The British decided to take the initiative though their new army had as yet received hardly sufficient training to make them soldiers and their supply of rifles, guns and munitions was insufficient. Indeed, England was just beginning to awaken fully to the fact that the forces of France and Russia alone were insufficient to cope on land with the Central Powers, particularly now that the weight of Turkey was thrown in the balance.

With her casualties three times the number of her original expeditionary force, with more than the original number of her army engaged in Flanders, she undertook an offensive against Constantinople itself. Second-class men-of-war which were not required with the grand fleet and a single first-class dreadnought of the latest type, the Queen Elizabeth, in conjunction with a French squadron, bombarded and reduced the ancient forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles and then attacked those in the narrows. British bluejackets even smoked their pipes and cracked jokes as they sat on the crest of Achi Baba, which became an impregnable Turkish position after the British Mediterranean force was landed. Had the Queen Elizabeth been able to fire an army corps ashore, the corps could have marched on into Constantinople.

The success or failure of the Gallipoli expedition depended upon surprise. Superficially it seems a colossal blunder. There are inside facts about it which have never been disclosed. Greece, it is supposed, agreed to send troops, but at the last moment changed her mind. Undoubtedly the expedition was an important influence in bringing Italy in. There was a fatal delay in its departure from Alexandria. Too much time elapsed between the preparatory bombardment and the landing. The Turks had been forewarned what to expect. They had leisure for concentration and preparation. On a narrow front of difficult shore where the landing was to be made, they had stretched their barbed-wire entanglements into the sea itself, while along the beach were carefully concealed machine guns and back of them ample forces of men and artillery.

No effort in history was ever more gallant than that of the British force, including the Australians, which threw itself ashore in the face of simply insurmountable obstacles and fire, under the cover of the guns of the men-of-war. As a surprise, the affair was a complete failure. Its only chance of success being as a surprise, most competent military leaders and experts agree that this was sufficient reason, in a military sense, for an immediate withdrawal; yet British stubbornness would not yield.

Indeed, the Gallipoli expedition was a political move, a violation of the true military principle—that you should always go against the main body of your enemy, which was at this time on the frontiers of Russia and France. Of course the effort was not entirely without its compensations; no expedition is, which holds any part of the enemy's troops in place in front of your own. The pressure was withdrawn from the Russians in the Caucasus and also further adventures from the outskirts of Asia Minor toward India in stirring up the Mohammedan population were for the time abated.

The attempt to reach the heart of Turkish power, the sultan's capital itself, by opening these famous straits and sending British ships to lay Constantinople under their guns, was a splendid conception worthy the military imagination of the daring ages when the British Empire was built and the days of the Spanish Main, but the only criterion in the ghastly business of war remains success.

Yet the spring of 1915 opened with no rebellion in India except sporadic outbreaks of the frontier tribes which are always recurring, while Egypt itself remained peaceful. The Germans inaugurated their second year's campaign by closing the Belgo-Dutch frontier and by the administrative use of every possible means for safeguarding their movements on the western front, which would indicate that they were to undertake another effort for the Channel ports. This was an obvious feint to conceal an effort elsewhere. Instead of using troops to make it, they tried out for the first time a form of warfare which was not new in the consideration of any army, though it had not been used because it was considered inhuman.

With the wind blowing in the right direction, the Germans released an immense cloud of chlorine gas. Its gravity held it close to the ground as it swept down upon the British and French in the famous Ypres salient. The effort was successful beyond their expectation, more successful than they realized and had they had sufficient reserves to press on, they might have broken the allied line at this point.

The effect of the gas was that of a horrible form of asphyxiation; the soldiers who did not succumb retreated in face of a weapon which could not be countered by any in their possession. The casualties were heavy, the sufferings of the wounded indescribable in their torment. From the military point of view, which holds that war is killing and that any method whatsoever is warrantable, the attack was a success as it gained ground, and for the time being confused the enemy. But it was a form of attack which could succeed only once. After the soldiers were provided with proper respirators containing a chemical antidote, they were in no danger of being "gassed." Among those in the thick of the gas attack were the first Canadian contingent, who bore themselves with unflinching fortitude, not only that, but after the first surprise of the attack was over, the survivors charged with rare heroism.

Strategy which formerly meant the swift movement of a few thousand troops to one flank or another overnight, or in a two or three-hour march, now means the concentration of hundreds of thousands by railway trains upon a particular point and of many thousands of guns and enormous quantities of material of every kind from shells to that for building railroads to keep up with your advance.

But the general of to-day no less than the general of yesterday, would always know where his enemy is most vulnerable, and strike him at that point. In the spring of 1915, the line of least resistance for the German army was obviously to the east where the loose organization of the Russian army, lacking munitions, was stretched over a front of over a thousand miles.

The French were better off in munitions, and their army and the British had a front of four hundred and fifty miles of intact trench line. It is estimated that in order to hold a battle front with modern troops, about three thousand men to the mile are required. This does not mean that there are three thousand actually on every mile; but counting the thin line in the trenches, the thicker line in the reserve trenches and the soldiers who are out of the trenches resting and the battalions in reserve and the reserve supplies of men in the depots who can promptly be brought into action.

For example, to hold a mile of the famous Ypres salient might require double the number of men necessary to hold a mile where the lay of the ground was in the favor of your troops. Owing to the use of motor trucks and to railway trains, whenever there is an attack, concentration of men at any point is very rapid. Holding to this rule, the Germans maintained all through the summer of 1915, 1,500,000 men on their western front, and they had that number at least to spare for their eastern front. Field Marshal von Hindenburg said that by hammering he would get Warsaw, and he was to keep his word with stolid German persistence. Napoleon, who had depended upon the number of his guns, would have fully appreciated the Austro-German plan of action against Russia.

The Russian army has been compared to cotton wool. The farther you went into Russia, the more cotton wool there was. The Russian army would yield, but there never seemed any end of it. Gaining a passive victory over the Russian army has also been compared to brushing the snow off the front doorstep. The more you brushed, the more snow banked up. Russia could afford to lose territory equivalent to the area of all France without having received a vital blow. Russia has plenty of room in which to retreat, as Napoleon learned. She is confident in the safety of her distances. When the enemy falls back she follows on his heels.

At the end of the winter, 1914-15, she was still in the possession of a large portion of Galicia. But the Germans were preparing a battering ram which their generals thought irresistible. Their plan now was to deliver so hard a blow at the Russian that he would be forced to yield a separate peace. Von Mackensen formed his unprecedented phalanx of soldiery and of artillery in Galicia and destroying all the fortifications and covering the trenches with torrents of shell fire he skillfully worked his legions forward, first breaking the Przemysl line, which compelled a general retreat, and then breaking the Lemberg line. Thus, having beaten back the Russian left wing, the Austro-Germans turned their attention to the Warsaw front and there repeated the same organized machine method of warfare. There were no brilliant strokes of genius, but merely the use of superior systems of railroads in making the concentration; of trained engineers and workmen in advancing the railroad lines; of systematic overwhelming attacks at critical points, directed by the unsurpassed German staff organization.

