World War

A great manufacturing nation, she had also a wealth of raw mate rial, especially since the annexation of the Lorraine iron-fields after the 1870 war. But the stoppage of outside supplies must be a handicap in a long war, increasing with its duration, and serious from the outset in such tropical products as rubber. Moreover, Germany's main coal and iron fields lay dangerously close to her frontier, in Silesia on the east and in Westphalia and Lorraine on the west. Thus for the Central Alliance a quick decision and an offensive war were more vital than for the Entente.

Similarly, the financial resources were calculated on a short war basis, and all the Continental Powers relied mainly on large gold reserves accumulated specially for war purposes. Britain alone had no such war chest, but she was to prove that the strength of her banking system and the wealth distributed among a great commercial people furnished the "sinews of war," in a way that few pre-war economists had realized.

The Psychological Forces.

If the economic forces were neglected in the war calculations of the Powers, the psycho logical forces were an unexplored region, except in their purely military aspect. And even here little study had been devoted to the moral element compared with the physical element. Ardant du Picq, a soldier-philosopher who fell in the 187o war, had stripped battle of its aura of heroic fictions, portraying the reac tion of normal men in the presence of danger. Several German critics had described from experience the reality of battle moral as shown in 1870, and had deduced how tactics should be based on the ever-present and balancing elements of fear and courage.

At the close of the century a French military thinker, Col. Foch, had demonstrated how great was the influence of the moral element in the higher sphere of command. But only the fringe of the subject had been penetrated. Its civil aspects were untouched, and in the opening weeks of the conflict the general misunder standing of national psychology was to be shown in the undue muzzling of the Press, followed by the equally stupid practice of issuing communiqués which so veiled the truth that public opinion became distrustful of all official news and rumour was loosed on its infinitely more damaging course. The true value of wisely calculated publicity and the true application of the propaganda weapon was only to be learnt after many blunders.

The Rival Plans.

In this survey the German plan justly takes priority, for not only was it the mainspring which set in motion the hands of the war clock in 1914, but it may even be said to have governed the course of the war thereafter. It is true that

outwardly this course from the autumn of 1914 onwards seemed to be of the nature of a stupendous "siege" of the Central Pow ers, an idea which is incompatible with the terms we have used. But the conception of the Germanic alliance as a besieged party, although true of the economic sphere, suggests a passivity which their strategy contradicts. Although the initial German plan mis carried, even in its failure it dictated the general trend of opera tions thereafter. Tactically, most of the fighting resembled siege operations, but the actual strategy on land for long erred rather by its disregard of these tactical conditions than by its conformity with them.

The Germans were faced with the problem that the combined forces of themselves and Austria were decidedly inferior to those of France and Russia. To offset this adverse balance, however, they had a central position and the anticipation that Russia's mobilization would be too slow to allow her to exert serious pres sure in the opening weeks. While this assumption might suggest a decisive blow at Russia before she was ready, it was equally probable that she would concentrate her main forces too far back for such a German blow to reach—and the experience of Napoleon was not an example to encourage an advance deep into the interior of Russia, with its vast distances and poor com munications. The plan adopted by Germany was, therefore, a rapid offensive against France while holding the Russian advanced forces at bay, and later, when France was crushed, to deal with the Russian army.

But this plan, in turn, was complicated by the great natural and artificial barriers which the French frontier offered to an invader. It was narrow, only some 15o m. across, and so afforded little room for manoeuvre or even to deploy the masses that Germany planned to launch against her foe. At the south-eastern end it abutted on Switzerland, and after a short stretch of flat country known as the Gap of Belfort the frontier ran for 7o m. along the Vosges mountains. Thence the line was prolonged by an almost continuous fortress system, based on Epinal, Toul, Verdun and just beyond the last-named lay not only the frontiers of Luxembourg and Belgium but the difficult Ardennes country. Apart from the strongly defended avenues of advance by Belfort and Verdun, the only feasible gap in this barrier was the Trouee de Charmes between Epinal and Toul, left open originally as a strategic trap in which the Germans could be first caught and then crushed by a French counter-stroke.