORRESPONDENT

By ARTHUR RUHL

When the American fleet was sent to Vera Cruz in the summer of 1914 and it looked for a time as if an army might go into Mexico, Major General Funston explained the conditions under which correspondents were to go to the front. There was to be no repetition of the scandalous free-for-all of the Spanish War, when news prospectors of all sorts and descriptions swarmed over to Cuba in almost as haphazard fashion as Park Row reporters are rushed uptown to cover a subway explosion or a four-alarm fire.

The number of men was to be limited and their privileges strictly defined. Only the press associations and some twenty or thirty newspapers were to send correspondents, and they must put up substantial bonds for each man--one for his good behavior, the other to serve as an expense fund against which would be charged his keep as a civilian guest of the army. These conditions fulfilled, the men were to accompany the expedition with the privileges, practically, of officers or neutral attachés.

They would join an officers' mess or have a mess of their own with similar service; they might provide their own horses which would be cared for with the other horses of the unit to which they were attached. They were to stay where they were put, so far as nearness to the fighting was concerned, according to the judgment of the commanding officer, and all their dispatches must first pass a military censor.

These rules were read with some dismay by those not included in the provisional list. To many who had hoped to see something of a war they doubtless seemed severe, yet it is a fact that had they been put into effect, the correspondents in Mexico would have seen much more, comparatively speaking, than any group of correspondents has seen in Europe. They would actually have accompanied the army, sharing throughout the expedition the day-to-day life of the fighting men, like the old-fashioned "horseback correspondent"--and nobody in Europe has done that.

At the beginning of the war, England permitted no correspondents at all at the front, and while a group was chosen, it was well into 1915 before they were even allowed to cross to France. Once they reached their headquarters they saw a good deal. They lived at or near the front instead of merely shooting up and back for a glimpse of it. They met many officers more or less intimately, saw the life behind and in the trenches; occasionally they were taken to observation stations from which they saw the effect of artillery fire, and even, perhaps, in the distance, charging infantry. Yet the number who had even these privileges was so limited that it included but one American.

Mr. Frederick Palmer was thus chosen to act as a sort of correspondent at large for the American press. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, an English journalist, acted in a similar capacity for the English press and, indeed, for the rest of the world, at the Dardanelles. He saw a great deal, as much, perhaps, as any reporter has seen of any campaign, but he was almost alone in his glory, and so far as the distribution of such privileges is concerned, the English have been more cautious than any of the belligerents.

The French military authorities were more open minded, yet, while a few favored sons or the head of some press association whose position in Paris was almost as secure as that of an accredited diplomat, were quietly taken up to the trenches from the first, several months had elapsed before a group of correspondents went to the front. The desirability of publicity was better understood later, many neutral correspondents visited the trenches, and a few specially favored individuals spent some time at or near the front, but, even here, permission was obtained as a result of individual effort rather than as a part of a general scheme for handling, more or less impersonally, all applicants in good standing.

In Germany, correspondents were rather freely taken to the various fronts from the first. One reason for this, was, perhaps, that the Germans, with their thorough organization of everything, including censorship and secret service, may have known better just how far they could go. They were not afraid of what might get through the wall, because the wall was tight, and they knew just what could get out and what couldn't. At any rate, many reporters, both native born and foreign, were getting glimpses of the various fronts while the English group were still eating their heads off in London. Once there, however, they saw less, as a rule, than the English correspondents finally did, for their trips were generally mere visits--a sort of Cook's tour in war time.

A quotation from an article of mine in "Collier's" written after a trip through Belgium and down to the first-line German trenches at Givenchy will suggest the nature of these excursions:

"You go out a sort of zoo--our party included four or five Americans, a Greek, an Italian (Italy had not yet gone into the war), a diminutive Spaniard and a tall, preoccupied Swede--under the direction of some hapless officer of the General Staff. For a week, perhaps, you go hurtling through a closely articulated program, almost as helpless as a package in a pneumatic tube--night expresses, racing military motors, snapshots at this and that, down a bewildering vista of long gray capes, heel clickings, stiff bows from the waist, and punctilious military salutes. You are under fire one minute, the next shooting through some captured palace or barracks or museum of antiques. At noon the guard is turned out in honor, at four you are watching distant shell fire from the Belgian dunes; at eleven crawling under a down quilt in some French hotel where the prices of food and wines are fixed by the local commandant. Everything is done for you--more, of course, than one would wish--the gifted young captain conductor speaks English one minute, French or Italian the next, gets you up in the morning, to bed at night, past countless sentries and thick-headed guards demanding an _Ausweis_, contrives never to cease looking as if he had stepped from the bandbox, and presently pops you into your hotel in Berlin with the curious feeling of never having been away at all."

There were a great many trips of this sort under the auspices of the German General Staff, and every neutral correspondent who came to Berlin with letters establishing his position as a serious workman in good standing in his own country, could hope, after a reasonable interval for getting acquainted, to obtain permission to go on one of them. It was not an ideal way of working, to be sure, yet the "front" was a big and rather accidental place, and one could scarcely touch it anywhere without bringing back something to help complete the civilian's puzzle picture of war.

One man would get a chance to spend a night in the trenches, with the sky criss-crossed with searchlight shafts and illuminating bombs; an automobile party might be caught on some East Prussian road with the woods on either side crackling with rifle fire as the skirmishers beat through the timber after the scattered enemy as after so many squirrels. Our moment came one afternoon in the German trenches at Givenchy, when, with the English trenches only a stone's throw away, both sides began to amuse themselves by shooting dynamite bombs.

Groups of native-born correspondents were likely to see rather more than outsiders, and the more authoritative home writers were attached not infrequently to an army corps or staff headquarters for weeks at a time. The Berlin and Vienna bookshops are filled with books and pamphlets written by such men, though, of course, little of their correspondence has ever reached America. A man like Ludwig Ganghofer, for instance, became so much of an institution that papers even joked about him, and I remember a cartoon--in "Jugend," I think--picturing him puffing up a hill where a staff was waiting and the commanding officer saying "Ganghofer's here. The attack may now begin!"