With the fall of Warsaw the Russian army was inevitably badly broken. They had lost multitudes of prisoners, and staggering quantities of material. But still it remained an intact army. It was not decisively beaten. The prisoners were taken by brigades, regiments, and divisions—thousands of them in reserve, without a rifle in their hands, as they waited their turn to pick up the rifle of a dead man. For six months, March to August, the greatest of all campaigns in numbers of troops and length of line continued in the east, Von Mackensen and the Austrians striking in the south and Von Hindenburg in the north. Its details will be read in the history which follows. Characteristic of either adversary was his method. The German with concentration of population, resources, artillery, soldiery, and organization, and the Russian part, glamorous, slow, yielding to the terrific blows, flowing back like an ebb tide, and taking his time, never risking a decision, his army never surrounded or cut in two.

While Von Hindenburg's guns were hammering the Russians in front, German political influence was occupied in Petrograd in the rear, where certain official circles were under German influence in the hope of getting Russia to capitulate. The situation was the most critical for the Allies since the Battle of the Marne. A most influential court party was undoubtedly in favor of capitulation. Russia was bleeding cruelly. She was suffering the psychological as well as the material effects of defeat. In Paris and London the possibility of having to go on with the war without the Russian's assistance had become a serious consideration. In short, the fate of Europe was then in the hands of diplomatic and court intrigue.

According to the accounts it was the mass of the Russian people whose pressure undoubtedly defeated the aims of German diplomacy. Uninformed of the real situation, conscious only of the enormous cost of the war in blood and treasure, their spirit of race patriotism was undaunted. They realized if Russians in high places did not, that surrender by Russia then meant a defeat, which would set the Russian power back for another fifty years. England could make peace and be in possession of more territory than she had at the beginning of the war. France could be certain of retaining what she had before the war. But Russia had not only lost Poland, but the Slav had bowed the knee to the Teuton.

At the same time there was widespread unrest among the Russian people. They felt that they had deserved victory, but had been denied it. It was not a question of the grand duke's skill in conducting the retreat from Warsaw, or his indomitable will and sturdy patriotism, but of satisfying popular sentiment. The announcement that the czar himself was to take command unified and heartened the Russian people, who felt that "The Little Father" was the natural God-given head of the army.

There was discontent in Russia too, with the situation on the western front. All the news that Russia had from France was of an occasional hundred or five-hundred-yard trench won or lost, while the Russian army had been swept from Galicia and been swept back again and had gone through the fearful ordeal of the retreat of July and August. Why shouldn't France and Britain do something to release the pressure on the Russians? For not the least of the advantages the Central Powers had had was single-headed direction. They represented one united force, working out a consistent and simple plan of campaign. But Russia, England, and France had to cooperate in council.

With Russia so hard pressed and with the danger of her yielding to the Germans so deeply impressed on London and Paris there was nothing for the French staff to do but to respond by some sort of action in loyalty to her allies as a matter of military necessity if not of military wisdom. The attacks in Artois had fully demonstrated the arduousness and cost of any such undertaking, particularly until there was an unlimited supply of shells to draw on. A gain of two or three miles' depth on a front meant no positive advance for either side, but rather a waste of life. Indeed, any considerable attack on that western trench line which did not actually break the line must be considered a failure. And against their will, no doubt, the French and British undertook another offensive on September 25, 1915.

On many sections of the western front the nature of the ground makes an attack absolutely unfeasible. The place chosen by the French was the Champagne region, in the neighborhood of the great army review ground of Chalons. It is a rolling, sterile country, dotted with sparse roads. There is a thin loam over a subsoil of chalk—excellent for the defensive, but also permitting the rapid movement of artillery troops in dry weather.

So far as can be learned the Germans had already given up their offensive in Russia before the French began theirs. At least they were well advised that the French offensive was under way, and they needed to know it only a week beforehand, in order to transfer reserves from their eastern front, which they brought to the number of 300,000, concentrating them mostly in the Champagne region, where they were to be needed. Coincident with the Champagne attack, the British, who are for command purposes a part of the French army, launched one in the region of Loos.

In northern France the country was extremely difficult, and as unsuited for offense as the rest of the ground occupied by the British. Aside from their object in assisting the Russians, the French hoped to break the line. In this they failed. Over a twelve-mile front they gained depths varying from one-half to three miles; and altogether, with the British, they took some 25,000 prisoners and 160 guns. Both the numbers of prisoners and of guns were small compared with the "bags" on the eastern front. But the character of the fighting, the heavy volume of artillery fire and extraordinary coordination of the first-class fighting units by the most skilled armies in history, make this action memorable in military annals in the same way as the German attack on Verdun in the following February. The ground lost in no wise endangered the German tenancy of their line.

Along the Italian front the summer had developed something of the same kind of stalemate that had existed in France. Fighting in the Alpine country so favored the defense that the Austrians did not have more than three or four hundred thousand troops engaged in holding the Italians in position. Therefore it had been easy for anyone taking a superficial view to exaggerate the military value of Italy's entry into the war. The Austrian troops had fought with extreme tenacity, for naturally the Austrian staff had sent against the Italians all those troops in Franz Josef's heterogeneous empire who had any racial antagonism against the Italians, including those who had been lukewarm in fighting against the Slav.

Unquestionably, honors at the end of the campaign in 1915 were with Germany. She had held her line solidly in the west. She had stripped the country of northern France and Belgium of all the machinery of its factories which would be useful to her. She had been relieved of any necessity of feeding the Belgian population, or of the menace that would have come from the threat of a famine in either Belgium or northern France by the American Food Commission which at first had received supplies from America to carry on their work, and later had depended almost altogether upon grants from the French and English Governments and upon large voluntary contributions from England. In the east she had gained territory almost equal in area to that of Prussia itself. All Poland was hers. Her governor general ruled Warsaw. Her situation as to food supplies was improved by the occupation of immense productive areas. She had made war with all her energy, and in want of able-bodied men to gather her own harvests, she had used the hosts of prisoners which she had taken from Russia. But, despite her victories, bravely and skillfully won, she was still a nation in siege, with no communication with the outside world, except through neutral countries.

