LAND AND WATER 
June 12, 1915. 
subject to tht two ruling houses of Hohenzollem 
and Habsburg-Lorraine. Though called " the 
.Germanic Powers " (for the whole effort is a 
German effort) the enemy includes great bodies of 
Slavs and Magyars, and can command the military 
service of a certain number of Italians as well, 
who happen to lie within the artificial frontier of 
Austria. They, further, can conscript into their 
armies more or less unwilling Roumanians, to the 
number of about 300,000, who abo lie within their 
frontiers, and a smaller number of even more un- 
willing Serbs. 
This combination of the two Governments, 
that of the German Empire and that of Austro- 
Hungary, which was ahnost the servant of the 
German Empire in the matter, proposed to chal- 
lenge, after the harvest of 1914, the Franco- 
Kussian allies. 
This determination was arrived at in the 
Buninicr of 1911, the time required for the pre- 
paration for such a great modern campaign at 
one's own chosen moment being roughly of three 
years. 
In expectation of this campaign the " Ger- 
manic Powers " in question made ready not only 
those materials and forms of organisations which 
are universally known to be necessary to modern 
war, but also made ready in a special fashion cer- 
tain materials and forms of organisation pecu- 
liar to those theories of war which they had 
espoused, and which their chosen enemies had 
upon the whole discouraged. 
What those theories of war were and how the 
■" Germanic Powers " were aided by special pre- 
paration we shall see in a moment. Meanwhile 
we found our general survey of the present situa- 
tion upon this fundamental truth, which I repeat. 
The " Germanic Powers," under the direc- 
tion of Berlin, determined three years ago (in the 
summer of 1911 — Agadir) to challenge and to 
defeat the Franco-Russian combination upon the 
Continent of Europe, and they fixed the date upon 
which this victory of theirs should be entered as 
.the period immediately after the harvest of 1914. 
It is in a sense true to say that their chief 
objective was not France, but Russia. They feared 
the growth of Russian power, for they felt Russia 
to be a new country rapidly developing, and their 
domination over the Slav populations, of which 
Russia is the champion, urged them to strike 
before she should have developed her communica- 
tions and all her other military resources. 
But on the other hand it was necessary for 
Ihem, from their standpoint, to get France out of 
the way, because, f roni that same point of view (a 
distortion the absurdity of which we are not here 
concerned with), France, though an aged and 
decrepit society, would be an impediment to them 
until she was convinced by defeat that she 
could no longer count in Europe. Further, the 
immediate defeat of France upon the West' was a 
prospect reasonably probable. A highly organised 
country very much inferior in numbers to the 
*• Germanic Powers," and with its capital a week 
tor so from the frontier, could surely be imme- 
diately and decisively^ defeated. This done, 
Russia would be alone in the struggle and could 
idtimately be convinced of her inability to disturb 
tho hegemony in Europq of the Germanic 
Confederation. 
2. This calculation, matured during the 
course of the three years between the summer of 
1911 and that of 1914, wisely discounted the aid 
of Italy. It was judged that Italy would remain 
neutral; it was also hoped, rather than ludged, 
that Great Britain would remain neutral. Against 
the possible entry of Great Britain into the field 
the enemy, however, did make every precaution. He 
organised a financial situation destined to hit the 
City of London very hard should Great Britain 
support those who were virtually her Allies when 
the war broke out, and while he did not act as he 
could have done, distribute commerce destroyers 
with exact care in that period immediately before 
the outbreak of war, he yet took every precaution 
to safeguard his naval power and organised his 
machinery for the production of the main instru- 
ments, from the submarine to the airship, where- 
with Great Britain should be attacked. He also, 
though in characteristically clumsy fashion, pre- 
pared the ground for anti-British manoeuvres in 
neutral countries, particularly in the United 
States of America. 
The entry of Great Britain into the campaign 
was a surprise to the enemy, but it had to some 
extent been discounted. That the Italians, with 
their conscript system, their considerable reputa- 
tion as engineers and producers of material, their 
excellent field artillery, and their two millions of 
trained men, would enter the field before the end 
of the war against the enemy— this the enemy 
never believed at all. 
3. The enemy took the field with the moral 
certitude of victory from the most impartial 
standpoint, and with a still further certitude of 
victory from his own particular standpoint. 
His whole certitude was based upon the 
factor of numbers. Fle would attack in tiie West 
with an immense numerical superiority. He 
would almost certainly arrive at his decision in 
the West, therefore, in the first three or four 
weeks of the campaign. Meanwhile he had 
reserves of man power at least equivalent to his 
large trained body, which reserves of man power 
he could train and put in the field in successive 
batches as the power of Russia upon the East 
might slowly mature and become menacing. 
Russia would gather her forces very slowly, 
because she had bad communications, an unde- 
veloped industrial plant and material, and was, 
further, a poor country in proportion to the size 
of her population. And while Russia was thus 
very slowly gathering her resources France would 
be defeated, the winter would be coming on 
(during which Russia could get no aid from 
abroad!, and before that winter was half-way 
througn the whole campaign should normally 
have been decided. 
We must remember, in this connection, that 
the " Germanic Powers " were certain enough of 
forbidding the provisioning of Russia through 
the Dardanelles, because they were certain enough 
before the full winter set in of procuring by pur- 
chase the adhesion of the cosmopolitan financial 
clique which has governed the Turkish Empire 
since its late revolution. 
This attitude of the enemy was based, we 
must remember, not only upon the false analogy 
of 1870, with its rapid and crushing successes, 
but also upon a sober analysis of the situation as 
far as it could be numerically estimated. 
To every trained man of useful age — from 
20, say, to 35 or 38 — which the French Republic 
could put into the field, the enemy could put into 
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