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THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR
History of the European War from Official Sources
Complete Historical Records of Events to Date,
Illustrated with Drawings, Maps, and Photographs
Prefaced by
What the War Means to America
Major General Leonard Wood, U.S.A.
Naval Lessons of the War
Rear Admiral Austin M. Knight, U.S.N.
The World's War
Frederick Palmer
Theatres of the War's Campaigns
Frank H. Simonds
The War Correspondent
Arthur Ruhl
Edited by
Francis J. Reynolds
Former Reference Librarian of Congress
Allen L. Churchill
Associate Editor, The New International Encyclopedia
Francis Trevelyan Miller
Editor in Chieft, Photographic History of the Civil War
P. F. Collier & Son Company
New York
[Illustration: _King George V of Britain and King Albert of Belgium
inspecting Belgian troops. The youth is the Prince of Wales, and
beside him is Major General Pertab Singh of the Indian army._]
THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR
Introductions
Special Articles
Causes of War
Diplomatic and State Papers
[Illustration: Editor's logo.]
VOLUME I
P · F · Collier & Son · New York
Copyright 1916
By P. F. Collier & Son
CONTENTS
Page
WHAT THE WAR MEANS TO AMERICA.
_By Major General Leonard Wood, U. S. A._ 9
NAVAL LESSONS OF THE WAR.
_By Rear Admiral Austin M. Knight, U. S. N._ 17
THE WORLDS WAR.
_By Frederick Palmer_ 31
THE THEATRES OF THE WAR'S CAMPAIGNS.
_By F. H. Simonds_ 83
THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.
_By Arthur Ruhl_ 113
PART I.--INDIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR--POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC
HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM 1866 TO 1914, WITH A CHAPTER ON THE
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF JAPAN
CHAPTER
I. Germany 126
II. Austria-Hungary 142
III. Russia 148
IV. France 159
V. England 172
VI. Italy 188
VII. Belgium 197
VIII. Japan 200
IX. The Neutral States--Portugal and Spain 203
X. Sweden, Norway, Holland, Luxemburg 208
XI. Summary of Political History 212
PART II.--THE BALKANS
XII. The Balkan Peoples 215
XIII. Bulgaria 224
XIV. War with Serbia 230
XV. Work of Stambuloff 234
XVI. Attempts at Reform in Macedonia 238
XVII. Crisis in Turkey 244
XVIII. Formation of the Balkan League 248
XIX. First and Second Balkan Wars 252
PART III.--DIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR
XX. Assassination of Franz Ferdinand--Austria's Ultimatum 258
XXI. Serbia's Reply 265
XXII. Diplomatic Exchanges 270
XXIII. Preparation for War 279
XXIV. Territorial and Geographical Comparisons 286
XXV. Assembling of the German Armies 292
XXVI. French Mobilization 297
XXVII. Britain--Russia--Austria 304
PART IV.--DIPLOMATIC PAPERS RELATING TO THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR,
COLLATED FROM THE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS
List of Official Documents 313
List of Sovereigns and Diplomats 315
Important Dates Preceding the War 325
Warnings of Hostile Intentions 328
Report of M. Cambon in 1913 335
The Assassination of the Austrian Archduke 341
Attempts at Mediation 356
The Austro-hungarian Note to Serbia 362
Text of the Note 366
Controversy Over Time Limit 369
Chronological Arrangement of Dates 370
Serbia's Reply to the Austro-Hungarian Note 394
Beginning of Mobilization 401
Kaiser and Czar Exchange Telegrams 438
Henry of Prussia and George V 451
Sir Edward Grey Refuses Terms of Neutrality 455
Further Exchanges Between William and Nicholas 461
Russia Explains Her Efforts for Peace 482
German Declaration of Intentions Toward Belgium 487
Serbia's Position Explained 488
Von Bethmann-Hollweg Explains Germany's Position in
The Reichstag 498
Sir Edward Goschen's Interview with Von Jagow 502
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
King George and King Albert Inspecting Belgian Troops _Frontispiece_
Opposite Page
George V, King of Great Britain and Emperor of India 46
M. Raymond Poincaré, President of France 78
Nicholas II, Emperor of All the Russias 142
Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia 206
Franz Josef I, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary 270
Albert I, King of Belgium 318
King Peter of Serbia 382
Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy 446
LIST OF MAPS
Page
Conflicting Interests of the Great Powers in Europe, Africa
and Asia (_Colored Map_) _Front Insert_
Europe in Twelfth Century, Historical Map 137
Europe in 1648-1789, Historical Map 150
Europe in 1793-1815, Historical Map 193
Balkan States Before the First Balkan War 217
Balkans After the Second Balkan War 254
Austria, 1815-1914 264
Poland and Its Divisions from 1772-1914 277
Armies of the Contesting Nations 293
Navies of the Contesting Nations 298
German-French Frontier, Fortresses of 303
German Confederation of 1815 307
German-Belgian Frontier, Strategic Railroads on 311
[Illustration: The Conflicting Interests of the Great Powers in
Europe and Neighboring African and Asiatic Territories before the
Outbreak of the War.]
WHAT THE WAR MEANS TO AMERICA
By MAJOR GENERAL LEONARD WOOD, U. S. A.
"Go yourselves, every man of you, and stand in the ranks and
either a victory beyond all victories in its glory awaits you, or
falling you shall fall greatly, and worthy of your
past."--DEMOSTHENES TO THE ATHENIANS.
What lesson will America draw from the present Great War? Must she
see the heads of her own children at the foot of the guillotine to
realize that it will cut, or will she accept the evidence of the
thousands which have lain there before? Will she heed the lesson of
all time, that national unpreparedness means national downfall, or
will she profit from the experience and misfortunes of others and
take those needed measures of preparedness which prudence and wisdom
dictate. In a word, will she draw any valuable lessons from the
Great War? This is the question which is so often asked. As yet
there is no answer.
It is the question uppermost in the minds of all those who are
intelligently interested in our country's welfare and safety. It is
the question which vitally concerns all of us, as it concerns the
defense and possibly the very existence of our nation. The answer
must be "Preparedness." If we are to live, preparedness to oppose
the force of wrong with the strength of right. Will it be? That's
the question! Or will America drift on blind to the lessons of the
world tragedy, heedless of consequences, concerned with the
accumulation of wealth, satiated with a sense of moral worth which
the world does not so fully recognize, planning to capture the
commerce of the warring nations, and expecting at the same time to
retain their friendship and regard. Let us hope that, in the light
of what is, and as a preparation against what may be, the answer
will be characteristic of a great people, peaceful but prudent and
foreseeing; that it will be thorough, carefully thought-out
preparedness; preparedness against war. A preparedness which if it
is to be lasting and secure must be founded upon the moral
organization of our people; an organization which will create and
keep alive in the heart of every citizen a sense not only of
obligation for service to the nation in time of war or trouble, but
also of obligation to so prepare himself as to render this service
effective. An organization which will recognize that the basic
principle upon which a free democracy or representative government
rests, and must rest, if they are to survive the day of stress and
trouble, is, that with manhood suffrage goes manhood obligation for
service, not necessarily with arms in hand, but for service
somewhere in that great complex mass which constitutes the
organization of a nation's might and resources for defense;
organization which will make us think in terms of the nation and not
those of city, State, or personal interest; organization which will
result in all performing service for the nation with singleness of
purpose in a common cause--preparedness for defense: preparedness to
discharge our plain duty whatever it may be. Such service will make
for national solidarity, the doing away with petty distinctions of
class and creed, and fuse the various elements of this people into
one homogeneous mass of real Americans, and leave us a better and a
stronger people.
Once such a moral organization is accomplished, the remaining
organization will be simple. This will include an organization of
transportation, on land and sea, and of communications. An
organization of the nation's industrial resources so that the energy
of its great manufacturing plants may be promptly turned into making
what they can best make to supply the military needs of the nation.
By military needs we mean all the complex requirements of a nation
engaged in war, requirements which are, many of them, requirements
of peace as well as of war. It will also include a thorough
organization of the country's chemical resources and the development
thereof, so that we may be as little dependent as possible upon
materials from oversea. At present many important and essential
elements come from oversea nations and would not be available in
case of loss of sea control. We must devise substitutes or find
means of making these things. Chemistry is one of the great weapons
of modern war. There must also be organization which will provide a
regular army organized on sound lines, supplied with ample reserves
of men and material; an army adequate to the peace needs of the
nation, which means, among other things, the secure garrisoning of
our oversea possessions, including the Philippines and the Hawaiian
Islands. These latter are the key to the Pacific, and one of the
main defenses of the Pacific Coast and of the Panama Canal. Whoever
holds these islands will dominate the trade routes of the Pacific,
and in a large measure the Pacific itself.
The regular army should also be sufficient for the secure holding
and safeguarding of the Panama Canal, an instrument of war of the
greatest importance, so long as it is in our control, greatly
increasing the value of our navy, and an implement of commerce of
tremendous value, a possession so valuable and of such vital
importance to us that we cannot allow it to lie outside our secure
grasp.
It must also be adequate to provide garrisons in Porto Rico and
Alaska, and at the same time maintain in the continental United
States a force of coast artillery sufficient to furnish the
necessary manning details for our seacoast defenses, and a mobile
force complete in every detail and adequate in time of war to meet
the first shock of an invasion and sufficient in time of peace to
meet the various demands made upon it for home service, such as
troops for home emergencies or disorders, troops for the necessary
training of the National Militia, also sufficient officers and
noncommissioned officers for duty at schools, colleges, military
training camps and in various other capacities. It must be also
strong enough to provide a strong expeditionary force, such as we
sent to Cuba in 1898, without interfering with its regular duties.
The necessity of building and maintaining an adequate navy, well
balanced, thoroughly equipped and maintained at the highest standard
of efficiency and ready always for immediate service, with necessary
adjuncts afloat and ashore, is also one of the clear lessons of the
war; others are the establishment of ammunition plants at points
sufficiently remote from the seacoast, and so placed as to render
their capture and destruction improbable in case of sudden invasion;
the provision of an adequate reserve corps of 50,000 officers, a
number sufficient for one and one-half million of citizen soldiers;
officers well trained and ready for immediate service; the provision
of adequate supplies and reserve supplies of artillery, arms, and
ammunition of all types for these troops.
We must also build up a system under which officers and men for our
citizen soldiery can be trained with the minimum of interference
with their educational or industrial careers, under conditions which
will permit the accomplishment of their training during the period
of youth, and once this is accomplished will permit their return to
their normal occupations with the minimum of delay.
The lesson which we should draw from the Great War is that nothing
should be left to chance or to the promise of others, or to the
fair-weather relations of to-day; that we should be as well
prepared, and as well organized on land as Switzerland, a nation
without a trace of militarism, and yet so thoroughly prepared and so
thoroughly ready and able to defend herself that to-day her
territory is inviolate, although she is surrounded by warring
nations.
Belgium to-day is an illustration of what may be expected from lack
of adequate preparedness.
The great outstanding lesson of the war is that we must not trust to
righteousness and fair dealing alone; we must be prepared to play
our part, and while loving justice and dealing fairly with others,
we must be always ready to do our full duty, and to defend our
country with force if need be. If we do not, we shall always be
helpless and at the mercy of our enemies. We can be strong, yet
tolerant, just, yet prepared to defend ourselves against aggression.
Another lesson is that our military establishment on land and sea
should not be dependent upon a system of militia and volunteers.
These will not be found adequate under the conditions of modern
war, and above all we should appreciate the fact that our military
system must be founded upon _equality of service, rich and poor
alike_. We must while extending equality of privilege to all,
including the thousands who are coming to us every day, insist upon
equality of obligation by all. With the privileges of citizenship
must go the obligations and responsibilities not only in peace but
also in war.
We should take heed of the lessons of the past, and remember that
the volunteer system has always failed us in our wars. Such
experience as we have had in war in recent years has in no way
prepared us for a war with a first-class nation prepared for war. We
have never engaged in such a war unaided. This experience is one
which is still before us. We should look upon service for the nation
in the same way as we look upon the payment of taxes, or the
compliance with the thousand and one laws and regulations which
govern our everyday life.
Relatively few people would voluntarily pay taxes even though they
knew the money was to go to the best of purposes. They pay taxes
because the law requires it. The people as a whole cannot be
expected, nor can we with safety trust to their performing their
military duties effectively, unless some general system of equal
service for all who are physically fit, is prescribed, some system
which will insure preparation in advance of war, some system which
will _bear upon all alike_. The volunteer spirit is superb, but the
volunteer system is not a dependable system to which to trust the
life and security of the people, especially in these days when the
highest degree of organization marks all nations with whom we may
possibly have some day differences which will result in the use of
force. The militia, willing as it is, cannot be depended upon as a
reliable military asset. Its very method of control makes it an
undependable force, and at times unavailable. The men and officers
are not at fault; they have done all that could be expected under a
system which renders efficiency almost impossible of attainment. The
militia must be absolutely and completely transferred to Federal
control; it must cease to be a State and become a Federal force,
without any relationship whatever with the State.
The militia must have thoroughly trained reserves sufficient in
number to bring it promptly to war strength. The infantry of the
National Guard, as in the regular army, is maintained on a peace
footing at rather less than half its maximum strength.
For a number of years we have been confronted by conditions which
may involve the use of a considerable force of troops, a force
exceeding the regular army and perhaps even the regular army in
conjunction with the militia. This means that a thousand or more men
would have to be added to each regular and National Guard infantry
regiment to bring it to full strength. In the National Guard only a
small proportion of the men have had long service and thorough
training, and if brought to full strength through the injection of a
thousand practically untrained men it would mean these regiments
would go to the front with not over 30 per cent of well-trained men.
In other words, they would be military assemblages of well-meaning,
but undisciplined and untrained individuals, and unless we are to
repeat the experiences of '98 it will be necessary to hold them for
several months in camp and put them through a course of the most
intensive training. It is probable that if they are called it will
be under an emergency which will not permit such training, and we
shall see again the scenes of '98, untrained, willing boys,
imperfectly equipped under inexperienced officers, rushed to the
front, willing but a more or less useless sacrifice.
Another great lesson should be to heed no longer those false
prophets who have been proclaiming that the day of strife has
passed, and that everything is to be settled by arbitration;
prophets of the class who obstructed preparation in England, who
decried universal military training, and all but delivered her into
the hands of her enemies.
"Our culture must, therefore, not omit the arming of the man. Let
him hear in season that he is born into a state of war, and that
the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should
not go dancing in the weeds of peace; but warned, self-collected,
and neither defying nor dreading the thunder; let him take both
reputation and life in his hands, and with perfect urbanity dare
the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and
rectitude of his behavior."--EMERSON.
NAVAL LESSONS OF THE WAR
By REAR ADMIRAL AUSTIN M. KNIGHT, U. S. N.
Although the greatest war in history is not yet at an end, and none
of us can even guess when the end will come, it is possible to draw
certain very important conclusions from the developments to date,
especially in so far as these developments are concerned with war
upon the sea. The great sea fight for which the world has looked
since its two greatest naval powers went to war against each other
has not taken place. It may never take place, although both sides
profess that they are eager for it. And until it does take place,
the final word will not be spoken as to the relations between guns
and armor, between battleships and battle cruisers, or between
either of these types of "capital" ships on the one hand, and the
destroyer and submarine on the other.
The submarine has proven its power, it is true, and against the
battleship; but always where the element of _surprise_ has entered
into its attack in quite a different fashion from that which is
inherent in its always mysterious and stealthy nature. The battle
cruiser has shown the value of speed and long-range guns combined,
but in a comparatively restricted field. The destroyer has played a
part in coast patrol and has doubtless accounted for a number of
submarines; but in its proper sphere of activity it has accomplished
nothing. And the wonderful achievements of the airship have been
practically confined to operations on land. We have waited vainly
and shall continue so to wait for the one supreme lesson which the
war has been expected to yield, unless it chance that on some day to
be forever memorable in the annals of the world there shall sweep
out upon the stormy waters of the North Sea two fleets complete in
every type of craft that human ingenuity has thus far contrived, to
engage in a struggle to the death--a struggle by which the issue of
the war may be decided in an hour, and in a fashion incomparably
more dramatic than anything which the warfare on land, with all its
horrors, has presented or by any possibility can present.
Pending this one great lesson, what is it that the war has taught?