In the second winter with uninterrupted energy she again turned toward the southeast for another military adventure. Rumania still held fast to her neutrality. In Bulgaria the Central Powers were to succeed in gaining a fourth ally, which in sheer military advantage was probably worth more than the accession of Italy to her enemies. Though Russia had won her freedom for Bulgaria in '76, no sentiment drew her to Russia's assistance when Russia was losing. No statesmanship is more matter of fact than that of the Balkans. Bulgaria had an old score to settle with Serbia, which had joined Rumania and Greece against her in making the Second Balkan War, after she had borne the brunt of the first against Turkey. Then, besides, the military temptation offered the Bulgarian staff was irresistible. Serbia had been through two wars before the heavy drain of this one. A country of swineherds and miserable villages, dependent for munitions upon England and the Allies—she was caught in a wedge, with Bulgaria on the one side and the Austro-Hungarian advance on the other. At the most the Central Powers had probably no more than 300,000 troops—about the same number that the Bulgars had. Against such a combination, Serbia, caught between the blades of a pair of scissors, could make no successful resistance unless assistance came from England and France, which the British and French public demanded should be sent. There was no hope of sufficient allied forces reaching Serbia in time to rescue her, but the Allies, particularly the British, could not afford to see Saloniki occupied by the Austro-Germans or by their friends, the Bulgarians. Up to the Balkan War Saloniki was Turkish; then it became Greek. This excellent port had long been the goal of Austrian ambition, which sought an outlet to the Mediterranean, no less than the traditional policy of Russia was aimed at the occupation of Constantinople.

In the Crimean War France and England fought to thwart Russia's designs on Turkey and now France and England were prepared to oppose Austria's designs on Saloniki.

In order to defend Saloniki British and French troops must land on the soil of Greece and march across the Greco-Serbian frontier, which was no doubt one of the reasons that had kept the Allies from sending forces before, in order to assist the Serbians on the Danube and Save in closing "the ring of steel."

Venizelos, the Greek statesman, who had been the Greek Bismarck in the extension of the Greek domain in the Balkan War, had taken sides with the Allies; and he favored concessions by Greece as well as Serbia to Bulgaria, in order to satisfy Bulgarian ambitions and keep her from striking hands with the Central Powers, while the King of Greece, with the Queen, a sister of the kaiser, had decidedly pro-German leanings. The Greeks had a most difficult part, even for Levantine diplomacy, to play. If they cast their fortunes with the Allies and the Teutons won, then they could count upon the Central Powers not only taking Saloniki away from them, but bringing themselves practically under Germanic domination. If they openly espoused the German side, then as the country depended upon the sea, their ports would be blockaded, if not bombarded by the allied fleets. In the event of an allied victory over the Central Powers they were certain that Saloniki would not be annexed by the Allies, bitter as they were against Greece because she was supposed to have broken her pledged word to assist them in the Gallipoli expedition. Following a policy of drift and protest, the Greeks consented to the British and French landing troops at Saloniki and to their making it a base of action.

Certain forces were sent into Serbia before the Serbian army had been completely driven back, and whatever the public thought, certainly with no expectation of gaining a victory over the Bulgarians. This obvious movement was only for the purpose of gaining time for fortifying a line around Saloniki and bringing sufficient men and guns to defend it.

German diplomacy and staff work had not in all of the war gained a more important technical advantage for less cost in time, money, and troops, than it had in the fall of 1915 in the Balkans when they made the Bulgars to serve as they had the Turks, to secure their ends. At last the British withdrew from Gallipoli with such small losses that the evacuation of this position on an exposed coast is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant pieces of military maneuvering of its kind in all history. No credit is ever given for retreats. But this was a good deal more than a retreat. It was withdrawing from a beach in face of a well-armed enemy. The story of it—as yet unwritten—will some day bring a tribute to British military skill from professional soldiers, if not from the lay public.

The Bulgarians decided not to invade Greece; the Greeks made no attack. Those who looked forward to the war being settled in the Balkans, and to Saloniki becoming another Port Arthur, had missed their calculations. But every gun and every man that the Allies had to maintain at Saloniki might be a gun and a man kept idle, when they might be needed elsewhere.

The Germans having disposed of Serbia, had at the same time forced the further dissipation of English and French troops. That they could once more turn to the main theatre of the war and try to push back the siege wall in another direction. Meantime, Turkey had been doing their bidding in another quarter. The natural response of the British to any threat to their Indian Empire was to take the offensive, for this was one certain way to impress the Oriental mind. Having annexed Egypt and Cyprus and occupied the German colonies throughout the world, Britain now proceeded to the extension of her Asiatic domain. The threat of Mohammedan insurrection was met by an invasion of Mohammedan regions.

Her expedition toward Bagdad, had it not been in the midst of the greatest war in all history, would perhaps have been the most spectacular and interesting of all the small campaigns in remote regions which have gradually extended British influence. It marched through Mesopotamia and the Garden of Eden. The Turks under German direction replied with an offensive which in turn put General Townshend's army in siege, requiring that it should have relief.

The self-interest of each one of the parties to the war is evident, with the exception of Turkey. Why she ever entered in on the side of Germany, or on either side, is a puzzle. She was the one to lose in any event. German success meant German domination. German failure must mean that Russia would realize her ambition to take Constantinople, and the British must further strengthen their empire at her expense.

For many decades the British and Russian empires have glowered at each other across the dividing belts of Thibet, Afghanistan, and Persia. The fear of a Russian invasion of India haunted British statesmen until the German power became so threatening that England struck hands with France and Russia. Now while the British were advancing northward, the Russians made a southerly move to her assistance. The grand duke, who had been sent to the Caucasus in February, 1916, took the offensive and captured the fortress of Erzerum, an action which was bound to relieve pressure on the British. Thus, the Turk who had been led to believe that he was to regain Egypt and recover some of his lost territory, was simply losing more. Indeed, after Saloniki, despite the talk to that effect, the far-seeing Germans neither carried out their threatened attempt to invade Egypt, nor, as many expected, were they drawn from the main theatre of war by dispatching troops by rail to Turkey. In dissipating the allied troops by their threats, they had taken care not to dissipate their own.

Thus Germany would supply Turkey with officers, and all her munitions, but she would not risk an army on the other side of Bulgaria with a long line of communications threatened by the Allies from Saloniki and Dedeagatch.

The approach of the spring of 1916 found them facing much the same problem as in the spring of 1915. Despite the territory they had gained, to ask for peace was to imply that their economic situation was weaker and their casualties heavier than they were willing to admit. Even if their economic situation was strong and the reserves plentiful, any suggestion that they were ready for negotiations must convince the Allies that they were reaching the end of their resources. There could be no doubt of Russia's immense reserves of men. It was only a question with her as to whether or not she could make them into an efficient army properly equipped and supplied, and whether or not she would be able to maintain her organization and railway facilities and sufficient forces at the actual fighting front to strike a successful blow against her enemies.

On the western front there had been an enormous accession of munitions during the winter, while the British new army with two million men yet to go under fire was gradually getting its rifles and guns. Victory comes in war either when you are exhausted or when you have taken from the enemy his capital or something of such vital importance to him that he must yield in order to recover it. Neither France nor Russia was by any means in that pass. Belgium had merely become a dead land, a shop within a garden, cut off from all trade, when it had been a nation of manufacturers and traders.

