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