December 19, 191 8 
LAND & WATER 
murder of the Archduke— was deliberate, wilful or accidental, 
perhaps a remote posterity will decide, more probably evidence 
will be lacking. At any rate whether the coincidence was a 
piece of statecraft or not, the occasion was provided, and the 
Austrian Government, under the inspiration of Prussia, pre- 
sented to Serbia an Ultimatum the like of which no civilised 
nation has eyer received. At was equivalent to a semi-annexa- 
tion if it had been accepted with- 
out modification. Every effort 
was made on the part of Europe as 
a whole, and Serbia in particular, 
to avoid the conflict directly 
aimed at by this Ultimatum. 
Nearly all the onerous terms of 
the demand were accepted. Arbi- 
tration for the rest was proposed 
— and refused. The Piussian 
General Staff was determined 
upon its war. It had no doubts 
of an immediate success, though 
the determination of the British 
Cabinet after a delay of some days 
to support France and Russia was 
not expected by the enemy, 
nevertheless the brevity and sup- 
posed necessary success of his 
attack were thought by him to 
outweigh the obvious advantage 
conveyed to his enemies by the 
support of British supremacy at 
sea. 
The enemy's situation was as 
follows: He commanded by far 
the largest of fully organised, 
fully equipped military strength 
in the world. He had a com- 
pletely conscripted and mobilis- 
able population of 121 million 
souls, capable of mobilising, within 
the first few months of the con- 
flict some 12 millions of men, or if 
these were not immediately used, of creating a correspond- 
ingly increased reserve. The two central Empires governed 
by the Hohenzollems and the house of Habsburg-Lorrqine, 
disposed of all these gigantic forces. Politically they 
were united, though in the first weeks of the war some 
independence of command was left to the Austrian half 
of the partnership. This most formidable military instrument 
had opposed to it upon the East 
the numerous but veryill-equipped 
Power of Russia. This Power, 
while it boasted numbers could 
not control a sufficient equipment. 
It was not industrialised and, 
when the war became a very long 
struggle dependent upon a highly 
industrialised effort, nothing but 
a vague and rather ill-calculated 
idea of a sort of swamping of ill- 
armed and ill-instructed forces 
could have made men exaggerate 
its force. There was indeed in the 
Central Empires a certain dread 
of such forces, rather sentimental 
than military, but at any rate 
such as it was it would take a 
long time to gather and to strike 
its blow through territory where 
even roads were rare and rail- 
roads had perhaps a tenth of 
the efficiency and less than a 
tenth of numerical value com- 
pared with those of Central 
Europe. 
The obvious plan of campaign 
had been to move against the 
French Republic which, though 
fully conscript and rapidly mobi- 
lisable, counted but a third of the 
power of the Central Empires in 
the strength immediately avail- 
able ; to destroy the armies of 
that Power ; then to stem, as it easily could, meet, and throw 
back the mere numerical tide of an ill-equipped and slowly 
moving Russian foe, and then to complete the campaign in 
the brief delay of perhaps a few weeks or, at the most, months. 
In this calculation the enemy had three assets. The first 
moral, the next two material, which were of great value to 
him. The moral asset^was a tradition of unbroken victory 
extending beyond the military knowledge of all men living, 
M4,RSHAL PETAIN 
GENERAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY 
and inspiring every action 6f the Prussian General Staff. The 
wars which it had fought had been brief and overwhelmingly 
successful. Upon their success had been based a rapid and 
astonishing expansion of wealth and material power, as well as 
of prestige. Meanwhile they had, if not upon principle aban- 
doned, a declining sense of the great defeat of a generation 
before. They were in the mood for victory. The French 
though determined to resist were 
uncertain of the future. 
The two material factors which 
a wise man would rather con- 
sider, apart from their over- 
whelming superiority in numbers, 
were first a provision of heavy 
artillery for the field far superior 
to that of the French, and second- 
ly, the theory or discovery — at any 
rate the just judgment — that the 
ring fortresses upon which the 
French depended for their defence 
would not hold against a modem 
siege train, informed and corrected 
in its fire hy aircraft. 
This last advantage was the 
critical point of superiority in the 
enemy's scheme. The enemy was 
perfectly right, and the French 
school in their reliance upon the 
ring fortress wrong. The change 
had come with such suddenness 
that it had not been appreciated 
save at Berlin. But come it had, 
and the ring fortress which in 
former years would have held out 
for months could now hold out 
for not more than a few days. ; 
We know what followed. The 
enemy, in sweeping through the 
Belgian plain was held but ^or 
a few days at Li6ge, for but a few 
hours at Namur. On August 21st 
the Germans along the line of the Sambre overwhelmec}; the 
advanced forces of the French, with the British contingent 
which formed the extreme left wing of the Allies upon tljat 
line. ' 
The JBritish Expeditionary Force, though but five per cent, 
of the total Allied force upon the West at this moment, had 
certain characters which gave it a peculiar value. The chief of 
these was that it was composed of 
regular professional forces and pos- 
sessed a fire-power and discijuine 
superior to that of the conscript 
armies with which they worked. 
The second was that, professional 
as it was, there fell to it the task 
of covering the extreme marching 
wing of the retreat. It had a 
far heavier task imposed upon it 
than was imposed upon any other 
part of the Allied line swinging 
back, pivoting upon Verdun. 
The strain upon it was corre- 
spondingly severe, but it main- 
tained its organisation and reached 
the neighbourhood of Paris at 
the end of ten days' retirement 
unbroken. Upon the 2nd and 
3rd September, 1 914, ten days, as 
i have said, after the defeat of 
the Allies upon the Sambre (to 
which the British gave the title 
of Mons and the French of 
Charleroi), there opened that 
great action which determined the 
form of the war (that is, which 
made it a siege war), and which 
will be known to history as the 
Battle of the Mame. 
This battle was the first ex- 
ample (many were to follow) of 
the error which ultimately ruined 
Prussia in the field : our superior 
upon the • whole in tactics, and especially in tactical 
instruments (until the advent of the tanks) ; far our superior 
in preparation — for she had desired, planned, and for a 
generation envisaged such a war, whereas the Allies had less 
and less considered that tragedy possible — she was happily 
the inferior of older and better civilisations in that supreme 
test of intelligence and culture — strategy. The strategy of 
the enemy, in its largest aspect, was inferior. What happened 