Germany, unless she were exhausted in men and supplies, could not consider any peace which did not accord her the results of her gains, while she was still in possession of much of the enemy's territory, and she still maintained the power of the offensive. The purpose of the Allies was to contain her, to strengthen "the ring of steel." Her own purpose must be to strike some vital blow which would win a separate peace either from Russia or France. The moment she gave up her offensive and settled down to the defensive, which was naturally against the policy of her staff and the vigorous nature of her people, she was acknowledging that she had reached the limit of her prowess. Then the Allies, with the sea at their command, would bid her await their pleasure—unless she had so far exhausted them that they considered a decided victory over her hopeless, and they made a compromise.

Saloniki now being an incident of her military past, the next plan of her staff was an effort on Verdun, the great fortress which occupied a salient in the French siege line. Here, as elsewhere when she attacked, she concentrated both her own and the Austrian heavy artillery, and following the system of intense artillery preparation, threw in her waves of infantry. This blow was struck at the most inclement season of the year, in February snow and slush and rain, as if to anticipate the allied attack which was generally thought bound to come later in the spring when sufficient munitions had been accumulated on the western front and the weather was favorable.

By this time experts who had thought the war would be decided in the Balkans had again realized that it never pays to desert the simple military principle that the decision comes between the main bodies of armies and not in remote regions from any clash of subsidiary forces.

Paris or Petrograd in the hands of the Germans might mean such a decision. Certainly, should the western front be broken by either side, it would be the most telling blow of the war in both the moral and the military sense. But after all, was the line of least resistance for Germany the line of the western front? Would she really strike her great blow of 1916—if she still had the power to strike one—against the western rather than the eastern front? Hitherto, attacks had succeeded against Russia.

It was in Russia that she had had her success. German officers had always stated their confidence that with their superior gun fire and tactics they could always force the Russians back. Could they press back the French and the British?

When would the war end? seemed as unanswerable to the lay observer in the spring of 1916 as in the spring of 1915. How long was the fearful attrition to go on? Could either side ever strike a decisive blow, or would the eventual result be a bloody stalemate, with England still in command of the sea?

The significant generic lesson of the war is not in the power of artillery, but the power of all material organization, when nations set out to gain their ends by force: its military lesson was that both sides had pretty well followed sound policy considering the situation, despite armchair critics who knew nothing of inside facts.

Europe was spending $100,000,000 or more a day in the business of destruction—of life and of property. A broad belt of ruins spread across France and Belgium for 450 miles; a broader one of 1,000 miles across Galicia and Russia. No nation engaged could be said to be victorious except the Japanese. Japan had gained Kiao-chau; strengthened her influence in China enormously, and was making immense profits by working her arsenals and every plant at full speed making munitions for Russia.

The United States at peace, preparing to make munitions as fast as she could, and able to produce only 3,000 rifles a week for the Allies on the 1st of December, 1915, and 5,000 a week March 1, 1916, was enjoying an era of "boom" prosperity, thanks to the eager market of nations whose own production was arrested while their workers were at war. From the gloom of London and Paris, where men and women had given up all luxuries, the transatlantic voyage brought you to New York, which was the only gay capital in the world, enjoying all the privileges of extravagance when money is plentiful.

WAR BY MACHINERY

This has been a war of machinery; but the old rule has been true that development in any weapon of offense has been countered by further development of means of defense. Nor is the theoretical power of weapons ever equaled by their actual power when the test of war comes. With self-preservation remaining the first law of nature, man is in nothing so skillful as in avoiding the enemy's blows.

When one watches a 15-inch gun fired and hears its 2,000-pound shell go screaming through the air, his concept of its destructive action is exaggerated by imagination, and further confirmed if he sees that shell burst inside a house, reducing its interior to wreckage. But the shell may not hit the house; it may fall in an open field and merely make a crater in the earth. Besides, someone must be in the house when it is hit if there are to be any casualties; and it is quite possible that a single person present might be dug out of the debris unharmed. Vulnerable as man's flesh is, he remains a pretty small object on the landscape. If he knows that his house is in danger of being struck he then either goes into the cellar at the first alarm, after having covered his floor with sandbags, or he may take to a dugout in his yard.

When one has seen ten 15-inch shells strike a town of 25,000 inhabitants in a busy hour of the day and only half a dozen persons killed and injured, he may learn a contempt for shell fire which, however, is promptly turned into a tragic respect when one of the same sort of shells strikes in a stone-paved courtyard where a hundred soldiers are at their evening meal, and two-thirds of them are killed and wounded.

The bursting of a shrapnel shell and its spray of low-velocity bullets is also theoretically most destructive, but a roof of 6-inch boards will furnish perfect protection from the bullets. Mother Earth remains the best protection there is from fire. No rifle bullet can penetrate through a 3-foot thickness of sandbags. A 6 or 8-inch high-explosive shell, which is the largest caliber practicable for trench warfare, may burst near a double layer of bags of stone rubble without hurting anyone in a cellar 30 feet underneath. The rain of shrapnel bullets which mows the barbed wire in front of a trench, as hail mows ripening grain, will not reach a single man in the trench to the rear, if he keeps his head down.

At first thought it seems utterly inconsistent when bullets carry effectively a mile and a half, and guns carry twenty miles, that infantry should be fighting so close that they can throw bombs at each other from distances of 15 and 20 yards. The very destructiveness of modern weapons has contributed toward this result.

There has never been anything like so many guns used in battle, and never have they been capable of such rapid fire. The field gun can fire consistently eight or ten shots a minute, thanks to its modern recoil cylinder and to the steadiness of aim, and literally establish a "curtain of fire" with its torrent of bullets shot down from the air and the cataracts of earth shot up by the bursting of high-explosive shells in the ground, which no infantry can pass.

A machine gun behind a shield firing 500 shots a minute is practically safe from rifle fire, and soldiers intrenched on either side of it add to its volume their own more accurate fire from their rifles. Infantry in the open, though they were not subjected to the fearful concentration of artillery fire, could not survive through a mile of machine-gun and rifle-swept space. Successful advances against anything but very inferior numbers badly armed become impossible in any frontal attack in the open. Thus all modern infantry operations must have more or less a siege character, as the only practicable means of approach is by digging your way forward. The spade has become almost as important a weapon as the rifle.

Impatience with digging, which was characteristic of the early days of the American Civil War, and which has been generally resented by all armies in the past, has now become second nature to every soldier, because its value is brought home to him by the most telling kind of lesson in experience—death. He puts earth between himself and the enemy's fire as instinctively as one holds up his hand to ward off a blow.

In trench fighting all that is exposed of a man firing is his head and shoulders, which accounts for the high percentage of dead to wounded in this war. In other wars it has been as one to five; while in this war, on the western front, it has varied from as one to two and three. If the trenches are brought extremely close together then either side is safe from the other's artillery fire, because there is as much danger of hitting your own trench as the enemy's with your shells. A distance of 20 or 30 yards meant that at any time either side could start in throwing bombs or grenades by hand across that one definitely neutral country—the zone of death between the trenches. Beyond that range up to the average range, trench mortars which "lobbed" a charge of high explosive from trench to trench could be used. Thus the war of machinery became a war of explosives. Anything that could be dropped into the trench and burst might kill or wound some of the enemy, which meant debit on their side of the ledger in a war of attrition and exhaustion. The higher the angle of flight the more likely the charge actually to fall into the narrow ditch in the earth, instead of breaking its force against the wall, which accounts for the superiority of the howitzer with its high angle of flight and shorter range to the gun with its lower trajectory and longer range.

