The venerable quip that what is firmness in ourselves is obstinacy
in our opponents is illustrated with a ludicrous explicitness in the
whole tenor of German official utterance since the failure of the
great drives. The obtuseness of the Allies is so abysmal (it is again
and again complained in the Reichstag and through Wolff) that they
are unable to see that Germany is the permanently triumphant victor.
Whereas for Germany, whose cause even the neutrals judge to be lost,
to hold out at the cost of untold blood and treasure is merely the
manifestation of heaven-conferred German steadfastness. The Army into
whose obstinate corporate head it is hardest to drive the idea of
German military all-powerfulness is the Russian, of which retreating
units, actually armed with staves against a superbly equipped (but
innocent and wantonly attacked) foe, were so stupid as to forget how to
be broken and demoralised.
And this long, imperturbable, _verdamte_ Nicholas, who was declared
on the highest German authority (and what higher?) to be annihilated
twice, having turned a smashing tactical defeat into strategical
victory, bobs up serenely in another and most inconvenient place.
Absurd; particularly when “what I tell you three times is true.”...
Neonapoleon didn’t remember Moscow. But he will.