First of all, it has taught once more the old, old lesson that has
been taught by practically every war in which sea power has been a
factor, that where this element is a factor, it is a factor of
decisive importance. The British navy may not win the war for
England, but it is every day more apparent that if the British navy
did not exist, or if it dominated the sea less decisively than it
does, the cause for which England stands would be a lost cause. And
the extraordinary feature of the situation is that the navy is
accomplishing its mission by merely existing. Thus far the "Grand
Fleet" has not struck a blow. From its position on the English coast
it looks across to the mouth of the Kiel Canal, and--waits! Its
patrols are always on guard, the coasts which it defends are never
threatened, and the commerce which trusts to its protection comes
and goes with practically no thought of danger. For several months
during the submarine campaign against commerce, something like
one-half of one per cent of the merchant vessels bound to and from
the ports of England were sunk. But no industry was crippled for a
moment, and neither the necessities nor the luxuries of life were
appreciably curtailed. Even at the height of the submarine
operations, great transports loaded with troops crossed the English
Channel freely, and out of a million and a half of soldiers so
transported not a single one was lost. It is safe to say that in any
three months since the war began the British navy has repaid the
cost of its maintenance for a century in pounds, shillings, and
pence; and in the sense of security which its existence and
efficiency have imparted to the English people, the return upon the
investment has been beyond all calculation.
The first and greatest lesson of the war, then, is this--that the
value of an effective navy, when the time comes for it to manifest
its effectiveness, is out of all proportion to the sums, vast though
these may be, that it has cost; that if it overmatches the opposing
navy decisively enough, the country behind it may rest secure and
serenely indifferent to the thought of invasion or even of attack,
so far as its sea frontier is concerned; and that the navy--still
assuming it to be of commanding strength--may accomplish its whole
mission of defense without ever being called upon to strike a blow.
It can hardly be necessary to point out the fact that this lesson
may be read in terms of "preparedness." The British navy was
prepared when the war began; the British army was not. The German
army was prepared; the German navy was not--in the sense of being
large enough for its mission. With these facts in mind, we have only
to look at the contrast between the progress of the war on land and
that on the sea to read the whole lesson of preparedness in a form
so concrete that it is hard to understand how any observer can fail
to grasp its full significance.
Among the minor lessons of the war, it will probably appear to most
laymen that the unforeseen effectiveness of the submarine is the
most significant. In a way this is true; but the significance of the
lesson may be dangerously exaggerated unless we recognize the part
contributed to the early successes of the submarine by the element
of surprise to which allusion has already been made. When the war
began, the submarine was an untried and an almost unknown weapon,
and the British navy was rather contemptuous of it, or at least
indifferent toward it. Its dramatic appearance in the North Sea at
early dawn of a misty September morning was as great a surprise to
the three British cruisers which it sank in rapid succession as the
story of the disaster was to the world at large. The fact that the
cruisers by their carelessness invited the fate which came to them
does not, of course, deprive the incident of significance. But after
all, the world has never doubted that a submarine could sink a ship
that practically insisted upon being sunk.
As a result of this experience, British men-of-war operating
thereafter in what they considered submarine territory, took
reasonable precautions; and in such waters no other important
successes have been scored against them. But neither to them nor,
probably, to anyone else except their adversaries, did it occur that
a submarine could make its way from the North Sea to the
Dardanelles. And so it came about that when one of them appeared
there, it found conditions again ideal for surprise, and taking
advantage of these conditions delivered its attack and scored a
success as striking as the earlier one in its own home waters.
The activities of submarines against merchant shipping we need not
discuss here. The only lesson they hold for us, from the point of
view of naval warfare, is the lesson that for them, as for all other
activities of the submarine, there is an answer. The answer was not
ready when the war began, but it was not long delayed. We are apt to
think of the submarine as if it always operated under water, and
completely under water. But when it is completely under water, it is
completely blind and as helpless as other blind things are. To see
objects at a distance, it must be on the surface, and to see them
even close at hand it must at least expose its periscope. Having
definitely located an object within easy range, it may wholly
submerge and deliver its torpedo without seeing the target. But the
chance of a hit under these conditions is remote. Normally the
submarine remains on the surface until it sights an enemy. Having
approached as close as seems practicable without danger of being
seen itself, it submerges, _except for the periscope_, and
approaches within range, directing its course and its aim, _by
sight_--not by some occult instinct such as is often attributed to
it. When within a zone where imminent danger threatens, it may
remain wholly submerged for a long period of time, but when so
submerged, it is not in any degree a threat to other craft.
In other words, the submarine is dangerous only when it can see. And
when it can see, it can be seen--not easily perhaps, but certainly
by an observer reasonably close at hand and on the lookout. It is
especially liable to detection from an airship. Moreover, the noise
of its propellers can be heard at a considerable distance, and a
very sensitive microphone has been developed as a submarine
detector. The waters about Great Britain are now patrolled by
hundreds of small, fast craft--destroyers, trawlers, motor
boats--always on the lookout for a periscope or other indication of
the proximity of a submarine. If one is actually seen, its capture
or destruction follows as a matter of course. If the presence of one
is indicated by the microphone or other evidence, such as oil
floating on the water, or bubbles rising to the surface, nets are
lowered and the water dragged for miles around. It is not known how
many submarines have been destroyed by these tactics, but the number
is unquestionably large. Thus the submarine is being robbed of much
of its mystery and much of its terror, and while it remains, and
will always remain, a danger, the lesson of the war is that it must
take its place beside other dangers with which modern war is filled,
as something to be respected and feared, but not as having rendered
the battleship and battle cruiser obsolete.
Another lesson of the war has resulted from the fact that
practically all of the important operations on the British side have
been conducted by battle cruisers, not by battleships. It is not to
be understood from this that the battleship has been discredited,
for such is not the case. The fleet to which reference has already
been made as holding the gates of the North Sea and "containing" the
German fleet behind the fortifications of Helgoland is made up
principally of battleships, and it is largely because they have been
engaged in this important duty that the few opportunities which the
war has offered for active service have fallen to the lot of battle
cruisers. But there are other reasons for this which spring from the
nature of the battle cruiser itself and inhere in the difference
between this type and the battleship. In size the types are
practically identical, and in power of armament the difference is
not great. But the battle cruiser sacrifices much of the armor by
which the battleship is weighted down, and purchases by this
sacrifice a great increase in speed. The typical battleship of
to-day has some 14 inches of armor on the side; the battle cruiser,
from 5 to 9 inches. The battleship has 22 knots speed, the battle
cruiser 32 knots. There has been much discussion as to the relative
merits of the two types, and conservative officers have been slow to
accept the battle cruiser. The war has shown the necessity for both
types, and no better illustration of their relative merits could be
wished than that which is afforded by the spectacle of the
battleships engaged in what is practically a blockade of the German
fleet, while the battle cruisers have swept the German raiders, the
_Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, and their consorts, from the distant
seas which were the chosen field of their operations. Following the
destruction of Admiral Cradock's little squadron by the faster and
more heavily armed _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, the British
admiralty dispatched a squadron of battle cruisers to run down the
German ships, and in the battle off the Falkland Islands the history
of Coronel was repeated with a change of sides, the fast and heavily
armed battle cruisers under Admiral Sturdee making short work of the
German ships, which they overmatched in speed and range as
decisively as the Germans had overmatched the ships of Admiral
Cradock's squadron at Coronel. In each case victory went to the
ships of high speed and long-range guns, and these two are the
determining characteristics of the battle cruiser. In the action of
January 25, 1915, in the North Sea, the same characteristics won
again. Battle cruisers were engaged on both sides, but the side
which had the advantage in speed and range won the fight.
Thus the battle cruiser had justified itself, and its justification
is one of the striking lessons of the war. We may believe that the
lesson will be emphasized if the time ever comes when this type
finds the opportunity to display its adaptability for work in
certain other fields for which it was originally designed--in
scouting operations, for example, and in flanking movements in
connection with a fleet engagement.
It does not appear that aeroplanes were used for scouting in any of
the operations in the open sea--either as preliminary to the battle
off Coronel and the Falklands, or in the search for raiders like the
_Emden_ and the _Karlsruhe_. They have been used, however, in the
waters about the British Islands, and with such marked success as to
leave no doubt that they would have been of great value in search
operations on a larger scale. They were used also for directing the
fire of ships on the fortifications at the Dardanelles, and the
results indicate that they have an important field of usefulness for
directing the fire of one ship or fleet against another. It is to be
expected that from this time forward, vessels fitted for carrying
and launching both air and water planes will accompany fleets, and
it is impossible to think of a scout to be designed after the
lessons of this war, which will not carry several of them. As the
scouts are the eyes of the fleet, so the aeroplanes will be the eyes
of the scouts, extending the scouting range by several hundred miles
and making secrecy of operations at sea almost as impossible as they
have already made it on land.
Allusion has already been made to the use of aeroplanes--flying not
more than a few hundred feet above the water--for locating
submarines; and it is not difficult to understand how effective a
waterplane would be for destroying a periscope, or even a submarine
itself--this last, perhaps, by dropping a bomb.
The lesson of the torpedo is connected with that of the submarine,
but has many features which are individual to itself. It is known
that within a very few years past the range and accuracy of the
torpedo have greatly increased, but there is little evidence
connecting these features with the performance of torpedoes in the
present war. So far as known, the submarines have done most of their
effective work at short ranges where hits were to be expected. And
no one will ever know how many shots have missed. The great
outstanding lesson thus far is the extraordinary destructiveness of
the torpedoes that have found their mark. It would never have been
believed two years ago that ships like the _Cressy_, _Aboukir_, and
_Hogue_ would turn turtle a few minutes after a single blow from a
torpedo. Still less would it have seemed possible to sink a
_Lusitania_ in fifteen minutes. A torpedo might, of course, produce
an extraordinary effect if it chanced to strike a boiler compartment
or a magazine. But it does not appear that this happened in any one
of the many disasters in question. It has been said that the German
torpedoes carry an exceptionally heavy explosive charge, the extra
weight having been gained by a sacrifice in speed and range. This
may in part explain their effectiveness, but when all allowance is
made for what we know or guess along this and similar lines, the
fact remains that the torpedo has shown itself a weapon of vastly
greater destructive power than the world has heretofore attributed
to it.
The story of the Dardanelles campaign has illustrated again the
futility of attacking land fortifications by battleships. Attacks of
this kind have never succeeded, and the temptation is strong to
accept the theory that in planning these operations the British
anticipated little or no resistance from those in command of the
forts. It was conceivable that the forts could be passed--as were
those at New Orleans and Mobile Bay by Farragut--but not that they
could be reduced by the gun fire of ships. Information is lacking as
to the damage actually done. It was probably greater than the
defenders have admitted; but it evidently fell far short of
silencing the forts. If the world needed a new demonstration of the
power of forts to stand out against ships, we may put this down as
one more lesson of the war.
An important revelation of the war is the smoothness and rapidity with
which large bodies of troops, with all their impedimenta--horses,
artillery, etc.--have been transported by water. This has, of course,
been possible only for Great Britain and her allies, and for them only
because they have held unchallenged the command of the sea. It is
thus, first of all, a confirmation of the lesson with which this paper
opened--the lesson that command of the sea is a factor of the very
first importance in any war in which it is a factor at all. It is
secondarily a lesson in the ease with which a nation which has command
of the sea can, in these days of large fast steamers, transport its
military forces in practically unlimited numbers to any distance that
may be desired. It is thus an answer to the protestations of those who
insist that the United States is secured against the danger of
invasion by the thousands of miles of water which separate its coasts
from those of possible enemies; for it demonstrates what has, from
the day of the first Atlantic crossing by a steamship, become more and
more notably a fact--that the oceans which separate frontiers for
certain purposes, connect them for other purposes and especially for
purposes of transit and transportation. The term "Ocean Highway" is no
mere figure of speech. The millions of troops that have passed by
water from England into France have made the passage with infinitely
less difficulty than has been connected with the further passage by
land to the fighting lines; and the hundreds of thousands from
England, France, India, and Australia, which have assembled in the
Near East could not have covered the distances that they have covered,
if they had moved by land, in ten times the number of days they have
occupied in moving by sea. The sea being clear of enemy ships, the
route from Liverpool to the Dardanelles has been a lane for an easy
and pleasant promenade. With the Atlantic and Pacific controlled by
the fleets of nations at war with us, their waters would invite,
rather than impede, the movement of an army to our shores. It would be
difficult to exaggerate the significance of this lesson for the United
States.
A rather grewsome lesson, but one which cannot be ignored, is that
in a naval battle, there are, at the end, neither "wounded",
"missing", nor "prisoners" to be reported. A ship defeated is, and
will be, in a great majority of cases, a ship sunk; and sinking, she
will sink with all on board. Some few exceptions there may be, but
the rule can hardly fail to be as thus stated. One of the first
things that a ship does in preparing for battle is to get rid of her
boats; and, as both her companions and her opponents are sure to do
the same, her crew can neither help themselves nor look for help
from friends or enemies. The _Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_ went
down in the battle off Coronel leaving not a single survivor to tell
the story of their destruction. Following the battle off the
Falkland Islands, the British picked up a few survivors from the
German ships, but not enough to contradict the rule. In the running
engagement in the North Sea on January 25, 1915, the _Blücher_ went
down with 650 out of 900 of her crew. Scarcely a man was saved from
the _Cressy_, the _Aboukir_, or the _Hogue_. And so the story runs,
and so it must always run when modern ships fight in earnest.
One of the most striking features of the engagements up to the
present time is the range at which they have been fought. A few
years ago 10,000 yards was considered the extreme range at which
ships would open fire. The ranges used in the Russo-Japanese War
varied from 3,000 to 8,000 yards, and the battle off Tsushima was
decided at less than 6,000 yards. In the present war the ranges have
been nearly three times as great as these. In the battle off
Coronel, the _Good Hope_ was sunk at 12,000 yards, the _Monmouth_ at
a little less. In the battle off the Falkland Islands, both sides
opened fire at 17,000 yards, and the German ships were sunk at
approximately 16,000 yards. The running fight in the North Sea
opened at 18,000 yards, and the _Blücher_ was sunk at 15,000 yards.
This extraordinary increase in the fighting range corresponds in a
measure to an increase in accuracy of fire, but it corresponds also
to a new recognition of the enormous advantage which may result from
a fortunate hit early in the action. The theoretical advantage which
should result from this has been confirmed by practical experience,
and it may be regarded as certain that battle ranges hereafter will
conform more nearly to those off Coronel than to those of Tsushima.
To summarize: The great outstanding naval lesson of the war is this:
That a nation whose navy commands the sea can rest secure, so far as
its sea frontier is concerned, from the fear of invasion or of
serious attack; that, further, its command of the sea insures to its
commerce the freedom of the sea; and that, finally, this freedom
extends equally to its armed forces, to which the highways of the
sea are opened wide, affording a possibility of offense at distant
points which is denied to the forces of the enemy.
Perhaps the lesson second in importance is that, owing to the rapid
march of invention in these days of progress, it is to be expected
that every war which comes suddenly upon the world will come with
certain elements of surprise, some of them startling in their power
and effectiveness, some of them giving promise of much and
accomplishing comparatively little. However surprising and however
effective the best of these may be, they will fall short of
revolutionizing warfare, but they may profoundly modify it; and the
nation which has them ready for use in the beginning will gain an
initial advantage which may go far toward determining the issue of
the war.
Lessons of more limited significance have to do with the
effectiveness of the submarine and the unexpected radius of action
of which it has shown itself capable; the amazing destructive power
of the torpedo; the value of the battle cruiser, both for the
defense of a coast from raiding expeditions, and for operations in
distant seas where speed is needed to bring an enemy to action, and
heavy guns to insure his destruction; the difficulty of reducing
shore fortifications by fire from ships; the necessity of aeroplanes
for scouting at sea, and the modifications in naval strategy and
tactics which will result from their general adoption.
After many months of sparring between the British and German naval
forces in the North Sea, an important engagement took place on May
31, 1916, between the two main fleets. Exactly what forces were
engaged will probably not be known until the end of the war, and it
is certain that we must wait long for definitely reliable reports as
to the losses on the two sides. It is already clear, however, that
the encounter has added little to our knowledge of naval warfare.
British battle cruisers engaged German battleships at close range
and were badly punished. In this there was nothing new or
instructive. Nor has anything new or instructive developed from what
is thus far known of other phases of the battle. Indeed the one and
only striking feature of the battle appears to be the fact that
everything occurred practically as it might have been expected to
occur. Neither submarines nor destroyers, neither Zeppelins nor
aeroplanes provided any startling features. The only lesson thus far
apparent is the old one that while dash and audacity have their
place in warfare, they need the directing and steadying hand of
judgment and of skill.
THE WORLD'S WAR
By FREDERICK PALMER
INITIAL STRATEGY
In innumerable volumes future generations will learn the details of
this war: and the discussions among delving historians will never
end. For our time a simpler task is the service set for us. We
require a record of the essential facts of the struggle arranged
with a sense of historical perspective.
For forty years the great nations of Europe had had universal
service. Every able-bodied youth, unless his government chose to
excuse him, became a soldier. For forty years the diplomatists had
held the balance of power so delicately poised that the mighty armed
forces all kept to their own sides of their frontiers. It was in the
era of modern invention and man's mastery of material power that
these great armies were formed and trained for the war that was to
test their steel.