Thus there can be no limitation to the amount of artillery and the quantities of explosives serviceable in this kind of warfare. No one of the armies has ever had anything like enough shells. None ever can. Five hundred guns of all ranges set back of one another from 3,000 to 20,000 yards' range to a mile could be placed, or 225,000 for the western front, and they could readily use five million shells a day in this contest of munitions and manufacturing resources.

All armies had to conserve their ammunition, and in parts of the line, which were known as "quiet corners," for tactical reasons the stalemate was almost peaceful, either side holding its fire unless the other became restless. But between the trenches which had remained in the same position for many months, no living thing was visible day after day except a rabbit or a field mouse where the ground birds made their nests, and there the piping of birds joined with the song of the bullets. Except for occasional snipers' shots at the sight of anything moving on the enemy's parapet, the day wore monotonously on—when to expose the head for half a minute meant death.

Naturally the trenches do not run straight. They bend in and out at sharp angles in order to localize the explosions of shells; they are so narrow in most places that two men can pass with difficulty. A few soldiers are on guard, the rest may be lying about their dugouts or probably engaged in building new traverses or in putting up new layers of sandbags or deepening their dugouts. They become beavers rather than warriors, day laborers with spade and shovel rather than knights. There is no marching and countermarching; they have no use for the skirmish drill or the maneuver ground. Sharpshooters with clamped rifles watch for a target patiently as fishermen for a bite.

Back from the first line trench runs a winding communication trench, a foot or more deeper than the average man's height and the turns in its walls stop any bullets which otherwise might sweep its length in enfilade. In the reserve trenches are other men in burrows who have not even the excitement of sniping. They do nothing but wait and dig, repairing damages wrought by occasional shells on dull days.

At any hour the enemy may suddenly decide to attack and they may find their houses pounded down about their heads and perhaps half of a company wiped out in a quarter of an hour. Then other communication trenches lead back until finally you are in the open country out of the range of bullets, but not outside the range of shells. Here the munition caissons and the transport wagons come up by night bringing the food for men and guns which is taken up to the hungry mouths under the cover of darkness; and here, on an average day, one will occasionally observe the passing of an ambulance with its green roof and sides which melts it into the road and the landscape—and processions of ambulances when there is battle. All the detail of army existence is as precise as that of the best organized industrial plant.

As you walk along you will spy at intervals a hidden battery, perhaps in a house, perhaps in a hedge, perhaps in a group of trees, perhaps beautifully roofed over with sod, so that it is invisible from the air. You rarely look up without seeing an aeroplane flying overhead. When there is action, you will see many. A faint pur comes out of the heavens and two planes are seen circling as they exchange bullets from their machine guns. Another plane is turning to the right and left and ducking to avoid the thistle blows of smoke which burst from the shrapnel shells fired by the antiaircraft guns.

Follow the course of the long procession of motor trucks which feed the army and you arrive at one of the great supply depots which every day send out the precise quota of supplies that are needed, with every motor truck having its schedule and keeping that schedule with the accuracy of a first-class passenger train. Follow the ambulances back from station to station, where the wounded men are examined to see if they are suffering from a hemorrhage and whether they are able to stand the farther journey and do not need an immediate operation, and you are brought to the immense base hospitals in a closely guarded and well ordered camp where every sanitary tradition known to modern life is absolutely enforced. One of these hospitals had twelve thousand beds and in the offensive of September 25, 1915, it discharged seven thousand patients in a day.

Soldiers are restricted to the neighborhood of their billets and officers themselves must have passes if they travel outside the region occupied by their battalions. Everyone is a policeman under an intricate system guarding every detail of army secrets from any spy and from those gallant aviators who risk antiaircraft gunfire in the hope of bringing home some information to their side.

Never has the Intelligence Service of an army had so many secrets to guard; never has it required such complicated measures of protection against espionage. In Napoleonic times, it was enough to know that your adversary was marching a hundred thousand men along parallel roads. This your cavalry scouts might discover; or a spy who had crossed the frontier in an unfrequented place might be watching the enemy's army and counting his numbers as they passed. Now the frontier is an intact line of trenches.

The spies of Richelieu's day have been surpassed in this, our day—with their stories yet to be told. Many a man who spoke the enemy's language well has put on the enemy's uniform, joined one of his scouting parties between the trenches in the darkness, entered the enemy's trenches, heard all the talk and slipped back to his own lines safely. If apprehended, his fate was certain—death.

The most efficient spy, of course, is the one with military training He knows the value of what he sees. Usually he is an officer of good family who has been cashiered for gambling or debt and takes a desperate chance out of patriotism and the hope of atonement. Naturally, the easiest route for spies was through Holland and Switzerland which became the gateway of passing spies and the playground of espionage and counterespionage. Gradually the restrictions tightened for all neutral travelers from capital to capital, while none were permitted to go into the zones of the armies, some twenty or thirty miles from the trenches.

The problem of the Intelligence Corps is much like that of putting the parts of a picture puzzle together. A line from a newspaper in one part of the world, a line from a newspaper in another taken in connection with a photograph, an excerpt from a letter found on a prisoner or a fact got from a prisoner by skillful catechism, might develop a valuable contributory item. The amount of information procured by either side about the other was only less amazing to the outsider than how it was obtained. Again, events revealed amazing ignorance. Most baffling and most secret of all branches is this, whose work is both gaining and conserving information, and just as professional, just as carefully prepared before the war as any other.

A single instance illustrates how small a fact may be of value to the enemy. A certain well known "military expert" went out to British headquarters as a guest of a general. From a tower in the square of a small town, he watched a certain action. When he wrote his account of it, it was submitted to the general who was his friend; and the general carelessly passed one little statement which no Chief of Intelligence of any army would ever have passed and probably no correspondent of experience would have had the temerity to submit to the censor unless he wanted to be responsible for the death of men who were his hosts and his friends. For the writer stated that he saw the battle from this tower.

Now the London papers reach Holland at four o'clock in the afternoon where they are seized promptly by the tentacles of the German Intelligence Service, which did not need to undertake any "picture puzzle work" on this occasion. It was plain as day that this tower must be used as an artillery observation post by the enemy. From there he could see the fall of shells from his batteries and know whether they were "on" or not. Out of the blue sky the next morning, came a German artillery concentration which brought the tower down like a house of cards, and many British soldiers billeted in the neighborhood were killed or wounded.

