WORLD WAR. The aim of this article is to trace the main strategic currents of the World War, as also the conditions and ideas which guided them. The causes of the war are not within its scope. (For the political and diplomatic history of the struggle see the article EUROPE.) A process of so years had gone to make Europe inflammable, and a few days were enough to detonate it. To study the causes of the conflict on the German side we should have to trace the influence of Prussia on the creation of the Reich, the political conceptions of Bismarck, the German philosophical tendencies, her economic situation—a medley of factors which transmuted Germany's natural desire for commercial outlets, un happily difficult to obtain, into a vision of world-power. We should can be rapidly manufactured from the levies of the led, like molten liquid poured into a mould. The German mould was a long-service body of officers and n.c.o.s who in their standard of technical knowledge and skill had no equal in the world. But if the machine was manufactured by training, it gained its solidity from another process. The psychological element plays an even greater part in a "national" than in a professional army. Esprit de corps is not enough; the stimulus of a great moral impulse to action is necessary, a deep-rooted belief in the policy for which citizens are called on to fight. The leaders of Germany had worked for generations to inspire their people with a patriotic conviction of the grandeur of their country's destiny. And if their opponents went forth to battle in 1914 with as intense a belief in their country's cause, this flaming patriotism had not the time to con solidate such a disciplined combination as years of steady heat had produced in Germany. The German people had an intimacy with and a pride in their army, notwithstanding its severity of dis cipline, that was unknown elsewhere.
This unique instrument was handled by a general staff which, by rigour of selection and training, was unmatched for professional knowledge and skill, if subject to the mental "grooves" which characterize all professions. Executive skill is the fruit of prac tice; and constant practice, or repetition, tends inevitably to deaden originality and elasticity of mind. In a professional body, also, promotion by seniority is a rule difficult to avpid. The Ger
mans, it is true, tended towards a system of staff control, which in practice frequently left the real power in the hands of youthful general staff officers. As war memoirs and documents reveal, the chiefs of staff of the various armies and corps often took momen tous decisions with hardly a pretence of consulting their com manders. But such a system had grave objections, for such a happy combination as that of a Hindenburg and Ludendorff is rarely found, and from it came the grit in the wheels which not infrequently marred the otherwise well-oiled working of the German war-machine.
Tactically, the Germans began with two important material advantages. They alone had gauged the potentialities of the heavy howitzer, and had provided adequate numbers of this weapon. And if no army had fully realized that machine-guns were "con centrated essence of infantry," nor fully developed this prepon derant source of fire-power, the Germans had studied it more than other armies, and by their method of grouping the machine-guns under regimental control, instead of distributing them among battalions, were able to exploit its inherent battlefield-dominating power sooner than other armies. Strategically, also, the Germans had brought the study and development of railway communica tions to a higher pitch than any of their rivals.
The Austro-Hungarian army, if patterned on the German model, was a vastly inferior instrument. Not only had it a tradition of defeat rather than of victory, but its racial mixture prevented the moral homogeneity that distinguished its ally. This being so, the replacement of the old professional army by one based on universal service lowered rather than raised its standard of effec tiveness. The troops within the borders of the empire were often racially akin to those beyond, and this compelled her to a polit ically instead of a militarily based distribution of forces, so that kinsmen should not fight each other. And her human handicap was increased by a geographical one—the vast extent of frontier to be defended. Nor were her leaders, with rare exceptions, the professional equals of the Germans, and if common action was better than with the Entente Powers, Austria did not accept Ger man direction gladly.