Where Napoleon marched a hundred thousand men along parallel roads,
the modern general sends his millions on railroad trains. The
problem for each nation when war came was to concentrate with a
greater rapidity than its adversary its enormous masses of men and
guns against the enemy; and success in this was not due as in former
days to speed of foot over good highways such as the Romans and
Napoleon built, but to organized railroad and automobile transport
or rather the prompt employment of all the industrial resources of
the nation for war alone.
Out of the conflicting reports day by day emerge to the observer as
he reviews the progress of the war, with the map before him, plans
of campaign as simple in their broad lines as in Cæsar's or
Alexander's day. Generals fighting with a million or two million men
under their command have held to the same principles as if they had
only ten or fifteen thousand.
All schools of successful warfare have believed in the offensive; in
quick decisive blows which take the enemy by surprise and find him
unready if possible. They hold that the army in rest must always be
beaten by the army which takes the initiative. This partly explains
the frequent small actions indicated by the reports of trenches
taken in assault along the western front, while the lines occupied
by the armies did not radically change. Such actions are the natural
expression by any spirited force of its sense of initiative. Unless
you sometimes take some of the enemy's trenches, he will be taking
yours. By striking him in one section you may prevent him from
striking you in another. Von Moltke and the other great German
generals were only following in the footsteps of Napoleon when they
taught that the offensive should be the first thought of every
soldier.
The offensive naturally seeks to flank its adversary. Lieutenant
General Winfield Scott once stated that if two lines of men, without
any officers, were placed in a field, one line would inevitably try
to get around the end of the other. The immensity of the forces, the
power and precision of modern armies in defense has lengthened the
battle fronts from a mile or a mile and a half in Napoleon's time to
hundreds of miles.
It is an old rule, that you cannot break through a battle front,
which means that you are thrusting in a wedge which will draw fire
on both sides. Pickett tried to break a battle front at Gettysburg.
A frontal attack which was no less pitiful in its results was that
of the Federals at Fredericksburg. Grant's hammering tactics against
Lee succeeded only by the flanking operations of superior numbers.
Strategically, the situation of the Central Powers was extremely
strong. Aside from the fact that their preparedness in numbers of
trained men, in arms and material, is too well known for mention
here, their excellent network of railways enabled them to make
rapid concentration. They had what is known as the interior line,
which gave Meade his advantage at Gettysburg. Whether the interior
line is three miles or a thousand miles long does not affect the
principle involved. Interior lines mean quick transportation of
reserves from point to point in concentration. It does not matter
whether their numbers are hundreds or hundreds of thousands; the
advantage is intrinsically the same. Joffre had probably fifteen
hundred thousand on the interior line of the Marne. Meade had
seventy thousand at Gettysburg.
In keeping with all great plans that of the Central Powers was
extremely simple. Austria was to look after Russia. She could
mobilize more rapidly than Russia, and her army was counted upon to
take the offensive into Russia and deliver a hard blow before the
Russian was ready to receive her. Indeed, the Austrian was to
attempt in the east what the German attempted in the west. The
German army was confident that in any event the slowness of Russian
mobilization would give it time for its daring venture in the west.
As the French, too, had excellent railroad systems, they also would
mobilize rapidly. The full strength of the German army, therefore,
was thrown against the French and the little Belgian army of eighty
thousand ill trained and equipped men in the first month of the war.
By using their interior lines, striking first in the west and then
in the east, the Germans were warranted on paper in counting on
successes that might have ended the war within the first four or
five months.
The frontier of France from Switzerland to Luxemburg, when manned by
the large numbers of the French army, became a battle front. There
was no room for a flanking operation. German ambition for a decisive
and prompt victory over the French army must have room for a turning
movement. The Germans made the invasion of Belgium a military
necessity for their purpose, which was the destruction of the French
army. They had built the great 17-inch mortars for smashing the
Belgian fortresses in order to open the gate for the flood which was
to sweep southward to Paris. These guns were less practicable for
field work or even for trench work, being best against cities and
stationary guns in forts.
Thus the German plan of campaign was fully developed the second day
of the war. It was no longer a secret to the general public, let
alone to the French staff, which recognized that it had to deal with
this effort of the German wing to come through Belgium. A French
movement into Alsace failed. The public reason given for this was
that it was a political demonstration in raising the Tricolor over
the "lost provinces" dear to the heart of every Frenchman.
Another--a military reason--which would seem a more obvious one to
the soldier, was a counteroffensive to draw off the force of the
German offensive at Liege and Namur, hoping thus, at least, while
Liege and Namur were holding the German right in position, to force
the German left to the bank of the Rhine. If you will look at the
map you will see that this strategy becomes transparently
intelligible.
Thus early in August the French were trying to turn the German left,
and the Germans were preparing to turn the French left. Had the
Belgians had anything like an adequate army, had it been skillfully
handled; had the fortress of Namur held ten days as many thought it
would, the German right might have been held long enough to prevent
the Germans forcing a battle on the Marne. By the third week of
August, however, the Germans had won their first point. They had
broken through Namur, so incapably defended. They had broken the
French left, put the British to flight, compelling the withdrawal of
the French from German Lorraine, and now the war in the west was
being waged entirely on French soil.
Technically and strategically the French had been outdone by
superior numbers and the incapable defense of Namur, but no decisive
battle had been fought. Indeed in a maneuver for positions, the
Germans had won. The test was to come on the Marne. Had France been
beaten there, she would have been beaten for good. Her army would
have been so badly shattered that the Germans would then have been
able to have thrown such preponderance of force, in conjunction with
the Austrians, against the Russians that Warsaw (and perhaps
Petrograd) must have fallen in the first year rather than in the
second of the campaign. It would not be going too far to call the
Marne the greatest battle in all history, both because of the
numbers engaged and the result. Barring a later successful German
offensive it decided the fate of France and very likely the fate of
the war. All the trench fighting that followed, after all, only
nailed down as it were the results of the Marne.
The general public taking its news from the daily press, thinks of
the Marne as having been waged mostly in the neighborhood of Paris.
It also wonders why the Germans did not go into Paris when they were
so near. Any entrance into Paris was of secondary and of superficial
consideration. The object of an army is to beat an enemy's army. Had
the German army beaten the French on the Marne, then it had plenty
of time for its entry into Paris. If it lost the battle, it could
not have held Paris.
The fate of Paris was no less decided in eastern France than on the
banks of the Marne. Far and away from a spectacular point of view,
the most interesting portion of that decisive conflict was among the
hills and valleys and woods of Lorraine, where over a front of
eighty miles the Bavarians and the French swayed back and forth in
fierce pitched battle. For the Bavarians were striking at the French
right flank toward the gap of Miracourt and the German Crown Prince
was striking in the Argonne at the same time that Von Kluck was
striking at the French left. The Bavarians and the crown prince
failed, while Von Kluck extended himself too far and was nearly
caught in the pincers by Manoury's new army striking on his flank.
But the vital, the human, the overwhelming factor was that the
French infantry after retreat, when they might have been in
confusion and poor heart, held with splendid stubbornness and
organization under the protection of the accurate fire from their
field batteries of 75's.
It is estimated that the Germans had actually on the front, or
within ready reach of the front in the battle of the Marne,
2,500,000 men, while the French had 1,500,000. As the population of
France is approximately forty-five million and that of Germany
seventy million, the ratio in armed men to population was
substantially the same for either combatant. For any decisive
offensive the Germans needed that percentage of superior numbers.
The fact that they failed carried its own significance.
Though they withdrew they were by no means decisively beaten. It
might be said--to give them the fullest benefit of the doubt--that
they undertook to buy something and the price was too high. To
insist, however, that they did not make their best effort is to
imply that the Germans were unwilling to pay the price for that
decisive victory which would win the war. They could not take the
risk of going too far or pressing too long and too hard; for that
might have meant, with the rapid mobilization of French reserves, a
defeat that would have thrown them clear out of France and lost the
war for them.
The Germans had profited by all the lessons of the Russo-Japanese
War, which taught the importance of trenches to modern armies, and
also the value of high-explosive shells, but their own expenditure
of shells had been far beyond their anticipation, and so far as we
can learn, at the Marne they faced a shortage. They lacked the
munitions to carry on the battle to a conclusion, even if they
possessed the men and the will.
Accepting the principle of the increased power of the defensive of
modern armies, they fell back to the defensive line of the Aisne,
and now the initiative must be with the French. There followed a
movement of precisely the kind characterizing many battles over a
smaller front and that was the extension of the line as reserves
were brought up by either side.
The French tried to flank the German left but the Germans extended
as rapidly as they, until the month of October found both armies
resting one flank on the sea and the other on Switzerland. Still
another reason for the German withdrawals from the Marne was the
loss of the battle of Lublin by the Austrians, due not to the
inferiority of the Austrian troops so much as to bad generalship.
The German staff was warranted by the defeat at Lublin in thinking
that they might have overestimated the Austrian army and
underestimated the Russian. In this case they might face the danger
of an invasion of Germany itself from Russia. Owing to the
heterogeneous character of the Austrian army with its many races and
the many pessimistic prophesies that have been made about the
loyalty of the Slav portions of Austria, which were fulfilled it is
said by the mutiny of some Slav regiments, it looked as if such
apprehensions had been well grounded.
In winning Lublin the Russians had done a distinct service to the
French in relieving pressure at the Marne and by their invasion of
East Prussia they undertook a service of a similar kind. The advance
of the Russian "steam roller" into Prussia so much heralded at the
time amounted to little more than an immense raid, as numbers go in
the greatest struggle of all history.
It won laurels for Von Hindenburg, a retired general, who became the
hero of the war in Germany, again illustrating that in this, as in
other wars, the fortune of circumstances and the character of your
enemy have much to do with the creation of martial glory. For it is
an open question if as a military feat Von Kluck's skillful
extrication of his army from the position beyond Paris is not as
worthy of praise as Von Hindenburg's clever victory of Tannenberg.
Though the German armies had not been able to gain a decisive
victory over the French, they had established themselves on French
soil. All the destructive effects of war must be borne by their
adversary while they could make use of the regions occupied to
supply and feed their troops. They had put the burden of direct
economic waste on the French and deprived them of economic supplies,
while the psychologic value of driving home to the enemy population
the ravages of war is considered important by military leaders.
Nor could the economic advantage be adequately measured by extent of
area occupied; for the one-twenty-sixth of the territory of France
which was held by the Germans represented far more than
one-twenty-sixth of French producing power for war purposes. A
nation's true material wealth in peace may be in its farms and
vineyards, but in war it is in the coal and steel and machine shops.
The "Black Country" of northern France of no interest to the
tourist, plays the same part to industrial France that the
Pittsburgh region plays to industrial America. Besides, with Lille
in German hands, France had lost the income from her export trade in
textiles.
As the Russians for lack of transport were not able to follow up
their success at Lublin, the succeeding weeks showed it to be far
from a decisive victory. The Austrian army soon recovered itself. In
comparison with Russia, both Austria and Germany were highly
organized industrial nations. They had not only been able to put
larger forces into the field at the outset than their adversaries,
but they had the resources in guns and rifles, and in the factories
for the manufacture of munitions, which enabled them to increase
their actual fighting forces faster than their adversaries, and to
supply them with larger quantities of munitions.
The German army was established in well-chosen positions in France,
which might be impregnable against even forces as superior as three
to one; the Austrian army was safely established in front of the
Russians. Both the French and the Russians were short of munitions,
and particularly of guns of heavier caliber, and of high-explosive
shells, which had become most essential in trench warfare.
Relatively, the Germans were depending upon their guns to hold the
Aisne line, while the Allies were depending upon the flesh and blood
of infantry. Germany was rushing every trained man she had to the
front and training a million volunteers. Now she could spare troops
moved by her efficient railroad system, taking advantage of the
interior line for Von Hindenburg to make a drive toward Warsaw,
where he repeated the same maneuver, in keeping with German practice
of the advance to the Marne. After his drive, he fell back from
Warsaw, and intrenched for the winter.
An unskilled garrison of Belgians held Antwerp, which was on the
flank of the German forces in Belgium. The fall of this fortress
meant the release of a considerable force of Germans, and allowed
their heavier concentration toward northwestern France. Having
failed to defeat the French at the Marne, which would have dropped
not only the ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, but also Havre,
like ripe plums into their basket, the Germans next sought to take
Calais, which is twenty-two miles from the coast of England. With
Calais went the possession of all Belgium, a strip of northern
France, and a foothold on the coast within twenty-two miles of
England, and with the free sweep of the Atlantic past the narrow
English Channel in front. Von Moltke, the chief of the German staff,
who was retired about this time, was said to have still favored the
greater conception of a decisive victory over the French army by an
attack on Verdun instead of on the Channel ports; and the kaiser's
own idea was said to have prevailed against his.
Now the allied armies in the west were to face a test second only to
that of the Marne. The British army, which had been in the
neighborhood of Soissons, had moved down to the left flank, hoping
to assist in a successful turning movement. Their little force was
being increased by every reserve that they could muster and arm.
From India they brought their native troops, long-service men
trained by British officers. These, at a time when every man of any
kind was needed, were thrown into the crucible of the coming
conflict, which reached its climax during the last days of October
in the chill rains and mists of Flanders, with rich fields of a flat
country turned into a glutinous mud.
Meanwhile, in a futile attempt, the British rushed small forces of
marines to the assistance of the Antwerp garrison. With Antwerp
theirs, the Germans were free to concentrate against the Channel
ports. Once more the offensive was entirely with them in the west.
They even brought into action some of the regiments of volunteers
who had been enlisted in August; and following the German system of
expending a fresh regiment in a single charge, these new levies were
sent in masses to the attack. The Belgians, including those who
escaped from Antwerp and from being driven into Holland, rested
their left on the sea. Some sixty thousand were all they could
muster out of a population of seven millions for the defense of the
sliver of country that still remained under their flag. A type of
man-of-war which was supposed to be antedated, the monitor, with its
low draft and powerful guns was brought into action by the British
in protecting the Belgians, who finally saved themselves by flooding
their front.
Next to the Belgians was a French army, and next to them the British
army, which shared with the French the brunt of the attack in that
sector around the old town of Ypres, which was to give its name to
the Ypres salient, the bloodiest region of this war, and of any war
in the history of Europe.
So far as one can learn, the losses of the British and the French
here were about 150,000, and of the Germans, about 250,000. Within
the succeeding year, probably another 200,000 men of both sides were
killed and wounded in the same locality. At the lowest estimate,
100,000 men have been killed outright in the Ypres salient, without
either side gaining any appreciable advantage. British regiments
held in the first battle of Ypres in some cases when they had a loss
of 80 per cent.
Both Germans and Allies fought in icy water up to their hips. Many
who survived succumbed to the cold. Lacking proper artillery
support, the British used to cheer when the Germans charged, as that
meant the end of shell fire, and they could come to close quarters
with the bayonet. Little by little, but grudgingly, they had to
yield against that persistent foe. The German staff was at its best
in its organized offensive, and the British at their best
"sticking," as they call it--and the prize was an arm of salt water,
to be all Ally or part German. When the Germans gave up the
struggle, they had the advantage of ground and the British stayed
where they were. Whether or not the Allies should have evacuated
Ypres and the deadly Ypres salient and withdrawn to better strategic
positions will ever be a subject of discussion; but the loss of the
city at the time would have had a moral effect on the situation of
the Allies, and the political consideration may have outweighed the
military.
Thus the campaign of the first summer and fall came to an end. The
Allies had failed in their hope of keeping the German within his
borders; and the German had failed to win any decisive victory
which could enforce peace on all or any one of the Allies.
The casualties, on account of the vast numbers engaged, had been
staggering. Germany held a small strip of Poland, and about the same
amount of territory in France that she was to hold a year later,
while Russia held a large section of Galicia. Where the armies had
operated, lay broad belts of ruins, destroyed at enormous cost by
shell fire. The moralist might well ask if the nations would have
entered the war if they could have foreseen the result of their
first four months' struggle.
SEA POWER
For any adequate understanding of the strategy of the war as a
whole, the trench line from Switzerland to Flanders must be extended
to the east of England across the North Sea to Iceland. This war has
again demonstrated the enormous value of sea power.
Glance at a map of the globe and you will see how small a portion of
it is occupied by the great nations of Europe, which for 2,000 years
have been the most vital and influential political, commercial, and
intellectual force in the world. The present nations are for the
most part only the modern expression of the vigorous races which
Cæsar found and conquered. They have been in continual competition
and in frequent wars.
The Russians have had only a little hold on the sea--in the Black
Sea and in the Baltic; the Germanic peoples have had the Baltic and
the North Sea; France faces the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; and
only twenty-two miles from France is the island of Britain and
Ireland, and other little islands, or what are known as the British
Isles, whose superficial area is less than that of France or
Germany.
Look again at the map, at the location of the British Isles and
Germany. Mark them in black, if you will, and those two little
points represent the two great antagonists in the war. Then turn the
globe around slowly, and you come to Canada, stretching from the
frontier of the United States to the Arctic, and across the Pacific
to Australia and Hongkong, the Straits Settlements and Ceylon,
India, and then in Africa, the most valuable of all its area--and
you have the dominions and the colonies of the British Empire!