In order to deepen the shroud of mystery over his side which baffles the enemy, many military men would undoubtedly make the press merely the herald of official bulletins. The British Admiralty carried out this system to the letter, as a navy may better than an army, in the resistance of the German submarine campaign. Thus the "Untersee-boots" came out from Kiel or Zeebrugge and disappeared in the mists of the North Sea with no message of how they had been destroyed when they never returned.

The Intelligence Service in common with army transport and the sanitary service and every other expert branch has for its object the conserving of the lives of your own soldiers and the taking of those of the enemy, best expressed by an infantry attack on the enemy's trenches, whether to gain a few hundred yards or a belt of eight to ten miles as in the case of the French attack in Champagne in September, 1915, and the German attack on Verdun in February, 1916. The first step is the concentration of batteries for artillery preparation. Gradually, these guns all try out their range with the aeroplanes spotting the fall of their shells. Then, at the scheduled minute they loose their blasts upon the front line trenches which are to be taken. In front of the trenches, of course, are the elaborate barbed-wire entanglements. These are often twenty, thirty or even forty feet deep. There may be more than one series of entanglements and some may be screened in some fashion or other from the effects of artillery fire. Aside from these, trous de loup, pits with sharpened sticks to impale the invader, and all the other devices of former times are used—in short, every obstacle from the time of Moses to the modern machine gun. No invader can possibly reach the enemy's trench to contest it with him until these impedimenta are removed. Thousands of short-cut plans and inventions have been offered for cleaning away the barbed wire before an attack, but not one has succeeded because it requires that whoever is to carry out the suggestion or remove the obstruction, must be submitted to murderous grilling machine-gun and rifle fire. Shrapnel shells with their sprays of bullets bursting at a height of a foot above ground remain the approved method of cutting barbed wire. If the barbed wire is not destroyed, the men in the charge are "hung up" in it, as the saying is. Then if a machine gun is still in position in the enemy's trench, they are riddled with bullets where they lie. No form of death could be more pitiless or helpless for the soldier than this. He becomes a target on a spit, as it were.

Granted that the barbed wire is swept away perfectly, no charge can succeed if many machine guns or rifles from the trenches are playing upon it. Then men simply rush into a spray of bullets. Therefore, all the teeth must be drawn from the trench itself. This is done by the concentration of high-explosive shells from guns of larger caliber, mostly howitzers, which burst in the earth, tossing up great fountains of dust, burying and smashing the machine guns and driving all the operators into their dugouts, where they are sometimes buried alive.

Back of the trench, the guns of smaller caliber which destroy the barbed wire place a "curtain of fire," as it is called, which does not permit the enemy to escape from a trench, or any reserves to come to his assistance. This process is kept up for such a length of time as is deemed sufficient. At a given moment, the invader charges, often protected by a screen of smoke which is sent out from his own trenches.

As the burrowers in the earth crawl from the parapets and take to their legs, they know that their fate is almost altogether dependent upon the preparation by the guns rather than any effort of their own. Ahead of them is this wall of smoke and dust from the explosions, in which they are lost to the observer. Keeping units together and protecting them is as difficult as maneuvering ships in a fog. The delicate problem of the gunner is to protect the invader just as far forward as possible, without putting shells into his own men. A few from defective fuses must fall short. This is expected and is a part of the cost of a charge; but none with correct fuses and dependable powder should. The gunners time their part to that of the invader, by lifting their fire from the first to the second line trench, as their own men are entering the first.

Granted that the barbed wire is cleared and the men enter the enemy's trench, they may find themselves struggling over heaps of dust mixed with the rags of sandbags, splintered timbers and the flesh and uniforms of their enemy—at first see not a single adversary. They will be instantly due for heavy shell fire; and also for heavy machine gun and rifle fire from the second line enemy trench. They begin to dig at once in order to establish protection. Out of this wreckage they have to reverse the enemy's trench, so that it shall face toward him. This becomes a matter of desperate effort and usually it is in the course of this that the severest casualties are suffered. But should the artillery destruction of the trench be imperfect, upon entering it they may still take the enemy by surprise in his dugouts. In that case, bombs in hand, at the doorways of these cellars they demand surrender. In case it is not given, they throw the bombs into the dugout; for, to enter, means that they will be shot down.

Or, upon entering the trench, they may meet the enemy's soldiers running out of their dugouts for hand-to-hand battle. The traverses are so narrow that the length of the rifle makes it a clumsy weapon, and the adversaries in modern war, whose guns carry twenty miles, engage hand to hand, using knives, bombs and even their fists. With discarded rifles and bombs lying about a trench, it is difficult to give quarter. For a prisoner who is down may pick up a rifle or a bomb and turn on his captor. It is not human savagery so much as conditions that has made the fighting so grim. Having established themselves in a certain section or sections of the trench, naturally the new occupants have the enemy on their right and left. That is, on one side of one of the winding traverses will be a German, and say on the other side a Frenchman. Neither sees the other's head, for both are hidden behind these walls of earth. If one starts around the corner, it means a bayonet or a bullet for him.

To gain ground in a trench requires a superior supply of bombs. Any small package that will contain a high explosive would serve the purpose. Early in the war, bombs were made out of jam tins and bottles or any other receptacle which could be filled with an explosive and set off by a fuse. Later on, different varieties of manufactured bombs in great quantities appeared. There have been instances of five thousand being used in a single day over two hundred yards of trench. After throwing a bomb from the traverse, the offensive follows up the explosion by rushing along the traverse and catching the defender with a bayonet while he is hors de combat from the effect of the explosion. While this orgy—characteristic of cave dwellers battling on a precipice in its ferocity—is proceeding, all is precision at the rear. As the caissons bring up the supplies of ammunition, the green-curtained motor ambulances speed on to the hospital with the wounded and the military police direct the congested traffic and keep watch for spies.

VITAL LESSONS

War is force, violence, killing. Whoever tries to disguise its character is a poor soldier and a poorer citizen. If you would avoid it, and if you would prepare for it, you must look at it as a fact, squarely in the face. Never has war been so savage as it is in this most progressive age in history. We had popular education, aseptic surgery, the wireless, and antitoxin, but war came nevertheless, and in the wake of Hague conferences and much preaching of internationalism. It came when the nations were supposed on account of the press and the telegraph to have been farther removed from parochialism than ever before, when more people in every nation in Europe knew the language of their neighbors than ever in history.

In the cave dweller's time, combatants used a stone hatchet which was the best weapon that science could produce. To-day by land and sea they have used all the powers of destruction known to modern man; all the scientific brains of Europe have been at the disposal of commanders. Yet no single revolutionary invention has appeared in the course of the war. The idea of the gas was old. Man already had learned to fly. Guns have been larger and shells more powerful, but the principle is the same. Weapons have been further developed, but the types have not changed.

All the essential lessons which the Germans applied they learned in the Russo-Japanese War. The line of trenches throughout the winter of 1904-05 before Mukden were much the same type as those along the Aisne. There were trenches in the Civil War and in the Crimea, and in the American Revolution and in many wars before that. So far as one can learn, there has not been a single invention by a civilian which would have been of any use to the British navy in fighting submarines. All have been devised and applied by naval experts who knew conditions. No profession is more expert than soldiering and none is older, because it began when Cain killed Abel.

War being the ultimate resort of force, then the poet, the dreamer, the scholar, the doctor and the organizer of the arts of peace may succumb to the bully with the square jaw, the low brow and flesh-tearing incisors, unless the civilized man uses his resources and talents to make weapons which are stronger than the bully's fist. This is precisely what civilization does in order to protect itself.

The two forces which were really prepared for this war were the British navy and the German army. The British navy has kept command of the seas and the German army has planted its trenches on foreign soil. For any nation which is separated from other nations by the sea, the military lesson of this war is that the sea is the first line of defense. You will escape bloody trenches at home if you never allow an enemy to land. He cannot land until he has driven your navy off the seas.

The other lesson is that a nation should know its method of defense and have it as complete, practicable and ready as the German army and British navies were. For three or four years, the Belgians saw the Germans constructing railroad sidings at Aix and making their preparations for the blow they struck. Yet the Belgians did not modernize their forts, or adequately strengthen their army for defense. If to the staffs of England and France war seemed inevitable, their governments refused to be convinced.

Any nation which is considering preparedness for national defense must have a national policy. It must know what it is going to defend and how it is going to defend it. The British navy was built for the specific problem of either defeating the German navy in battle or keeping it fast in its lair. The German army was organized for the purpose of the invasion of France and then of Russia; the French army for defense from Germany.

Their efficiency was not the result of the expenditure of money, for money will not buy defense. It requires training, organization, and patriotism, and courage, which are not for sale in the market places of mankind.

Until this war the opinion among English-speaking peoples was universal that the volunteer system was the best method of recruiting. This on the principle that the man who offers himself to fight, fights better than the one who is called to arms by government order. Thus England raised 3,000,000 men. But to a man who has lived much with armies, it seems an immoral method; it means hiring men to fight for you. One man's life is just as valuable to him as another's. It is the final sacrifice which he makes for the defense of his country or his home. He should make it himself and not ask others to make it for him. Those who should be the first into battle are the men of wealth, of position, the favored ones. They owe their country more than the others, because their country has done more for them.



The courage which every Continental army has exhibited has forever destroyed the idea that universal service weakens the valor of an army. Millionaire and peasant, nobleman and workman fighting side by side in the ranks, and doing all the drudgery of the trenches in common, develop a democracy which means that a man appreciates his fellow man for his own sake.

The old idea that wars must be frequent in order to keep up a nation's virility has also been disproved. Universal service both in France and Germany through forty years of peace, had been an important influence in the better physical development of the race, which led to the fortitude, precision, and courage exhibited. At the same time, a realization of the seriousness of war on the part of all men, because they knew before this war began the punishing effect of rifle or machine-gun and artillery fire, is a powerful deterrent to making war in any spasm of emotion.

There is no more glory, there is no more sport to war. It has become scientific, businesslike, and commonplace. Never has an unprepared nation been so helpless against the prepared as to-day. The American Revolution could never have been won by untrained levies to-day against the British regulars if they possessed modern weapons. Our forefathers had their fowling pieces, taken from the walls in the days when the cannon fired a solid shot for a few hundred yards, and there were few cannon; and so far as weapons were concerned, they were almost on a level with their enemy, the enemy's only superiority being that of their drill and organization. Now the enemy would have guns and rifles which it takes many months to make, even if you have the plants.

In an era of sanitation and bodily cleanliness and popular education, it has been shown that far from men having lost their virility, they fought far better than the so-called "strong" and primitive man, and those soldiers of former ages who "drank hard six days a week and fought like the devil on Sunday" and would look down upon this age as effeminate. Physically, mentally, and morally, the soldiers who sprang to arms in the beginning of this war were superior unquestionably to any soldiers who have ever gone into any war in Europe. They had more skill, more courage, more determination. Their pride was greater, and that alone made them more gallant. Those who wanted to know what war was like, to have the experience of their first baptism of fire, soon had it in the swift processes of mobilization and attack. Then, in their stubbornness, they settled down to the long, grim business of seeing through a task that was begun. The trenches were the last places where you would hear the advocacy of war as war. There the sentiment was simply of duty that must go on until a decision was reached.

Never has war been more savagely fought, possibly because the modern mind reasons that war being force and violence and killing, this principle should be applied to the limit. Yet never have the wounded been so tenderly cared for, never has the hospital organization been so complete. Never probably in the history of European warfare have prisoners, once they were taken, been so well treated. In other wars 100,000 survivors or so returned home when the struggle was over. Here millions will go. Every home will either have its dead hero or its living veteran. These are the men who will rule Europe in the future. Behind the lines, among the civilian population, the war has acted as a scourge. It has submerged self into the whole. Fatty degeneration of the heart of the body politic has been cut away to the muscle.



THE THEATRES OF THE WAR'S CAMPAIGNS

By F. H. SIMONDS

MAIN MILITARY FEATURES

The purpose of this review is to summarize briefly the main military phases of the first year and a half of the Great War. To do this it is perhaps simplest to accept the unity supplied by the three major campaigns of the Central Powers, that of Germany against France, that of Austria and Germany against Russia, and that of Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria against Serbia.

There is no intention of discussing here any ethical or political considerations. Certain historical details are, however, of real interest and value. Thus it is worth while to recall that the present conflict differs little, if at all, from the earlier coalition wars of Europe, in which one nation, numerically weaker, has sought to impose its will upon a group of nations collectively larger, richer, and potentially capable of employing greater numbers of men. In a word, the present war is a pretty accurate repetition of the wars of Louis XIV and Napoleon I, with Germany playing the French role.

Now in such struggles it had always been true, and German writers, notably Bernhardi, insisted it would be true of any future war, that the single chance for a decisive victory for the smaller nation lay in crushing the several foes before they were able to get their collective strength in the field, while the superior preparedness, training, general military efficiency of the smaller nation still enabled it to put the superior numbers at the decisive point at the crucial moment.

This whole conception is made perfectly clear by a glance at the familiar and classic parallel of the Napoleonic wars. In 1805 Napoleon, facing a European coalition, which included Russia, Great Britain, and Austria, and was bound to enlist Prussia ultimately, quite as the present anti-German group enlisted Italy, had to solve the same military problem.

Consider what he did. Breaking his camp at Boulogne, which he left in September, 1805, he sent his Grand Army into southern Germany and against Ulm. On October 20 he captured Mack's army at Ulm. On December 2 he routed the Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz, and on December 26 there was signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which eliminated Austria from the war. Prussia now intervening, he destroyed the Prussian armies at Jena and Auerstaedt on October 14, 1806. In June, 1807, he completed his task by defeating the Russians at Friedland. The Peace of Tilsit, which followed immediately, removed Russia and Prussia from the fighting line, as Austria had already been removed. Between the capitulation of Ulm and the victory of Friedland there intervened nineteen months. More than eighteen have now passed since the fall of Liege in the present war.