Between Germany and the rest of the world is the British navy. Every
German ship which sails the trade routes of the earth must go past
the British threshold. Germany, with a rapidly increasing
population, with an imperial patriotism which discouraged emigration
to foreign countries, wished to extend her domain; she wanted room
in which German national ambition could expand.
Through all her history, Britain has had one eye on the continent
and one on the seas. Continental affairs concerned her only so far
as they meant the rise of any power which might threaten her
dominion of the seas. The silver-pewter streak of channel kept her
safe from invasion by any continental power, yet she could land
troops across the Channel and throw the weight of her forces in the
balance when her dominion was threatened. It is her boast that she
has always won the "last battle," which is sufficient. She had only
30,000 troops in the allied army under Wellington, which delivered
the finishing blow to Napoleon.
Twenty years ago, when the German navy was in its infancy, her
policy was one of splendid isolation. France then was the second
naval power, and Russia the third. The British naval program was
superior to any two continental powers. The increase in German
population and in trade and wealth brought with it an increase in
the German navy, until Germany, with her ally, Austria, became the
threatening continental factor to British security.
Now Britain formed a combination for defense with Russia and France.
Her military part was to send 120,000 troops across the Channel to
cooperate with the French army against the Germans. She was the only
one of the great nations, except the United States, that depended
upon a regular army, which was occupied mostly in policing her
empire. Aside from her regulars, her only military organization were
her Territorials, which were something on the same order as the
American National Guard.
The number of men which she could throw across the Channel was
therefore insignificant, compared to the great hordes of the
European armies. Her real part was command of the sea. She was
either to destroy the German navy or make it helpless in interfering
with allied trade on the seas. Her Government was Liberal, her
people as a whole skeptical of the possibility of a European war.
For centuries they had been bred to believe that her security was in
her fleet. She had long enjoyed her empire, she possessed immense
capital, and her inclination was toward complacency, while Germany's
was that of the eager newcomer to power.
The situation in Ireland on account of the passage of the Home Rule
Bill had become so strained that many people believed civil war to
be inevitable. The conviction of the German Ambassador in London, as
well as most German observers, was that Britain would not actually
enter the war, when the test came. Upon her decision, it is now
evident, depended the fate of Europe. With England out, the French
army could not have saved France. For then, Germany could have had
the freedom of the seas. Her navy would have sent the French into
harbor, closing not only every French, but every Russian port to the
entrance of supplies and munitions, which would have meant food
scarcity in France, and utter scarcity of munitions in Russia.
German troops could have landed in France to the rear of the French
army. The whole complexion of the war would have been changed. So
well laid were their plans, so sure were they of their numbers of
men and guns, which they could promptly concentrate, that there
seems little question of the ability of the Central Powers to have
crushed France in the first three months of the war, and then to
have won a decisive victory over Russia, bringing home from either
country great indemnities, and, with Germany, if she choose,
annexing northern France and Belgium.
Thus the Central Powers would have established themselves so
strongly as the dominant nations of Europe, that Germany with her
seventy millions of people could have directed her energy as the
next step in her career against the Mistress of the Seas.
Had Belgium not been invaded, it is questionable if the British
public would have favored joining in the war. But this aroused
public indignation to the breaking point in support of the war
members of the cabinet. Sir Edward Grey, the British Minister of
Foreign Affairs, had his way.
The British navy was as thoroughly prepared for an emergency as the
German army. It had no illusions as to the nature of its task or of
its responsibility to the nation. Britain had superior resources in
shipbuilding to Germany. She had a fleet superior in every class of
ship, and she had led the world in naval progress--both her
dreadnoughts and her battle cruisers being of a later type than her
rival's. Her desire, inevitably, was that the German fleet should
come out at once and give battle. Confident of the outcome, she
contemplated the removal of her rival from the seas at a single
blow.
German naval policy was as careful to avoid this test as British was
to invite it. The German navy was kept safely at anchor in Kiel,
protected by immense fortress guns, by elaborate mine fields, scores
of submarines and destroyers, and by numerous nets against the
approach of any British submarine. There was no way for any enemy to
reach it except by the air. The Germans would have located any
British attempt to attack their navy, as it might have meant the
loss of important British fighting units which would have given the
Germans more nearly equal chances of victory if they chose to
precipitate an engagement. Sir John Jellicoe, in command of the
fleet, however, refused to take any risks of losing his units. He
kept his fleet in harbor, ready at any moment to steam out into the
North Sea for action. Throughout the war to this writing, not one of
his great first-class battleships has fired a shot, with the
exception of the _Queen Elizabeth_, which took part in the
bombardment of the Dardanelles forts.
Superiority of gun power has been sufficient to keep England safe
from invasion, German merchant ships from sailing the seas, protect
the sea passage of millions of troops, and insure the occupation of
the German colonies by British expeditionary forces. Except as it
was raised over a submarine or commerce raider, the German flag was
swept from the sea within the first six months of the war.
There has been no naval battle at all commensurate with the strength
of the two fleets. Each time that a British and German ship have met
in action, the overwhelming importance of speed and of gun range
have been demonstrated. Speed and range enabled Von Spee to destroy
Cradock's squadron at Coronel off Chile, with almost no loss to
himself. Later at the Falkland Islands he suffered the same fate at
the hands of Sturdee, who, with his second-class battle cruisers,
had the speed and range of the German third-class.
Again, in the battle off Dogger Bank, the _Blücher_, the
second-class battle cruiser which had only 26 knots, was left behind
by her sisters, the German first-class battle cruisers, while she
was pounded into the sea by the _Lion_, the _Tiger_, and the
_Princess Mary_, which were driving ahead at 30 knots. The honors of
the war, so far as the offensive goes, therefore, have been with the
last battle cruiser.
German naval policy, no less wise for its own ends than for the
British, has depended upon the submarine, whose importance may be
easily exaggerated and easily underestimated. No submarine can
approach the major fighting ships of a great fleet when that fleet
is properly protected by torpedo-defense guns and fast destroyers
and light cruisers. The deciding test of a submarine's power in this
respect was the fruitless attempts of the best German submarines to
reach the _Lion_ with a deathblow, when crippled, after the battle
off Dogger Bank, she was being towed home at 5 knots an hour, under
the protection of the destroyers.
However, any isolated vessel, whether a merchantman or a man-of-war,
is at the mercy of a submarine, which hunts the seas for this kind
of target. It has only to lie in wait on the trade routes until its
prey appears, submerging in case of danger. Then a torpedo sent home
and a valuable piece of property goes to the bottom of the sea. What
resourceful brigandage is to traffic on the highways, the German
submarine became to British traffic on the seas. It is the sniper of
naval warfare, but cannot give battle. It must find its protection
under the sea, while all freight and all passengers, all the world's
business is done on the surface of the sea; and the great guns of
the dreadnoughts command the surface.
[Illustration: George V, King of Great Britain and Emperor of
India.]
When brigandage becomes highly organized, it means enormous expense
in increased police work, particularly if you cannot trail the
brigands to their hiding places and force them to capitulate. In
this case the brigands' hiding places are under the protection of
powerful fortress guns and mine fields in secure harbors.
The British navy, with over three thousand ships, including mine
sweepers and auxiliaries of all sorts under Sir John Jellicoe's
command, was forced to go to immense expense and pains in combating
the submarine campaign. Many submarines were taken; but the Germans
kept on building them. It was a war against an unseen and cunning
foe, which required ceaseless vigilance and painstaking effort. The
amount of material, as well as the amount of ships required in order
to combat the submarines and also to keep the patrol intact from the
British channel to Iceland, could it be enumerated, would stagger
the imagination. Meanwhile, England had to go on building new
dreadnoughts and cruisers and destroyers at top speed, with a view
to increasing her rate of naval superiority over the Germans. Once
the German fleet had come out and been beaten, then the British
would be secure in victory, and they could spare many guns for the
army and devote all their energy to the land campaign.
While the Germans had a "fleet in being," they had an important
counter for peace negotiations. They were as rightly advised in
sticking to their harbor, as the British in holding their command of
the sea without risking their units by trying to force an entrance
into harbors equipped with every known defense of modern warfare.
In all instances the British army must wait for material if navy
demands were unsatisfied. With the tide of fortune going against the
Russians and French on the Continent, the original agreement for
only 120,000 men became entirely perfunctory, in view of the tragic
necessity of more troops to be thrown against the Central Powers on
the Continent. With a large proportion of her regular officers
killed in the first two months of the war, Britain had to undertake
the preparation of a vast army without adequate drill masters or
leaders. She had to make wholly untrained civilians into soldiers
while the war was being waged. This took time, but less time than
for the manufacture of rifles and guns. She had everything necessary
for supplying her navy, but ridiculously inadequate plants for
supplying a force of soldiers so immense. Thus England had scores of
battalions of excellently drilled soldiers prepared to go to France
before there were any rifles for them to fight with, or before they
had the all-important artillery for their support in battle.
In the early months of the war probably she was not awake to the
necessity of the situation. Besides, her manufacturers, still
confident of an early victory over Germany, were more interested in
permanently gaining markets which the Germans would lose than in
making munitions. The war was not brought home to the Englishman as
it was to the German and the Frenchman, by having bloody lines of
trenches on his own soil. Every British soldier was fighting across
the seas in the defense of the soil of another nation. Naturally, in
many cases, he was slow to a realization that this also was his own
national defense. But by the volunteer system alone, England
enlisted over two million men before conscription was threatened.
In order to centralize authority under a single man, Lord Kitchener
was intrusted with the stupendous task of organizing the new army
and seeing that it was properly equipped. He had foreseen at the
start that the war would be long and that it would be nearly two
years before England could throw anything like an armed force
adequately representing her population into the struggle on the
Continent. He had to train his officers at the same time that he
trained his men and build guns and make rifles.
Meanwhile, the German army system was complete. Indeed, there was no
want of men with military experience in any one of the continental
countries to act as drill masters. England was attempting a feat
equaled only in our Civil War, where vast armies of untrained men
were raised. But in this case, the enemy was not composed also of
recruits, but of men trained under universal service by a staff
which had traditions of preparedness as a basis for the preparation
before the war, while the British staff and the British army had
been trained in the handling of small, mobile forces in policing
their empire. But as the months wore on, it was evident that the
military decision of the war might rest with this new army when the
other armies were exhausted, when at last it reached the front in
full force with adequate arms and equipment in the hope of repeating
history, thanks to the command of the sea which gave Britain time to
prepare--by winning the last battle.
Had Britain lost command of the sea early in the war, she would have
been utterly helpless. The Germans could readily have landed a force
that would have taken London in six weeks. Even this would have been
an unnecessary military action. For, with her food supply shut off
by German ships, Britain would have had to throw up her hands and
ask for terms.
The Dominion of Canada, Australasia and South Africa would have
found themselves in the position of isolated nations, dependent for
the time being upon their own resources for defense. Their loyalty
to the British Empire has not been the least wonderful of the many
wonderful results of this war. They have sent legions of volunteers
across the seas to France and Gallipoli to fight beside the British
and the French. As for Hongkong, the Straits Settlements, Ceylon,
India, and all the colonies of the empire, they would have been
Germany's for the occupation. Such is the meaning of sea power. But
the British navy being superior to the German, held Germany in
siege.
THE SECOND SUMMER'S CAMPAIGN
Germany must make the best possible use of her comprehensive
industrial organization and of her preparedness for war and throw
the greatest possible number of men into the fighting line at the
earliest possible moment. She was practically in a race against
time; and time was with the Allies. While they retained command of
the sea the United States and other neutral nations overseas, once
their plants for manufacture were completed, could pour out supplies
of munitions.
Germany's foreign trade was practically at a standstill. From the
port of Hamburg her argosies of manufactures no longer went forth to
the world in return for raw material. Her many ships, from the
enormous passenger steamers to the small tramps which had brought
her tribute with their carrying trade, were idle. She could
manufacture, then, only for home consumption and all her plants that
had been manufacturing for export began producing for her armies.
The energies of the one hundred and twenty-five millions of people,
men, women and children, in Germany and Austria-Hungary were wholly
occupied in making war. Their object must be to push the walls back
as far as they could, and so to punish Russia or France that one or
the other would yield a separate peace. The aim of British
statesmanship must be to hold the Allies together at any expense and
keep Germany from breaking the siege. If more nations could be
brought in against Germany, that would strengthen the siege lines
and lengthen the front the Central Powers were building.
Through the winter of 1914-15 the diplomats of the Allies and the
Central Powers in Rome fought for Italy's hand with all the skill
and resources of trained European diplomacy. Responding to the
sentiment for the recovery of Trentino and Trieste which she
considered ethnologically and geographically a part of her domain
she was to throw in her fortunes with the Allies against her old
enemy, Austria.
Serbia had her troops still on the boundary of the Danube and the
Save. Rumania, facing Austria with Russia on her flank, also much
courted, was even more coy than Italy. Bulgaria, with her excellent
army, was on the flank of Serbia and blocked the road to Turkey.
Little Greece was another state watching the conflict with the
selfish interest of a small spectator, trying to judge which side
would be the victor.
Russia of the steppes and the multitudes of men was short of
munitions; her plants were incapable of making sufficient supplies.
The Baltic was closed to her by the German navy, Archangel was
frozen in and the closing of the passage of the Dardanelles shut her
off from the Mediterranean. She was in touch with the sea only in
the Far East, with the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains between
her and the manufacturing regions of the United States. Her crop of
wheat, which she exchanged for manufactured goods in time of peace
was no less interned than the manufactured products of Germany. If
the Dardanelles were opened she could empty her granaries and
receive arms and munitions in return. Therefore, the first winter of
the war, while their main armies were intrenched in colder climes,
both sides turned their attention to the southeast. In November the
Turks had joined the Central Powers, thus flying in the face of the
historical Turkish policy, so cleverly applied by Abdul Hamid, in
playing one European power against another and profiting by their
international differences.
For many years German diplomacy, capital and enterprise had been
busy building up German influence in Asia Minor. Abdul Hamid had
been overthrown under the leadership of Enver Pasha and other
officers who had been trained in Germany according to German
military methods and who had absorbed the German ideas. Von der
Goltz, a German general, had reorganized the Turkish army. The
access of Turkey to the Central Powers formed the addition of
another thirty million people, which gave them one hundred and fifty
million on their side.
Through the assistance of the Turks, the Germans never for a moment
deserting their idea of keeping the initiative and forcing their
enemies to follow it, threatened an offensive against the Suez
Canal, which was abortive, but served the purpose of requiring
British preparation for its defense. Germany saw more than mere
military advantage in the Turkish adventure. She was reaching out
into the Mohammedan world which stretches across Persia and Asia
Minor, through little known and romantic regions, to India where, as
a part of her Indian Empire, England rules more Mohammedans than the
population of the German Empire. The unrest which was reported to
have been ripe in India for the last decade might thus be brought to
a head in a rebellion against British authority; as it might, too,
in Egypt, the Sultan of Turkey being the Padishah or head of the
Mohammedan faith.
At least Britain would be forced to maintain larger garrisons than
usual both in Egypt and India against any threat of insurrection.
Among all who have had to deal with the Oriental peoples, and
particularly those who know them as intimately as the British rulers
of India, the importance of power--and publicly demonstrated
power--is fully understood. To the average British Indian or
Egyptian subject, Britain has been an unconquerable country, the
mistress of the world.
Many reasons united in calling for some action on the part of the
British to offset that of the Germans. With Russia in retreat the
Balkan States, which had regarded her prowess as irresistible, were
losing their faith in the Allies. One successful blow would do more
to dispel their skepticism and to bring Italy in on the side of the
Allies than sheafs of diplomatic cablegrams and notes. During such a
crisis every message in the game of war diplomacy becomes only a
polite calling card that represents armed men.
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 Châlons. 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.
[Illustration: M. Raymond Poincaré, President of France.]
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 rôle.
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 Auerstädt 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 Bülow 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 Württemberg, 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. Bülow, 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 Bülow'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 Mülhausen 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 Lunéville 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 Bülow 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'Espérey, 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 Bülow 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
Châlons 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 Bassée, 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 Königsberg, 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.
The German plan of campaign was simple. Hindenburg was to strike east
and south from East Prussia at the Russian lines along the
Niemen-Bobr-Narew. Mackensen, having pushed the Russians out of
Galicia, was to strike north through Lublin and toward Brest-Litovsk.
A new army was to invade Courland and aim at Riga. It was the German
hope that the main Russian masses would be caught and enveloped by
Hindenburg and Mackensen, that Poland would be taken and all its
garrisons, and the bulk of the Russian military power be destroyed.
The first blow fell at Gorlice in Galicia in the last days of April.
Mackensen, furnished with the greatest train of artillery war had
ever seen, burst through the Russian lines along the Dunajec,
destroyed Dmitrieff's army, which faced him, almost captured the
Russian Carpathian forces and drove the Russians rapidly beyond the
San, retook first Przemysl and then Lemberg, thus clearing all but a
corner of Galicia.
The main German and Austrian armies were then sent north toward
Brest-Litovsk, while Hindenburg began his thrust by attacking
Ossowetz and the Niemen-Bobr-Narew barrier of forts. By this time
the world knew that Russian ammunition had failed and for many weeks
the possibility of a tremendous Russian disaster existed. Step by
step the Russians were pushed back. The fall of Warsaw was assured
in July and it was not until August that the escape of the Russian
garrison was certain. The same problem was raised about Kovno and
Brest-Litovsk, but again the Russians won clear. Late in August the
final net of the Germans about Vilna was drawn, but for the last
time the Russians eluded it.
And with the battle of Vilna the German eastern campaign practically
ends. In the north the Russians held Riga and the Dwina line, in the
center they were behind the great marshes of Pinsk, to the south
they were behind the Styr and Stripa, still holding Rowno, still
clinging to a corner of Galicia. They had lost hundreds of thousands
of prisoners and many guns. All of Russian Poland, most of Courland,
and much other territory had been surrendered. But they had kept
their armies intact and were once more in line.
In so far as the German campaign had been designed to free Austrian
soil and relieve the pressure upon Austrian and German fronts in the
east, it had been a shining success. It had served, too, to restore
German prestige in the Balkans. But it had come too late to keep
Italy out, and it had not eliminated Russia.
Unless the Germans were prepared to repeat the fatal Napoleonic
march upon Moscow, there was now nothing for them to do but abandon
their eastern campaign for the winter, to dig in and hold until the
spring permitted new operations. But this offered to the Russians a
period of recuperation and rest. In the spring they would have new
armies and fresh artillery. These circumstances were the measure of
the German failure in their second offensive. In their first they
had set out to dispose of France and had suffered defeat at the
Marne. In the second they had undertaken to put Russia out, and
after a long series of victories, Russia had escaped and was now
beyond their grasp.
From the military point of view the Russian failure was even more
serious than the French, because it came a year later, and at the
hour when the superior numbers and resources of the enemies of
Germany were already beginning to tell.
THE THIRD GERMAN OFFENSIVE
The two preceding German campaigns had been based on purely military
considerations. The first was a true Napoleonic conception designed
to grasp a Napoleonic opportunity. The second was partly imposed
upon Germany by Russian success and Austrian failure. There was no
longer a question of destroying the opponents in order, it was a
question of eliminating one and then finding a basis for peace with
the others. The third German campaign, that in the Balkans, was
political quite as much as it was military. It was designed to
provide Germany with some profit for her great sacrifices and her
great losses, but it was no longer a question of the conquest of any
considerable foe.
By the operations of British sea power, Germany had now practically
lost her colonial empire. It was certain that with peace she would
not again be permitted to make use of British colonies or ports, as
she had done before. Her overseas commerce with belligerents and
their colonies was bound to be ruined, even if peace came soon, for
the period of the war it was, of course, abolished.
The entrance of Turkey on the German side had opened for the Germans
a new field for industrial exploitation, if there could once be
opened a road from the Danube to Constantinople. This field would be
beyond the reach of sea power. Once Germany had taken actual command
at Constantinople, once the railroad from Hamburg to the Bosphorus
was open, it was possible to threaten Britain in Egypt, and perhaps
ultimately in India by the Bagdad and Mecca railways.
Such a threat, coupled with one more successful campaign, might
exercise a decisive influence upon the minds of the people of the
allied countries, and in opening a road to the Golden Horn, Germany
might find the path to peace. Already there was apparent willingness
in Berlin to evacuate Belgium and northern France, only from Russia
did Germany now insist upon tribute in the form of conquered
provinces. But until the road to Constantinople was open, until the
Serbian nuisance was abolished, peace could not be considered.
Turkey, too, was calling for aid. Early in the year the Anglo-French
fleets had tried to force the Dardanelles. Their failure had been
followed by a land attack at Gallipoli, which had so far failed, but
Turkish ammunition and artillery was inadequate for a sustained
fight, and there was needed German aid. To lose the Dardanelles was
to see Turkey conquered, Russia provided with munitions, and the
whole German dream of expansion to Asia Minor destroyed.
It was necessary, too, to provide the German people with a new
victory. They had been bitterly disappointed that the Russian
campaign had not brought peace, or, at the least, the elimination of
Russia. A new and relatively cheap success, the conquest of the
Balkans, would fire their imagination and again stimulate their
hopes for a victorious peace. In addition, Bulgaria now beckoned to
the Germans. Her army was at the disposition of the two kaisers, but
there was plain peril that if the coming were too long delayed, the
Allies might succeed in persuading Ferdinand to cast his lot with
the camp that now offered him Serbian Macedonia and Turkish Thrace,
and were suggesting the further _pourboire_ of Greek Kavala.
Accordingly Germany decided to go south, having gone west and east
without finding peace or decisive victory. She had available for
this operation troops no longer needed against Russia since the
campaign on this front had died out, and she had to command it, the
great Mackensen, whose fame now rivaled that of Hindenburg, whose
victories had regained Galicia. "Constantinople and Peace" became
the new German watchword, just as "Paris and Peace" and "Warsaw and
Peace" had been in preceding months.
And at the outset of this third campaign it is perhaps appropriate
to point out that Germany was now to achieve that complete military
success that had been denied to her in France and Russia, she was to
win a victory in the military sense which was beyond cavil, but she
was this time to lose the political profit she had hoped, because
she had mistaken the importance in the minds of her enemies of the
Balkan field and fatally overestimated the war weariness of the
peoples that opposed her. At the Golden Horn she was to find not
peace, but the necessity for new campaigns.
THE SERBIAN PHASE
On the military side the Serbian campaign was the simplest of
operations. For many months the Serbian forces had been posted south
of the Danube and the Save and east of the Drin, looking over their
frontiers into Hungary and Bosnia. Behind them from the Danube at
Belgrade to the Ægean at Saloniki ran the Orient railroad, by which
they were munitioned. At Nish halfway to the sea, the line drew near
to the Bulgarian frontier and sent a branch off, which passed
through Bulgaria and reached Constantinople.
The Saloniki railway was the life line of Serbia, it was also the
natural route for a retreat, if the Austro-German attack became too
heavy. But it was fatally exposed, should Bulgaria enter the war
against Serbia. In the Treaty of Bucharest, Greece and Rumania had
undertaken to join Serbia should she be attacked by Bulgaria, and
the mission of Greece was to cover the Saloniki railroad as far
north as it was necessary to join hands with the Serbians.
Now, while the Bulgarians were beginning to mobilize and the
Austro-German hosts were gathering to the north, Serbia appealed to
her former allies to keep their agreement. Both declined, and their
refusal was fatal. The Allies had relied upon Greek promises, and
had failed to collect any considerable force at Saloniki. They had
trusted Bulgaria and refused to let Serbia attack her neighbor
before Bulgarian mobilization was complete. Once Bulgaria had
mobilized the doom of Serbia was settled.
What happened was this: The Germans forced the passage of the Danube
north and east of Belgrade and came south along the broad Morava
River Valley, driving the Serbs before them. Thanks to the heavy
artillery of the invaders Serbian resistance was impotent. The
Austrians, meantime, crossed the Drin and came east from Bosnia.
Think of Serbia as a rectangle and you can visualize two sides of
the figure as closing in on the center, which was the heart of
Serbia.
At the appointed moment the Bulgarians struck west from a third side
of the rectangle, speedily crossed the Belgrade-Nish-Saloniki
railroad, and thus cut off the true line of Serbian retreat, that
upon Saloniki.
Very early in the campaign the Bulgars seized Uskub, thus
interposing a wedge between the small Anglo-French force at Saloniki
and the Serbs about Nish to the north of Uskub. Meantime a desperate
concentration was taking place at Saloniki, and an Anglo-French
force, commanded by Sarrail, was being pushed up the Saloniki
railroad toward Uskub to open a road to the Serbs to join their
allies. The operation suggested that successfully conducted in
Flanders in the opening months of the war, which enabled the Belgian
army to escape from Antwerp and join their allies in Flanders.
But this operation failed. The French came north to the outskirts of
Veles, twenty miles from Uskub, just too late to save the Serbians,
who now fled west to Monastir and south to Montenegro and Albania.
As a fighting force the Serbs were eliminated, the wrecks of their
armies barely escaping to the Adriatic and Ægean coasts at Durazzo
and Saloniki. Bulgarian troops forced the Katchanik gorges and took
Prisrend, and German and Austrian forces entered the ill-omened
Plain of Kossovo and overran the ancient Sanjak of Novibazar.
Before the storm that was now moving south, the French and British
retreated upon Saloniki, and presently began to construct about this
Greek city lines and defenses recalling those Wellington built at
Torres Vedras before Lisbon to restrain the flood of Napoleonic
invasion in the Iberian peninsula. The conquest of the Balkan
peninsula, save for Greece, was now as complete as Napoleon's own
success in Spain had been more than a century before.
In due course of time an Austrian army repeated the operations of
the Germans, this time succeeding in reducing the strongholds of
Montenegro, which had defied the Turk through long centuries. Mount
Lovetcen, the peak which looks down upon Cattaro and commands the
inner bay, was at last taken, Scutari followed, northern Albania was
overrun, Nicholas followed Peter into exile. All Macedonia was taken
and the Allies forced out of Serbia, which had become an entirely
conquered country. To complete the conquest of the Near East there
was needed nothing but a successful siege of Saloniki, but this
required preparation and the rebuilding of destroyed railroads, and
so the Allies found respite in this Ægean port for a brief time.
Such was Germany's third campaign. Her victory enabled her to send
munitions to Constantinople, and insured the failure of the allied
attack at the Dardanelles. Only a few weeks later the allied armies
evacuated the Gallipoli Peninsula; thus testifying to the decisive
character of the German operation. Still later Turkish reenforcements,
doubtless drawing upon German sources for munitions, defeated another
British expedition almost under the walls of Bagdad and drove it in
retreat down the Tigris, ultimately surrounding it at Kut-el-Amara, a
hundred miles to the south.
Again, there came immediately forecasts of another Turkish thrust at
Suez, under German direction, a first attack having failed in the
previous winter. Whether Germany actually obtained any considerable
stock of provisions or foodstuffs may be doubted by her succor, but
it is clear that her campaign had enabled her to make use of many
thousands of Turkish troops, who were waiting only for arms, it had
given her control of the Bulgarian army, a small but efficient
force, and it had provided an eventual means of attacking the
British Empire by land, once the advance upon Egypt could be
organized.
This last circumstance is worth noting, for the time had now arrived
when the Germans perceived that Great Britain had so far escaped
injury, was the single one of the larger powers who had drawn profit
without terrible loss from the war and was becoming the determining
force in the allied camp, because its resources were still
unexhausted and its armies only just coming into the field, while
German numbers were approaching a positive decline. If Germany could
reach Suez, conquer Egypt, using Turkish armies and German genius
and munitions, she would deal a heavy blow to the British Empire,
and she might compel the British to listen to proposals for peace,
which were now contemptuously thrust aside by London.
In sum, the Serbian campaign saved Turkey, disposed of Serbia,
enlisted Bulgaria, opened the road to the Near East and to
subsequent attacks upon Egypt and perhaps upon India, but it did not
bring peace, and it did not inflict any immediate injury upon any
one of Germany's larger foes, only Serbia and Montenegro actually
suffered serious loss, and the destruction of their armies was but a
detail in a world war.
ITALY
For the purposes of a summary it is unnecessary to review in detail
the Italian operations. They have no distinctive challenge to the
reader. Italian statesmanship imposed upon the Italian high command
a task which made immediate victory impossible, and assigned to
Italy the useful but inglorious rôle of occupying some 400,000
Austrian troops, and thus contributing to the strain imposed upon
the Central Powers and to the hastening of the moment when
exhaustion might be expected to set in.
Had Italy decided to enter the war at the moment when Russia was
destroying Austrian armies in Galicia in September and October of
1914 she would almost unquestionably have supplied the necessary
numbers to bring a speedy and decisive defeat for the Central
Powers. Again, had she selected the moment when Russian armies were
at the crests of the Carpathians, and Przemysl had just fallen, she
would have probably made the German offense against Russia
impossible, brought Rumania in with her, and produced the collapse
of Austria. Bulgaria would not have enlisted with the Central
Powers, Greece would almost certainly have attacked Turkey, and the
Balkan campaign would not have taken place.
But German diplomacy averted the second peril, and Italian alignment
with Austria and with Germany in the Triple Alliance made an attack
at the opening of the war unthinkable. When Italy did come in, the
German victory in Galicia had been won, Russia was in retreat, the
allied defeat before the Dardanelles forts and the Russian disasters
had produced a profound effect in Balkan capitals, and Austria was
able to find the troops to meet and check the Italian advance almost
at the frontier. Since that time the Italian operations have been
merely trench conflicts, and Italy has nowhere penetrated a score of
miles into Austrian territory, nor has she taken Trieste, Trent, or
even Gorizia.
If one desires a parallel for the Italian operations it is to be
found in the later phases of the Peninsula War against Napoleon.
This field was never of decisive importance, but it did require the
attention of several of Napoleon's best marshals, and drew off
thousands of French soldiers needed by the great emperor in the
campaigns in eastern Germany, where his fortunes were finally
decided. What Wellington did, the Italians under Cadorna have been
imitating in their own peninsula, and their service to their allies
has thus been very considerable.
Nor is it necessary for the purposes of so rapid a review of the
main phases of the war to dwell upon the allied failure in the west
between the end of the battles of Flanders in November, 1914, and
February, 1916. At the beginning of 1915 what were allied hopes and
purposes in the west? Unquestionably French and British public
believed that with the coming year the Grand Alliance would be able
to crush Germany. Unquestionably French and British high commands
planned to open the summer with a drive that would clear France and
Belgium. As for the Germans, having laid their plans to go to
Russia, they asked nothing of their western armies save that the
lines should be held.
The French began their spring drive in Artois and in Champagne. The
Artois fighting of May and June was exceedingly severe, incidental
gains were made, but the British were suddenly disclosed lacking in
all proper ammunition, lacking in numbers to support the French
offensive, and barely able to hold their own lines about Ypres,
after desperate fighting, made memorable by the first use by the
Germans of gas as a weapon of offense.
From June until September the western armies stood still, while
Britain organized her munition manufactures and continued to send
her new troops to the Continent. Kitchener's "million" was not
realized until the late fall, instead of the early spring. But
when, in the latter days of September, the British attacked about La
Bassée, and the French in Champagne, the muddling of British
officers cost the Allies a considerable triumph in Artois, and the
French victory in Champagne was purely local. Some 30,000 prisoners,
200 cannon, this was the fruit of an offensive which cost the
British 60,000 casualties, and the French hardly less than twice as
many.
German defense, therefore, fulfilled its mission in the west, German
armies were able to drive deep into Russia without having to detach
reenforcements to the west. Such offensives as the Allies ventured
were either complete failures or merely local successes, without
major value. Belgium and northern France were not liberated, and
there was, as yet, not even a promise of the crushing of Germany.
ALLIED POLICY
In the brief space that remains I desire to discuss the policy of
the nations which are fighting the Teutonic Alliance. The German
purpose at the outset of the war has been discussed. Franco-Russian
preparation had been made long before the war, and the general plan
of the high commands of the two allies worked out without any
material interruption. The same is true of the cooperation of the
British army. This simply followed out the plans agreed upon years
before.
It is not true, as has been frequently asserted, that France or her
allies were surprised by the German invasion of Belgium, this had
long been foreseen. It is not true, as was believed widely at the
time, that Joffre invited disaster by sending the mass of his troops
into Alsace-Lorraine, yielding to political and patriotic sentiment.
He did nothing of the sort. Such troops as were sent into these
provinces fulfilled their mission and contributed to drawing German
corps away from the north. The bulk of the French armies and the
British Expeditionary Corps were in line along the Belgium frontier
from Arlon to Mons when the Germans began their great drive.
The French were surprised in two respects. They had not foreseen the
rapidity with which the German heavy artillery would reduce the
forts in Belgium, the fall of Namur was the greatest catastrophe of
the first period of the campaign, and they had not dreamed that the
Germans would be able to mobilize so many troops in so short a
period. Joffre had planned to meet the Germans along the Meuse and
the Sambre, that is along the French frontier, but when the German
advance began, his troops on these fronts were outnumbered by at
least two to one, not because the mass of the French troops had been
sent to Alsace-Lorraine, but because the French had not foreseen the
capacity of the Germans to mobilize their reserves and had little
more than their first-line troops ready, while the Germans were
making use of Landwehr and even Landsturm formations in the first
shock.