The Peace of Tilsit made Napoleon the master of Europe with only Great Britain left in the field against him. The subsequent military and political history which led to Napoleon's downfall has no pertinence in the present discussion. What it is essential to recognize is that the German high command in August, 1914, approached a Napoleonic problem in the Napoleonic fashion.

In German quarters there had been before the war, and there has been since, a debate as to the comparative advantage of making the first campaign against France or against Russia. The fact that the attack on France failed has doubtless contributed to strengthen the case of those who held the view of the elder Moltke and advocated an eastern offensive. But this is merely an academic discussion. What is of interest to us now is to recognize that Germany did decide to attack France, that she did direct against the republic the first and necessarily the greatest blow she could deliver. It was not until April, 1915, that she actually undertook an attack upon Russia, and then the prospect of a decisive victory, on the Napoleonic order, had practically disappeared.

THE ATTACK UPON FRANCE

Turning now to the first campaign, the attack upon France, it is to be recognized at the outset that the German purpose was to dispose of France in the military sense for the period of the war by a campaign that should repeat the success of 1870. It was essential that this victory should be achieved before France could profit by Russian activity in the east and before Great Britain could render material military assistance to her French ally. It was equally essential that the blow should be so swift and heavy that it would crush the French before they could equip and organize their great reserves, for whom, thanks to legislative folly and pacifist agitation, there was lacking equipment and arms.

For the accomplishment of this great task, Germany counted upon her superior numbers, the greater speed of her mobilization, and the excess of her population over France to give her a decisive advantage. She counted also upon her advantage in heavy artillery and machine guns, on her organization of motor transport, which was to establish new records in invasion. Only in field artillery, in the now famous "seventy-fives," could France claim any advantage.

In 1870 Sedan had come four weeks after the first German troops had entered France. For the new campaign the Germans allowed six weeks. For this time German high command reckoned that Russia could be mobilized in the east, and that any incidental Russian success in East Prussia or Silesia would be counterbalanced by the tremendous victories to be won in northern France. Paris itself would be a sufficient counterprize for Posen, Breslau, or Cracow.

The time limit, however, imposed certain other conditions. The Franco-German frontier from Luxemburg to Switzerland had been transformed into one long barrier, garnished with detached forts and resting upon the first-class fortresses of Verdun, Toul, Epinal, and Belfort. To pierce such a barrier was not impossible but to break through in three weeks, with the whole French army before the forts and the shortness of the front offering the Germans no opportunity to take advantage of their superior numbers, was recognized as next to impossible.

There was left the roads through Belgium and Luxemburg. To come this way Germany had for more than a decade been constructing strategic railways leading from the Rhine and Moselle valleys to the Belgian frontier, double-track roads that served in a desolate country, but were provided with all the necessary machinery for detraining thousands of soldiers.

Belgium might not consent to suffer this invasion of her territory but the Belgian army was negligible, and the German heavy artillery was known to be adequate to dispose of the antiquated forts of Namur and Liege with brief delay. Once the Germans had passed the Meuse and deployed upon the Belgian plain, they could turn south and pass the Franco-Belgian frontier, which was destitute of real defenses, the few fortresses being obsolete, and thence the road ran down to Paris clear and open.

Conceivably Great Britain might make the Belgian invasion a cause for joining France. But, again, the British army was small, there was the gravest doubt as to whether it would be sent to the Continent at all, and even if it came, it would not redress the balance between the French and German armies. Such being the case, as German high command saw it, Belgium was summoned, and refusing, was attacked, the German armies passing the Belgian frontier in the direction of Liege on August 4, 1914, the day on which Germany declared war upon France, and the forty-fourth anniversary of the invasion of France in the Franco-Prussian War.

FROM THE MEUSE TO THE MARNE

To grasp the main circumstances of the opening campaign it is simplest to think of the whole German invading forces as comprising one army. The right of this army under Kluck and Buelow came west through Belgium by Brussels and Namur, swinging south after the Belgians were disposed of, and leaving a guard to curtain the Belgian army which had retreated on Antwerp. The center moved southwest through the Belgian Ardennes and Luxemburg, entering France between Longwy and Givet on the Meuse. The left moved from Metz and Strassburg, attempting to force the French barrier line between Toul and Epinal. The center was commanded by the German Crown Prince, Albert of Wuerttemberg, and Hausen, the left by the Crown Prince of Bavaria and Heeringen. Smaller forces operating in Upper Alsace played little real part in the operations.

Taking up first the German right: It did not begin its real advance until August 12, 1914. Liege had been captured on August 7, the last fort fell on August 15. Meantime the Germans pushed a heavy screen of cavalry forward, and there was steady skirmishing between Liege and Brussels, which was magnified into battles and German defeats. In point of fact, the Belgian army was rapidly pushed back, and once the main German advance began, it fled to Antwerp.

Kluck took Brussels on August 18, 1914, and turned south, meeting the first serious resistance at Mons. Buelow, moving across the Meuse at Huy, took Namur on August 23, 1914, and his troops fought at Charleroi, while those of Hausen forced a passage of the Meuse south of Namur. The French were beaten at Charleroi, and the British while the battle of Mons was still undecided, were forced to retreat, because Buelow's success in taking Namur had imperiled the whole allied left flank.

Because he delayed his retreat too long, Sir John French was immediately threatened with destruction, Kluck having succeeded in getting on his flank, while sending superior numbers against his front. For a week there was grave danger that the Germans would be able to destroy the British and intervene between the French left and the city of Paris. At Cambrai on the 25th, British destruction seemed imminent, but the British just managed to win clear, and French troops coming up on their exposed flank by September 1, they were safe.

The French center had essayed an offensive into the Ardennes at the moment the battle of Charleroi was beginning. In this they did not succeed, and the Fourth Army under Langle de Cary fell back in perfect order from the Belgian-Luxemberg frontier across the Meuse near Sedan, where they held their line until the general retreat began. Henceforth the French armies from left to right were not seriously threatened until the final struggle at the Marne.

But the right under De Castelnau had been obliged to retreat. It had opened the campaign by a series of victories which had carried the main force into German Lorraine as far as Saarburg on the railroad from Metz to Strassburg. To the south Muelhausen had been taken, lost, and recaptured. But in the third week of August the main army encountered strong forces in the region of Morhange and fell back on Nancy, the frontier town of Luneville being momentarily occupied by the Germans. At Nancy it stood. But its stand was one of the important battles of the western war and a contributory cause to the subsequent victory at the Marne. By this victory the eastern barrier was held and the German effort to isolate Verdun and Toul blocked. Some of the most terrible fighting of the war took place here, and the Germans, fighting under the eye of the kaiser suffered colossal losses.

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 Buelow 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'Esperey, 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 Buelow 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 Chalons 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 Bassee, 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 Koenigsberg, 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.