Once this fact was clearly established, Joffre resolutely drew his
forces back until he was able to put more reserves in the field and
thus approximately restore the balance between the two armies. But
he was still heavily outnumbered at the decisive moment, winning his
great battle with inferior forces. His enemy had reckoned on the
traditional eagerness of the French to attack, and had expected to
obtain a decisive victory, through superior numbers, in the first
days of the war. The impression which the press reports gave in the
early days, that the French were driven from defeat to defeat and
almost succumbed to the German attack is far from accurate. In point
of fact, the French armies, after suffering marked but relatively
insignificant reverses at the outset, reverses due to the blunders
of the subordinate generals in part, and to the greatly superior
German numbers and artillery in the main, were drawn back in
obedience to a carefully conceived plan, were denied the opportunity
to fight, as they desired, until the exhaustion of German strength,
ammunition, and transport, and the increase in French numbers gave
the opportunity for a victory. The whole opening campaign was fought
on the French side with a very keen recollection of the mistakes of
1870, and the result justified the strategy.
But with the end of the Battle of the Marne both the Allied and the
German plans collapsed. Neither side had foreseen clearly the
possibility of a battle in which the French might win a decisive
victory, yet lack the numbers to enforce the decision absolutely.
But the Germans were able to meet the situation promptly and, by
preparing a position on the Aisne, to retain a considerable portion
of the ground they had occupied in their first rush. Thus in failing
to repeat their triumphs of the Franco-Prussian War and of the Seven
Weeks' War, they had escaped the disaster of Napoleon at Waterloo,
when he, too, had staked all on a single throw.
In the weeks and months that followed the German defeat at the
Marne, allied understanding of the actual nature of the war
developed only slowly. Until the coming of spring and the British
failure to get men or munitions, the French and the British public,
and probably their soldiers, believed that the Germans were shortly
to be turned out of France. But with the failure there was at last
established the real situation, the war had taken on the character
of our own Civil War, it had become a struggle in which the decision
would follow the exhaustion of one of the contending forces and the
incidental victories of either side could not contribute materially
to the ending of the war.
In the Civil War the North was exceedingly slow in learning this
lesson and it was not until General Grant at last assumed the
command of all the Northern armies that an intelligent policy was
adopted. This policy has been summarized as the policy of attrition
and it is now generally recognized as the policy on which the
enemies of the Central Powers rely for ultimate success. Grant's own
statement of this policy was as follows: "To hammer continuously
against the armed force of the enemy and his resources, until by
mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be left to him
nothing but submission." By this policy Grant won his war.
Now the allied policy, which it is necessary to recognize, to
understand the war as it is viewed by one of the two contending
forces, is this: The Allies are satisfied that the German numbers
have begun or are beginning to fail. They fix at around 8,000,000
the total man power of Germany at the outset, using all means of
computation including their own experience. They figure that at the
end of the first eighteen months Germany had lost permanently not
less than 3,500,000, possibly 4,000,000. They know that it requires
upwards of 3,000,000 men to hold Germany's present lines and about
1,000,000 to perform other necessary services.
Now no such wastage has to be faced by the Allies as a whole. France
is in the German situation, but Great Britain is still possessed of
large numbers of men and her losses are under 600,000, while her
population together with that of her colonies is above 60,000,000,
whites alone being considered, against Germany's 67,000,000.
Russia's man power is practically limited only by the ability to
equip and munition. Italy has, as yet, made little draft upon her
resources. Austria, on the other hand, has suffered more heavily,
proportionately figured, than Germany.
Within a time that can be approximately fixed, the Allies believe
that Germany will have either to shorten her lines or underman them.
If she undermans them she will face the peril that overtook Lee
about Richmond, when, as he said, his lines were stretched so thin,
they broke. If Germany shortens her lines, this will be a confession
of defeat and will deprive her of the conquered territories.
Meantime the entire strategy of the Allies is summed up in Grant's
grim words, and as Grant kept up his hammering on all the fronts of
the Confederacy so the Allies are keeping up their pressure.
But attrition of men is only half; there is the question of food and
of money. Command of the sea insures the food supply of the Allies
and their financial resources greatly surpass those of Germany.
Germany is suffering--we have Harden's word for this, because of
food shortage, she is suffering from economic paralysis resulting
from the blockade and she is suffering from the lack of certain
materials needed in war. She is compelled to find money for her
other and poorer allies. The enemies of Germany do not expect that
she will be starved out or that she will have to surrender for lack
of materials to make ammunition. But they do believe that shortage
of food, economic pressure, financial difficulties, will go hand in
hand with the failure of numbers.
In a word the Allies are fighting a war with many weapons of which
the army is only one and the British navy another, perhaps the most
effective. They are not fighting to win a campaign and they are not
basing their expectation of victory on the incidents in any one
field or in any single campaign. The Germans, on the contrary, as we
have seen, have undertaken three tremendous campaigns, the first to
win an absolute victory on the battle field, a victory which would
make the Germany of William II the successor of the France of
Napoleon I in Europe; the second to dispose of one of the great foes
and thereby win a limited but considerable success; the third to win
peace and an incidental opportunity to expand toward the east, the
only direction in which expansion cannot be checked by sea power.
The Allies still expect to crush Germany; by crushing Germany they
mean bringing her back to her frontiers of 1914, detaching
Alsace-Lorraine from her and possibly Prussian territory east of the
Vistula. They mean to destroy her fleet, demand indemnities for
Belgian and French sufferers, they mean to abolish what they regard
as the Prussian menace to peace. They are fighting Germany as Europe
fought Napoleon and with the same determination. On the German side
the struggle is also being waged in the Napoleonic fashion, Germany
is seeking to employ the Napoleonic method and has so far achieved
something of the early success of the great emperor.
But the simplest fashion in which to describe the later phases of
the conflict is to say that a war of action has become a war of
endurance, that Germany has sought and missed a decision on the
battle field and her foes are now seeking the decision through
economic forces quite as much as military and through casualty lists
rather than brilliant campaigns.
THE WAR CORRESPONDENT
By ARTHUR RUHL
When the American fleet was sent to Vera Cruz in the summer of 1914
and it looked for a time as if an army might go into Mexico, Major
General Funston explained the conditions under which correspondents
were to go to the front. There was to be no repetition of the
scandalous free-for-all of the Spanish War, when news prospectors of
all sorts and descriptions swarmed over to Cuba in almost as
haphazard fashion as Park Row reporters are rushed uptown to cover a
subway explosion or a four-alarm fire.
The number of men was to be limited and their privileges strictly
defined. Only the press associations and some twenty or thirty
newspapers were to send correspondents, and they must put up
substantial bonds for each man--one for his good behavior, the other
to serve as an expense fund against which would be charged his keep
as a civilian guest of the army. These conditions fulfilled, the men
were to accompany the expedition with the privileges, practically,
of officers or neutral attachés.
They would join an officers' mess or have a mess of their own with
similar service; they might provide their own horses which would be
cared for with the other horses of the unit to which they were
attached. They were to stay where they were put, so far as nearness
to the fighting was concerned, according to the judgment of the
commanding officer, and all their dispatches must first pass a
military censor.
These rules were read with some dismay by those not included in the
provisional list. To many who had hoped to see something of a war
they doubtless seemed severe, yet it is a fact that had they been
put into effect, the correspondents in Mexico would have seen much
more, comparatively speaking, than any group of correspondents has
seen in Europe. They would actually have accompanied the army,
sharing throughout the expedition the day-to-day life of the
fighting men, like the old-fashioned "horseback correspondent"--and
nobody in Europe has done that.
At the beginning of the war, England permitted no correspondents at
all at the front, and while a group was chosen, it was well into
1915 before they were even allowed to cross to France. Once they
reached their headquarters they saw a good deal. They lived at or
near the front instead of merely shooting up and back for a glimpse
of it. They met many officers more or less intimately, saw the life
behind and in the trenches; occasionally they were taken to
observation stations from which they saw the effect of artillery
fire, and even, perhaps, in the distance, charging infantry. Yet the
number who had even these privileges was so limited that it included
but one American.
Mr. Frederick Palmer was thus chosen to act as a sort of
correspondent at large for the American press. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett,
an English journalist, acted in a similar capacity for the English
press and, indeed, for the rest of the world, at the Dardanelles. He
saw a great deal, as much, perhaps, as any reporter has seen of any
campaign, but he was almost alone in his glory, and so far as the
distribution of such privileges is concerned, the English have been
more cautious than any of the belligerents.
The French military authorities were more open minded, yet, while a
few favored sons or the head of some press association whose
position in Paris was almost as secure as that of an accredited
diplomat, were quietly taken up to the trenches from the first,
several months had elapsed before a group of correspondents went to
the front. The desirability of publicity was better understood
later, many neutral correspondents visited the trenches, and a few
specially favored individuals spent some time at or near the front,
but, even here, permission was obtained as a result of individual
effort rather than as a part of a general scheme for handling, more
or less impersonally, all applicants in good standing.
In Germany, correspondents were rather freely taken to the various
fronts from the first. One reason for this, was, perhaps, that the
Germans, with their thorough organization of everything, including
censorship and secret service, may have known better just how far
they could go. They were not afraid of what might get through the
wall, because the wall was tight, and they knew just what could get
out and what couldn't. At any rate, many reporters, both native born
and foreign, were getting glimpses of the various fronts while the
English group were still eating their heads off in London. Once
there, however, they saw less, as a rule, than the English
correspondents finally did, for their trips were generally mere
visits--a sort of Cook's tour in war time.
A quotation from an article of mine in "Collier's" written after a
trip through Belgium and down to the first-line German trenches at
Givenchy will suggest the nature of these excursions:
"You go out a sort of zoo--our party included four or five
Americans, a Greek, an Italian (Italy had not yet gone into the
war), a diminutive Spaniard and a tall, preoccupied Swede--under the
direction of some hapless officer of the General Staff. For a week,
perhaps, you go hurtling through a closely articulated program,
almost as helpless as a package in a pneumatic tube--night
expresses, racing military motors, snapshots at this and that, down
a bewildering vista of long gray capes, heel clickings, stiff bows
from the waist, and punctilious military salutes. You are under fire
one minute, the next shooting through some captured palace or
barracks or museum of antiques. At noon the guard is turned out in
honor, at four you are watching distant shell fire from the Belgian
dunes; at eleven crawling under a down quilt in some French hotel
where the prices of food and wines are fixed by the local
commandant. Everything is done for you--more, of course, than one
would wish--the gifted young captain conductor speaks English one
minute, French or Italian the next, gets you up in the morning, to
bed at night, past countless sentries and thick-headed guards
demanding an _Ausweis_, contrives never to cease looking as if he
had stepped from the bandbox, and presently pops you into your
hotel in Berlin with the curious feeling of never having been away
at all."
There were a great many trips of this sort under the auspices of the
German General Staff, and every neutral correspondent who came to
Berlin with letters establishing his position as a serious workman
in good standing in his own country, could hope, after a reasonable
interval for getting acquainted, to obtain permission to go on one
of them. It was not an ideal way of working, to be sure, yet the
"front" was a big and rather accidental place, and one could
scarcely touch it anywhere without bringing back something to help
complete the civilian's puzzle picture of war.
One man would get a chance to spend a night in the trenches, with
the sky criss-crossed with searchlight shafts and illuminating
bombs; an automobile party might be caught on some East Prussian
road with the woods on either side crackling with rifle fire as the
skirmishers beat through the timber after the scattered enemy as
after so many squirrels. Our moment came one afternoon in the German
trenches at Givenchy, when, with the English trenches only a stone's
throw away, both sides began to amuse themselves by shooting
dynamite bombs.
Groups of native-born correspondents were likely to see rather more
than outsiders, and the more authoritative home writers were
attached not infrequently to an army corps or staff headquarters for
weeks at a time. The Berlin and Vienna bookshops are filled with
books and pamphlets written by such men, though, of course, little
of their correspondence has ever reached America. A man like Ludwig
Ganghofer, for instance, became so much of an institution that
papers even joked about him, and I remember a cartoon--in "Jugend,"
I think--picturing him puffing up a hill where a staff was waiting
and the commanding officer saying "Ganghofer's here. The attack may
now begin!"
In Germany, however, as in France, at least during the first year of
the war, each correspondent, particularly a foreigner, was merely a
privateer, making his own fight for a chance to work, and pulling
what wires he could. After his brief excursion he returned to
Berlin, a mere tourist, so to speak, and had to begin the old
tiresome round--his own embassy--the German Foreign Office--the War
Office--all over again. There was no organization in which he could
enroll, so to speak, he had no permanent standing. This
drawback--from the correspondent's point of view--was met in
Austria-Hungary by the Presse Quartier, an integral part of the army
like any other branch of the service, whose function it was to
handle the whole complicated business of war correspondence.
The Austro-Hungarians, prepared from the first for a large number of
civilian observers, including news and special writers,
photographers, illustrators and painters, and, to handle them
satisfactorily, organized this Presse Quartier, once admitted to
which--the fakers and fly-by-nights were supposed to be weeded out
by preliminary red tape--they were assumed to be serious workmen and
treated as the army's guests.
The Presse Quartier--the Germans later organized one on somewhat
different lines--was in two sections; an executive section with a
commandant responsible for the arrangement of trips to the various
fronts and the general business of censorship and publicity; and a
second, an entertainment section, so to speak, also with its
commandant, whose business it was to board, lodge, and otherwise
look after correspondents when they were not on trips to the front.
At the time I visited the Presse Quartier the executive section was
in the city of Teschen, across the border of Silesia; the
correspondents lived in the village of Nagybicse in Hungary, two or
three hours' railroad journey away. In this village--the most novel
part of the scheme--some thirty or forty correspondents were living,
writing their past adventures, setting forth on new ones, or merely
inviting their souls for the moment under a régime which combined
the functions of tourists' bureau, rest cure, and a sort of military
club.
For the time being they were part of the army--fed, lodged, and
transported at the army's expense, and unable to leave without
formal military permission. They were supposed to "enlist for the
whole war," so to speak, and most of the Austro-Hungarian and German
correspondents had so remained--some had even written books
there--but a good deal of freedom was allowed observers from neutral
countries and permission given to go when they felt they had seen
enough.
Isolated thus in the country--the only mail the military field post, the
only telegrams those that passed the military censor--correspondents
were as "safe" as in Siberia. They, on the other hand, had the
advantages of an established position, of living inexpensively in
pleasant surroundings where their relations with the censor and the
army were less those of policemen and of suspicious characters than of
host and guest. To be welcomed here, after the usual fretful dangling
and wire-pulling in war office anterooms and city hotels was
reassuring enough.
Correspondents were quartered in private houses, and as there was
one man to a family, generally, he was put in the villager's room of
honor, with a tall porcelain stove in the corner, a feather bed
under him and another on top. Each man had a soldier servant who
looked after his boots and luggage, kept him supplied with cigars
and cigarettes from the Quartier commissariat--for a paternal
government included even tobacco!--and whack his heels together
whenever spoken to and flung back an obedient "Ja wohl!" We
breakfasted separately, whenever we felt like it, lunched and
dined--officers and correspondents--together. There were soldier
waiters, and on every table big carafes of Hungarian white wine,
drunk generally instead of water. For beer one paid extra.
The commandant and his staff, including a doctor, and the
officer-guides not on excursions at the moment, sat at the head of
the long U-shaped table. Anyone who came in or went out after the
commandant was supposed to advance a bit into this "U," catch his
eye, bow and receive his returning nod. The silver click of spurs,
of course, accompanied this salute when an officer left the room,
and Austro-Hungarian and German correspondents generally snapped
their heels together in semi-military fashion. All our goings and
comings, indeed, were accompanied by a good deal of manner. People
who had seen each other at breakfast shook hands formally half an
hour later in the village square, and one bowed and was bowed to
and heard the sing-song "habe die Ehre!" a dozen times a day.
With amenities of this nature the Quartier guests passed their time
while waiting their turn to go to the front. There were always,
while I was there, one or more parties in the field, either on the
Italian or the Russian front, or both, while a few writers and
artists were well enough known to be permitted to go out alone. The
Hungarian, Mr. Molnar, for instance, whose play, "The Devil," was
seen in America a few years ago, was writing at that time a series
of letters under the general title, "Wanderings on the East Front,"
and apparently, within obvious military limitations, he did wander.
One day, another man came into lunch with the news that he was off
on the best trip he'd had yet--he was going back to Vienna for his
skis, to go down into the Tyrol and work along glaciers to the
battery positions. Another man, a Budapest painter, started off for
an indefinite stay with an army corps in Bessarabia. He was to be,
indeed, part of the army for the time being, and all his work
belonged to the army first.
Foreigners not intending to remain in Austria-Hungary could not
expect such privileges, naturally; but if they were admitted to the
Quartier at all they were sent on the ordinary group excursions like
the home correspondents themselves. Indeed, the wonder was--in view
of the comparative ease with which neutral correspondents drifted
about Europe; the naiveté to put it mildly, with which the wildest
romances had been printed in American newspapers--that we were
permitted to see as much as we did.
When a group started for the front it left Nagybicse in its own car,
which, except when the itinerary included some large city--Lemberg,
for instance--served as a little hotel until they came back again.
The car was a clean, second-class coach, of the usual European
compartment kind, two men to a compartment, and at night they bunked
on the long transverse seat comfortably enough. We took one long
trip of a thousand miles or so in this way, taking our own motor, on
a separate flat car, and even an orderly servant for each man.
Each of these groups was, of course, accompanied by an officer
guide--several were detailed at the Quartier for this special
duty--whose complex and nerve-racking task it was to answer all
questions, make all arrangements, report to each local commandant,
pass sentries, and comfortably waft his flock of civilians through
the maze of barriers which cover every foot, so to speak, of this
region near the front.
The things correspondents were permitted to see differed from those
seen on the other fronts less in kind than in quantity. More trips
were made, but there is and can be little place for a civilian on a
"front," any spot in which, over a strip several miles wide, from
the heavy artillery positions of one side to the heavy artillery of
the other, may be in absolute quiet one minute and the next the
center of fire.
There is no time to bother with civilians during an offensive, and,
if a retreat is likely, no commander wishes to have country
described which may presently be in the hands of the enemy. Hidden
batteries in action, reserves moving up, wounded coming back,
flyers, trenches quiet for the moment--this is about as close to
actual fighting as the outsider, under ordinary circumstances, can
expect to get on any front.
The difference in Austria-Hungary was that correspondents saw these
things, and the battle fields and captured cities, not as mere
outsiders, picked up from a hotel and presently to be dropped there
again, but as, in a sense, a part of the army itself. They had their
commandant to report to, their "camp" and "uniform"--the
gold-and-black Presse Quartier arm band--and they returned to
headquarters with the reasonable certainty that in another ten days
or so they would start out again.
Another advantage of the Quartier was the avoidance of the not
uncommon friction between the civilians of the Foreign Office and
the soldiers of the War Office. The Foreign Office runs things, so
to speak, in times of peace and it is to the Foreign Office that the
diplomatic representatives of foreign powers apply for favors for
their own fellow-citizens. But in war time the army runs things, and
the Foreign Office official who has charge of correspondents is
continually promising things or wishing to do things he is not sure
of being able to carry out. The result is often a rather unpleasant
sort of competitive wire-pulling between correspondents, some trying
the Foreign Office, some the War Office, some attacking both at the
same time--one would even hear it said now and then that the surest
way to get anything from the soldiers was to complain to them that
the Foreign Office civilians wouldn't do anything for you!
In Austria-Hungary the Presse Quartier acted as a bridge between the
two. It was the definite court to which all applicants were referred
and a good deal of aimless waiting about and wire-pulling eliminated
at once. And having cleared away the preliminary red-tape, the
correspondent had, in the Quartier commandant, an agent more likely
to push his interests than the civilian officials back in the
capital and more likely to be listened to by those at the front.
The war correspondent had been "killed off" so many times in
newspapers and magazines of late years that one might expect him to
be as dead as the dodo, and of course the old-fashioned "horseback"
correspondent--a sort of unofficial envoy extraordinary from the
reading public, who carried his own elaborate outfit and rode more
or less where he pleased--is extinct. A horse would have been about
as useful on most of the European fronts, under the conditions
prescribed, as a rowboat. What the correspondent needed, in the few
hours he was permitted to see anything, was a fast motor car, and
quite as much as the car itself the pass, without which it would
have been stopped at the first crossroads.
Wandering round the active front where any point in a strip of
several miles wide, however apparently peaceful, is under
observation and likely to be at any moment under fire, is not
practicable even were it permitted. Modern artillery, long range
rifles, aeroplanes and field telephones have put an end to such
strolling; while the elaborate system of communication in such
highly civilized neighborhoods as those in which the present war is
being fought, and the care with which every scrap of information
about the enemy is pieced together and coordinated, makes it
imperative that every possible source of such information shall be
controlled.
Nevertheless the Great War had no sooner started than the old guard
bobbed up serenely, and with them new ones--men and women writers,
adventurous novelists, privateers of all sorts. They have kept on
working and seeing more or less, and have performed necessary and
valuable service. They have described the life behind the front, the
life in towns, camps, prisons, hospitals and given the news--the
rough general outlines--of the swiftly changing drama. Very few have
seen any fighting, properly speaking, and although bits of their
work here and there deserve to become part of the permanent history
of the war, they themselves would be the last to suggest that they
have told the real story.
The real story is of two kinds. There is the narrative of the
events, the orderly, understanding arrangement and coordination of
the showers of facts and rumors that blow in from a hundred sources
to the great news centers far from the front. And there is the story
of personal experience, the sensations of the individual as he looks
into the face of war. The first tells what happened, the other how
it felt. For the one, the correspondent is too near, for the other
too far away.
The division of the enormous battle fronts into innumerable little
news-tight compartments, so to speak, understood in their entirety
only by the commanders in chief at the centers of the telegraph and
telephone network far behind the front, makes it impossible for a
correspondent to see very far beyond his own nose. Even were he
permitted to understand the general plan of his own army he could
scarcely know, while still at the front, the general plan of the
enemy. A well-informed observer working comfortably at his desk in
one of the capitals, with the news of the world at his disposal,
with experts on every subject within easy calling distance, and with
every sort of map and reference book, is much better able to write a
story of the war--such a story as this, for instance--than any
correspondent actually at the front, however fortunately situated.
There have been many such "correspondents at home" and reporters
returning from first-hand glimpses of this and that, have often for
the first time understood the significance of such details when they
were seen through the broad perspective and leisurely analysis of
such long-distance observers.
The nourishing flavor of such a little book as Fritz Kreisler's
"Four Weeks in the Trenches"--scarcely more than a magazine article,
with no sensational adventures and no attempt at rhetorical effect,
and of several little collections of published letters--reveals at
once the correspondent's other disability. People feel that this man
really was _there_--this is what one real man with a gun in his hand
did feel, and not what some civilian, sitting safely out of range,
imagines crowds of men might have felt. Its very incompleteness,
things left out because of sensibilities so stunned that events made
no mark as they whirled by, is often more impressive than the
conventional war correspondent's cocksureness and windy eloquence.
There are scores of men like this gifted violinist--playwriters,
painters, journalists, men trained to see things in various
ways--drawn in by universal service and now buried in the mass, but
destined some day to emerge to normal life.
From them the story of the individual, of the fighting itself, must
come long after the war is over. It will come piecemeal, from
diaries now stuck away in the soldiers' pockets, from memories that
will only begin to act when peace has given weary brains a chance to
work again, from men now tired and dirty and horror-stunned and
scarcely able to remember their own names.
PART I--INDIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR
POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM 1866 TO 1914 WITH A
CHAPTER ON THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF JAPAN
In order to understand properly the underlying causes which were
responsible for the outbreak of the Great European War of 1914, it
is necessary to be acquainted with the recent historical development
of the various nations involved. In considering the various phases
of this development it becomes evident that in modern times the
history of any _one_ country exerts a powerful influence upon the
history of all the other countries. The vast development of means of
communication between the various countries of the earth--railways,
steamships, telegraphs, telephones--resulted in an equally vast
increase of their commercial and social intercourse until one might
almost claim that there is not a single event of any importance
whatsoever happening in _one_ country which does not make its
influence felt throughout the entire world. It is not always easy or
even possible to determine the exact degree to which the various
nations of the world are affected by this mutual interdependency,
and frequently many years elapse before it becomes evident at all
that what one nation has done or neglected to do has an important
relation to the fate of another nation, even though the two nations
may have few points of contact and be separated by great distances.
To describe historical events as they happen day by day or even year
by year throughout the modern world is an almost hopeless task,
because a description of this nature would result in a confusion
which would be even worse than an entire lack of knowledge
concerning these matters. We will, therefore, consider separately
the historical development of each nation and thereby try to arrive
finally at a clear understanding of the historical causes of the
Great War of 1914.
Some of these causes, of course, may be claimed to go back to the
beginnings of the history of the various nations; but a majority of
them had their origin in comparatively recent times. It is also true
that the Napoleonic Wars resulted in certain international
alignments some of which, at least in part, held over until
comparatively recently. But it was only approximately at the
beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century that
international relations assumed the important position and the
fateful influence which they hold now. The short war of 1866 between
Prussia and Austria, fought primarily to determine the supremacy in
German affairs, may conveniently be considered for our purposes a
starting point of modern international history because it resulted
in changes so important that their final results had a powerful
influence over the fate of the entire civilized world. Inasmuch as
this war affected more directly Germany and Austria, we will first
consider these two countries.
CHAPTER I
GERMANY
In 1866 there was strictly speaking no Germany. That part of the
world which during the past forty-five years has been known as
Germany consisted of a large number of small states and
principalities, speaking the same language and having in a general
way the same customs and ideals. All attempts to find some basis for
their political unification, however, miscarried. Whenever Prussia,
which beyond doubt was the biggest and most powerful of all the
German-speaking states, attempted to take the lead it was opposed by
powerful Austria as well as by a varying number of smaller states.
The latter, much as they desired in certain ways to bring about a
united Germany in order to be better protected against their much
more powerful neighbors, Russia and France, feared these hardly
more than a Germany under the control of Prussia. It gradually
became clear that unification of Germany would never be realized as
long as Austria and Prussia were contending for leadership. How
utterly impossible it was for these two countries to achieve any
lasting success as long as they made a common cause of anything had
been proven only two years earlier, when both went to war with
Denmark about the succession to the throne of the duchies of
Schleswig-Holstein. For no sooner had they succeeded through their
combined efforts in defeating Denmark and thereby forced the
northern kingdom to relinquish its claims on Schleswig-Holstein than
they found it next to impossible to settle among themselves the
division of the newly acquired territory.
It was about at this time that the greatest statesman of modern
Germany, Bismarck, began to become all powerful. It was he who
recognized more clearly than anyone else the need of eliminating
Austria from German affairs, and then finding some cause which would
appeal strongly and equally to all the other German states. The
difficulties connected with the division of Schleswig-Holstein
offered to him an opportune cause for a quarrel with Austria, and
when he felt in 1866 that the Prussian army had been sufficiently
re-formed and built up to overpower not only Austria, but any of the
other German states which might possibly join with her, he went to
war. Prussia had succeeded in forming an alliance with the newly
united Italy on the basis of the latter's desire to regain the north
Italian territory which was then in the possession of Austria. On
the other hand the latter had drawn to its side the kingdoms of
Hanover and Saxony, as well as all the south German states. The war
was one of the shortest in the history of mankind, considering the
size of the countries involved and the odds at stake. In less than
two months, after only one important battle--at Sadowa--had been
fought on July 3, and lost by the Austrians, peace was concluded at
Prague. As a result of the arrangements made then, Austria was
eliminated from German affairs and withdrew all its claims for
Schleswig-Holstein, and Prussia was free to form a confederation of
the north German states with itself as a leader, while the south
German states were permitted to form a federation of their own.
Austria furthermore lost Venetia to Italy. Of the Austrian allies,
the south German states were let off easy with a money indemnity,
but Hanover, Nassau, and Hesse-Cassel lost their independence and
became part and parcel of the Prussian kingdom.
This addition to its territory made Prussia even more predominant in
Germany than it had been in the past and Bismarck immediately
proceeded to take the first step in the unification of Germany. This
took the form of the North German Confederation and so well did he
build at that time that the new government which he conceived then
has ever since remained the government of united Germany. In its way
it was unique. It was a mixture of monarchism and federation. Each
of the federated states retained a large amount of control over its
internal affairs, but yielded to Prussia control of its armies,
foreign relations, railways, and posts and telegraphs. The King of
Prussia became the president of this federation and as such its
chief executive. The legislative powers were intrusted to two
bodies, the Bundesrat and the Reichstag, the former representing the
various states, the latter their people. The members of the
Bundesrat were appointed by the rulers of the states which they
represented, whereas the members of the Reichstag were elected by
universal manhood suffrage.
This rise of Prussia's power and influence disturbed and displeased,
among all the European states, none more than France. It was only a
few years before Napoleon III saw himself forced, partly through
internal difficulties and partly through his failures in Mexico and
Italy, to challenge William I of Prussia. In this combat the
predominancy in German affairs was no longer at stake, as it had been
between Prussia and Austria; but so powerful had Prussia become that
France felt it necessary to defend the leadership in Central European
affairs which it then claimed. The revolution which had broken out in
1868 in Spain and resulted in the expulsion of Queen Isabella became
the indirect cause of the Franco-Prussian War. After various
unsuccessful attempts on the part of Spanish statesmen to find a king
for their country among the European princes they offered the crown of
Spain to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a relative of the
King of Prussia. Naturally the prospect of having a German prince rule
its western neighbor greatly excited France and led immediately to a
strong protest on its part. But not satisfied with this Napoleon
demanded from King William a promise that he should at no time permit
his cousin to accept the Spanish throne. These demands of the French
were promptly refused by the King of Prussia, and Bismarck and Von
Moltke saw to it that the message as delivered was brusque and
calculated to excite France to anger. Indeed, opinion was so deeply
stirred that Napoleon felt compelled to ask for a declaration of war.
On July 19, 1870, this step was taken.
Undoubtedly Napoleon was influenced in his decision by his
expectation that the south German states would either side openly
with him or else at least refuse to side with Prussia, basing this
hope on their fear that if Prussia should become all powerful in
Germany their own independence would be threatened. His
expectations, however, were not realized. As much through the
wonderful statesmanship of Bismarck, who knew when to give as well
as when to take, as through the awakening of an immensely strong
national feeling throughout the length and breadth of Germany, the
south Bavarian states, within a few days after France had declared
war, sided openly with Prussia. This combination proved too strong
for France, for it was superior not only in numbers and equipment,
but especially in leadership. The unified German armies won battle
after battle in quick succession and by September 2, Napoleon found
himself with a large army hopelessly surrounded in Sedan and was
forced to surrender. He was sent to Germany as a prisoner of war and
his downfall resulted in the end of the Second Napoleonic Empire and
the declaration of the Third French Republic.
The German armies immediately proceeded to the siege of Paris and on
January 8, 1871, the French capital had to capitulate. A few months
later, in May, France and Germany made peace, the former paying an
indemnity of $1,000,000,000 and ceding Alsace and a part of
Lorraine. In the meantime the unification of Germany had progressed
rapidly. Even before Paris had fallen, the German princes, headed by
the King of Bavaria, had offered to King William the presidency over
a new federation containing both the north and the south German
states. This federation was to be known as the German Empire and its
president as the German Emperor. On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of
Mirrors at Versailles King William accepted this offer, and was
proclaimed German Emperor.
It was quite natural that in the beginning the path of the newly
created German Empire should not be strewn exclusively with roses. At
the time of its formation, it is true, it had nothing to fear from
other nations. France which, in a way, may be considered at that time
as its only external enemy, had been beaten, and beaten in such a way
that it was clear that years would have to elapse before the new
republic would be in a position to undertake anything against Germany.
Indeed, a great many thoughtful people throughout the entire civilized
world were hoping that this period of recuperation through which
France was bound to pass would result in a gradual understanding
between Germany and France. The gulf which separated them immediately
after the Franco-Prussian War, to be sure, was wide; for the attitude
of the two peoples in regard to the taking over of Alsace-Lorraine was
widely different. The French felt that Germany had abused its power at
the moment of its victory to tear an integral part off the body
politic of the republic. They vowed that although the necessity of the
moment had forced them to submit they would never forget the "lost
provinces," and this spirit, this demand for restitution, was fostered
and nourished throughout the years to come. From time to time it
seemed as if the great masses of people in the two countries would
finally reach an understanding. But whenever the cry for restitution
seemed to have been stilled, politicians of one kind or another
succeeded in making it sound again. Germany on the other hand claimed
that Alsace-Lorraine had originally been a German province, had been
taken from Germany by force, and that the French had neither a legal
nor moral claim to the territory.
Internally the new chancellor of the German Empire had a great many
battles to fight in order to achieve the financial, social, and
military reforms which he deemed necessary for the safety and
upbuilding of the empire. It is not necessary for our purposes to go
into these struggles in detail. It suffices to note in passing that
they resulted in increases and in vast improvements of the German
army, and laid the foundation for the marvelous industrial and
commercial expansion of the German Empire.
The leading men of the German Empire fully appreciated the need of
their country of a long period of peace in order to work out the
many problems which the unification had brought about. In every
possible way the diplomats, politicians, and rulers of the various
German states did their best to make it clear to the other nations
that they had no desire for further conquests and were, to say the
least, as anxious as their neighbors to maintain peace. In 1872 the
three emperors of Russia, Austria, and Germany met together with
their ministers at Berlin, and although no treaty was concluded at
that time, the conferences which took place then and throughout the
following years had a powerful influence on the continuation of
European peace. About the same time Italy also attempted to show its
good will toward Germany by sending the crown prince of the new
kingdom on a visit to the German Emperor, and it seemed at that time
as if the fate of all of Europe and, indeed, of the entire civilized
world, was in the hands of the central European states--Germany,
Austria, Russia, and Italy. Both France and England seemed to be
isolated.
However, it was not long before clouds appeared on the firmament,
and they came, as they had come before, and as they were to come
again, from the East.
The first disturbance of the cordial relations, that apparently had
been established among Germany, Austria, and Russia, was caused in
1876 when the Near Eastern question became again an issue between
Austria and Russia. The latter's inquiries at Berlin as to the
German attitude in a possible war between the other two empires were
met with an evasive answer, except that it was made clear that
Germany would not permit Russia to deal with Austria beyond a
certain point. As a result of this stand Russia decided to settle
the Eastern question through a war with Turkey rather than with
Austria.
During the Russo-Turkish War, April, 1876, to February, 1877, the
causes and results of which will be considered in another place,
Germany maintained the strictest neutrality, so strict in fact that
at its conclusion Germany was chosen as mediator. To this part the
young empire adhered most carefully during the Congress of Berlin,
June to July, 1878, and, difficult though it was, showed the
strictest impartiality. At the same time it refused to gain any
profit from the readjustment which resulted. In spite of this,
however, it received little appreciation on the part of Russia,
which apparently had expected a more active display of gratitude on
the part of Germany for its own friendly neutrality during the
Franco-Prussian War. In a way this marks the beginning of a strong
anti-German feeling in Russia, which by 1879 had grown strong enough
to make a war between the two countries seem possible. Bismarck
immediately took the necessary steps to insure Germany against such
a possibility by concluding an alliance with Austria, October 7,
1879, at Gastein. In this he was bitterly opposed by William I,
whose personal feelings were leaning much more toward Russia than
Austria. However, a threat on the part of the chancellor to resign
brought this rapidly aging emperor to terms.
The Austro-German alliance was defensive only. It stipulated that in
case of an attack by Russia on either contracting party the other
was to assist with its entire forces. In case of an attack by any
other power only friendly neutrality was to be observed, except if
such a power was in any way supported by Russia, when the first
stipulation was to take force.
Three years later, in 1882, Bismarck strengthened Germany's
international position by overcoming Italy's enmity against Austria
to the extent of inducing the southern kingdom to join in this
defensive alliance, which from then on was known as the "Triple
Alliance," and which endured until Italy's declaration of war
against Austria in 1915. The chancellor had now succeeded in placing
the keystone in Germany's defensive bulwark. He had to fear no
longer the possibility of a joint attack by Russia and France. For
the powerful triple block of Central Powers would make any joining
of forces by these two countries impossible.
A result of this security was Germany's entrance among the colonial
powers of the world. The objects of this step were twofold: to open
up new fields for the rapidly expanding German trade, and to divert
German emigration in such a way that its steady stream would not
drain the Fatherland of too large a proportion of its surplus
population. From 1884 on Germany used every opportune moment to
acquire colonial possessions. Though for many years none of the
other powers seriously objected, it was quite natural that sooner or
later Germany would find itself in conflict with the other
colonizing powers, especially with the greatest of all--England.
In 1884, Alexander III, who had succeeded his murdered father in
1881 and who was much less pro-German than the latter, showed signs
of succumbing to France's strenuous advances looking toward an
alliance to enable the republic to gratify its desire for revenge.
But Bismarck's diplomatic genius not only prevented this, but even
brought about a secret neutrality treaty between the two empires,
which, however, was entirely separate from the Triple Alliance.
Gradually, thus, the chancellor accomplished all that he had set out
to do after the formation of the German Empire to place his country,
not only among the great powers of the world, but to gain for it
within certain limitations, a leading position. With his internal
policies he was hardly less successful, although he had many hard
battles to fight to gain his end. The year 1888 saw him in the
zenith of his power, and Wilhelmstrasse (where the German Foreign
Office was located) promised fair to take the place that Downing
Street had held. That year, however, brought a change of rulers to
Germany. In March William I died at the age of ninety-one, and was
succeeded by his son Frederick III, the son-in-law of Queen
Victoria of England. This in itself endangered Bismarck's position
and influence. For ever since 1879 Frederick had more or less openly
allied himself with the National-Liberal party, which strongly
opposed the chancellor's foreign policy. The new emperor, however,
had been stricken with a mortal disease, which in 1878 was diagnosed
as cancer of the throat, and which resulted in his death on June 15,
1888, less than four months after he had become emperor.
His son and successor, William II, was less than thirty years old, a
more or less unknown quantity, with little experience, but
possessing a very strongly individual temperament. The break between
him and Bismarck came soon, and resulted in the latter's resignation
on March 18, 1890. Germany could ill spare the master hand that had
guided so successfully its destinies since 1870, and at no time
since has Germany's international position been so strong or its
foreign policies as purposeful as under its first chancellor.
The second incumbent of this office was General von Caprivi,
1890-1894, whose accomplishments were chiefly of a military and
economic nature. Of the former the most important was the change to
the two years' term of army service, of the latter the conclusion of
commercial treaties with Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, and
Rumania. In the field of foreign relations his term of office
yielded the important result of a better understanding with England,
accompanied, however, by a lessening of friendly relations with
Russia. This period also brought to Germany the island of Helgoland
in exchange for certain readjustments of boundaries in Africa.
Bismarck's work in regard to cementing the German-Russian relations
was undone by the refusal of Germany to renew the secret neutrality
treaty which expired in 1890, and in 1891 Russia concluded an
alliance with France which from then on considerably reduced the
influence of the Triple Alliance. The menace of a France recovered
and supported by a strong ally again loomed up, and the
dissatisfaction of German public opinion, increased by the severe
criticism of the retired "iron chancellor," resulted finally in the
resignation of Von Caprivi.
His successor, Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst, 1894-1900,
was an experienced diplomat, distantly related to the emperor, and
possessing much stronger convictions of his own. By this time
Germany's industrial development had made immense strides. From an
agricultural country it had changed to a nation deeply interested in
industry and commerce. Its merchants contended everywhere for the
world's trade. Articles of German manufacture made the term "made in
Germany" a by-word of quality and efficiency. Riches flowed into the
empire in a steady stream. Riches, however, were not the only result
of this development. The young empire began a fight for leadership
in manufacture and commerce, in science and the arts. To achieve
these ambitions, German agents and salesmen penetrated all
countries, new and old, and built up vast markets for German
products, at the same time using every means available to undermine
and destroy the economic influence of other nations. Nor was the
empire contented with material gain and new-found prestige; Germany
abandoned its former policy of concerning itself only with European
affairs, and became a sinister and unscrupulous opponent of other
great powers in the dangerous game of "world politics." We are not
concerned here, however, with this feature of Germany's advance,
which is fully treated elsewhere.
This period brought out more and more the strong individuality of
William II, who had early--earlier, perhaps, than anyone
else--recognized his country's new needs, and who put all of his
immense vitality into his efforts to fill them. Some results were:
the beginning of a very definite and extensive naval program, the
building and completion (1895) of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Canal between
the Baltic and the North Sea, active participation in the
development of Turkey in Europe and Asia, the acquisition of a
"sphere of influence" in China, and the lease of Kiao-chau in 1897,
the purchase of the Carolina Islands in 1899. All these activities
brought Germany more and more frequently in contact and often in
conflict with English interests. Its naval ambitions aroused the
suspicions of the old mistress of the sea, and relations which at no
time since the death of William I had been overcordial became more
strained.
In 1909, Prince Hohenlohe was succeeded by his Foreign Secretary,
Count, later Prince von Bülow. Though an experienced diplomat and a
man of great intelligence and culture, he found his road beset with
difficulties. Not only had he to face in international politics at
every step the dual alliance of France and Russia, which was
becoming rapidly more intimate, but English aversion against German
independence in matters of world politics, and English resentment
against German expansion grew day by day. The culmination of this
general dread of German ascendancy found expression in the formation
of the Anglo-French _entente cordiale_ of 1904 and the Anglo-Russian
arrangement of 1907, of which we shall hear more when considering
the histories of the three countries directly involved. Whether or
not the German claim that these agreements were concluded with the
ulterior motives of isolating and then crushing Germany and her
allies had foundations, is of little importance. For the fact
remains that they were considered in this light, not only by
Germany's diplomats, but by the nation at large, and ever after
Germany's foreign policy was based on this consideration.
Even before England had actually come to a definite understanding
with Russia, the first test was put to the new line-up of the
European powers. In 1905 trouble arose about the extension of French
influence in North Africa. Although a general European war seemed
more possible at that time than at any other time within recent
years, it was averted as a result of the so-called Algeciras
Conference. In this first inning Germany won together with Italy and
Austria against France, backed by Russia and England, and the result
was the declaration of Morocco's integrity.
[Illustration: Europe in Twelfth Century, Historical Map.]
During the next decade the foreign policy of Germany showed the same
chief characteristic that was noticeable in that of the other
countries--high tension. One is almost tempted to compare this
period of Europe's history to the hours immediately preceding a
violent electrical storm. The diplomatic atmosphere was surcharged
with electricity, and long before the storm really broke the growl
of distant thunder could be heard and occasional flashes of
lightning announced its approach. That, in spite of all signs, so
many people firmly believed that the storm would never break, is
easily explained with the innate optimism of mankind, and is on a
par with the spirit of unbelief in unpleasant things that makes
people go out unprepared for rain, as long as rain only threatens,
but does not actually fall.
In 1911, Morocco again almost became the stumblingblock. In that
year France annexed this north African country in spite of the
agreement that had been reached at Algeciras. Germany immediately
entered a strong protest, which, however, was later withdrawn in
consideration of certain commercial privileges in connection with
the development of the country, and the cession of territory in
central Africa. Once more war had been avoided.
This period also saw numerous upheavals in the Balkans. Throughout
these Germany made it clear that it would permit nothing in that
part of the world which would work out to the disadvantage of its
ally--Austria.
In spite of temporary reduction in the tension existing between
Germany on the one hand, and England, France, and Russia
respectively on the other, the differences between these countries
became more marked, diplomatic clashes more frequent, and their
mutual suspicion of each other more pronounced. England especially
resented the ambitious naval program of Germany, which seriously
threatened British supremacy on the sea and forced England to
tremendous expenditures to maintain its overwhelming naval strength.
France was menaced by Germany's increase in the peace strength of
its army, which was accomplished in 1913 by means of special
taxation known as the "Wehrbeitrag."
The German-French relations were influenced considerably, not only by
French colonial policy, but also by conditions in Alsace-Lorraine. We
have already heard of the French attitude in regard to these so-called
"lost provinces." Right after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and
for a considerable period afterward, the desire for restitution and
the demand for the reconquest of the lost territory undoubtedly was as
sincere as it was widespread among the French nation. It is, however,
no less true that these sentiments decreased in fervor, and most
likely would have subsided entirely if they would have been permitted
to take their natural course. Instead of this, this question gradually
became a political issue of the first magnitude, and now one political
party and then another would use it for its own purposes. It was thus
that the French-German animosity was kept alive and nurtured. On the
German side the more or less uncompromising attitude toward all things
French as far as Alsace-Lorraine was officially claimed to be a matter
of political necessity. At any rate it gave continual opportunities to
French politicians to make capital out of the conditions as they
existed in Alsace-Lorraine. One of the most severe outbreaks of
anti-German and antimilitary feeling in that part of the German Empire
happened in December, 1913, in the small Alsatian garrison town of
Zabern, when some Alsatians of French antecedents and sympathizers
were wounded in a clash with German officers and soldiers. Unimportant
as this affair was, in a way, it resulted in a great deal of very
pointed and unfriendly comment in the French press, and undoubtedly
added fuel to the fire of Franco-German animosity which was burning
even then stronger than it had done for many years.
In 1908, near the end of Prince von Bülow's incumbency of the
chancellorship, his position became very difficult, because of the
general disapproval on the part of the nation of the German
emperor's custom to make long speeches concerning foreign affairs.
Some of these speeches caused a considerable amount of offense in
foreign capitals, and, while this matter, too, may be considered a
minor detail in Germany's relations with foreign powers, it had at
the same time some influence. Throughout this period the chancellor
was supported by a combination of the National-Liberal and
Conservative parties. But in 1909 the continuation of this
combination became impossible on account of the divergence of
opinion existing between these two parties in regard to the
Government's financial reforms. The National-Liberal as well as the
Social-Democrat and other radical members of the Finance Committee
withdrew, and the Conservatives formed a new combination with the
Center party. This new majority, however, made so many changes in
the original Government bill, and forced through measures which the
chancellor so thoroughly disapproved, that he handed his resignation
to the emperor. It was not accepted right away, but upon his
continued insistence, he finally was permitted to resign in July.
His successor was Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, up to then Minister of
the Interior of Prussia, a member of an old patrician house with
strong National-Liberal tendencies.
In 1910 the Far Eastern problem again became acute. Russia, Japan,
and England, of course, were most vitally interested in the future
of China. Both France and Germany, too, had important commercial
interests. For a time it looked as if these great powers would clash
about the Chinese question, which each wished to solve in such a
manner that the greatest possible advantage and gain would come to
itself and none or the least possible to the others. However, in
1910 the United States proposed that the Manchurian railway, just
then the principal issue, be financed by an international syndicate,
reasserting, thereby, its previous stand for an "open-door" policy
in China. Germany supported this attitude, and undoubtedly did not
make through this action any friendships among the other powers.
In May, 1911, the Reichstag, after long discussion, accepted a bill
giving a separate constitution to Alsace-Lorraine, making, thereby,
this territory more equal to the other parts of the German Empire.
This action, of course, was welcomed by the inhabitants of
Alsace-Lorraine, and was a long step toward reconciling them
sometime to the German overlordship. In the same degree in which it
accomplished this it caused displeasure in France, where, by this
time, every success in the Germanizing of the "lost provinces" was
viewed naturally with almost as much disapproval as the original
occupation.
It was in the same year, 1911, that the Morocco difficulties arose
again with France, as we have already seen, but in spite of the
appearance of a German gunboat at the port of Agadir and the
threatening attitude of Germany, matters were finally settled
amicably. The terms of the settlement, however, pleased neither the
German nor the French nation at large, and a considerable feeling of
enmity remained.
Late that year, 1911, a determined campaign was started by the
German Navy League in an effort to bring about an increase of
Germany's naval forces through the force of public opinion. This
activity, which met with considerable success, was viewed with alarm
and displeasure in England. These sentiments grew and spread to
France when in the spring of 1912 the newly elected Reichstag
adopted a bill carrying greatly increased expenditures for both army
and navy.
In the summer of 1912 the Balkan question, which is treated in
detail in a separate chapter, assumed threatening proportions.
Germany as well as the other great powers, however, at that time
managed to find a common basis and kept all from active
participation in the two Balkan wars, restricting their activities
to the exertion of their various influences for as just a settlement
as was possible under the circumstances when the time for settlement
had arrived in 1913. In spite of the inactivity of the powers there
can be no doubt that their respective attitudes at that time toward
the various Balkan States and their ambitions had an important
influence on the latter's attitude toward the various powers after
the war of 1914 had broken out.
In December, 1912, the Triple Alliance was renewed, although even
then the conflicting interests of Italy and Austria in the Balkans
had made such a step somewhat doubtful.
The early spring of 1913 brought with it the uncovering of a rather
extensive scandal in connection with the manufacture of guns and
other war materials. One of the Socialistic leaders in the Reichstag
charged some officials of the great munition firm of Krupp and of
other firms with bribery of War Department officials, and with the
creation of artificial war scares in other countries for the sake of
increasing munition orders. Although the German courts later
sustained this contention to a certain extent, and although it
resulted in a certain amount of antiwar sentiment, Germany continued
with its well-defined program of increased preparedness. That the
Government had behind it in its efforts the full support of public
opinion was proven in June of the same year, 1913, by the passage in
the Reichstag of another bill carrying considerable increases in the
peace strength of the army, and by the fact that the necessary
expenditures were met by special taxation, which, though severe in
its effects alike on poor and rich, was borne cheerfully by the
entire nation.
[Illustration: Nicholas II, Emperor of All the Russias.]
Although the Balkan question continued to be the source of
considerable anxiety and extensive diplomatic conferences, the
political horizon of Europe during the latter half of 1913 and the
first half of 1914 seemed comparatively cloudless to all but the
keenest observers. Like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky,
therefore, came the news that the heir to the throne of
Austria-Hungary, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife, the
Duchess of Hohenberg, had been assassinated during a visit to
Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, June 28, 1914, and that the
Austrian Government had determined to hold Serbia responsible.
England, France, Russia, and Serbia tried, in vain, during the next
five weeks to check the outbreak of a general European war.