in making his selections, but in some cases this tendency seems to have been due more to an almost superstitious belief in heredity than to a partiality toward the aristocracy. True, he liked to have a flattering and subservient entourage, and, with an overweening conceit of his military knowledge, expected deference to his views on matters martial. Even the great Graf von Schlieffen, Chief of the General Staff from 1891 to 1906, from whose brain came the German war plan of 1914, felt the necessity of pandering to this weakness. He issued instructions for manœuvres and war games providing that 'when the Kaiser takes part he must be allowed to win; he cannot, as Kaiser, be beaten by one of his generals.'

On the other hand, Schlieffen's successor, Helmuth von Moltke, although a weaker and an inferior mind, actually restrained the Kaiser's military vanity, and was less a pliant courtier than is commonly supposed. That he was able to do so may have been due to the fact that he was essentially the Kaiser's own choice in defiance of public opinion. Nearly thirty years of his career had been spent in the gilded post of aide-de-camp to his uncle, the great von Moltke of the 1866 and 1870 wars, and to the Kaiser. Thus when, in 1904, he was suddenly raised to real responsibility as one of the two Deputy Chiefs of the General Staff, the army realized that such a step must have some future significance. Their perplexity was not prolonged. When in 1906 Schlieffen, disabled by a kick from a horse, was absent from his post, Moltke acted for him, and the next year definitely succeeded him as Chief of the General Staff. The names actually submitted, some time before, to the Kaiser as suitable had been those of von der Goltz and von Beseler. Von der Goltz,

a famous military writer, and the prophet of the Nation in Arms, found, like many other soldiers, that active thought and the power of expressing it create uneasiness rather than appreciation in high places. Von Beseler, later the conqueror of Antwerp, belonged to the Engineers, and, although Deputy Chief of the General Staff, was therefore ignored by the Kaiser, who 'knew' only Guard and Cavalry officers. But, above all, the choice of Moltke seems to have been due to the Kaiser's belief in his historic name as an omen of victory.

If Moltke's elevation was unjustified by his achievements, the strength of his pedestal enabled him to make a stand against interference from his 'creator.' He told the Kaiser frankly that at manœuvres 'the decisions of the commanding generals are always influenced by the interference of Your Majesty, so that the officers lose all desire for initiative and become inert and unreliable.' And the Kaiser gave way, abstaining from active command or interference until July 1914. Moltke was thus emboldened to take liberties with the war plan of his illustrious predecessor. The first change was wise, politically at least. Moltke preferred to risk delay by the forts of Liége rather than to avoid them by crossing the strip of Dutch territory known as the Maastricht Appendix, an act of military convenience which might range Holland as well as Belgium on the side of Germany's foes. But Moltke revealed less moral audacity than his predecessor in matters that were purely military. Schlieffen had concentrated all his efforts on building up an overwhelming right wing in the projected advance into France. He had taken the calculated risk of weakening the left wing with the view that this wing could retire gradually before a French onslaught without serious danger, and

by its very yielding draw the French on to their destruction by drawing them away from northwestern France, which would thus be all the more exposed to the smashing onrush of the German right wing.

Moltke shrank from the risk, and as new reserves became available strengthened the left wing at the expense of the right. And, like many timid men, he wished to risk too little at the outset and to gain too much later, thinking that a strong left wing would not only avert initial danger but enable him to envelop the French armies on both flanks, repeating 1870 and leading to a greater Sedan. Thus, when the test came, the German war machine was laboring under too great a strain, and this, coupled with Moltke's inability to keep control, caused the breakdown on the Marne, and the loss of the first and greatest chance of Germany's victory in the war. Moltke's papers after his death threw a vivid light, not only on the complexity and rigidity of the German war machine, but on the way a national, as opposed to a professional, army tends inevitably toward war. Once set in motion it gathers weight and pace like an avalanche, escaping direction and making almost hopeless any attempts either to orient or to retard its course.

On July 31, 1914, Moltke was summoned by the Kaiser and shown a telegram from the German Ambassador in London which said that Secretary of State Grey had informed him Great Britain would engage to keep France out of the war if Germany would. reciprocally engage not to undertake hostilities against France. The Kaiser then said to Moltke: 'Now we need only wage war against Russia; thus we simply march the whole of our army eastward.' Moltke replied: "Your Majesty, that is impossible. The deployment of a host of millions of men VOL. 141 - NO. 1

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cannot be improvised; it means a whole year of laborious work, and once settled cannot be altered. If Your Majesty insists on leading the whole army to the east, it will not be an army ready for battle, but a disorderly crowd of unorganized armed men without supply arrangements.'

The Kaiser was 'much upset' and retorted bitterly: 'Your uncle would have given me a different answer.' The machine which they had created was beyond the power of men to control, and not only were they swept inevitably in its wake toward war, but they proved equally helpless to guide it strategically once its ponderous and remorseless passage over the French frontier had begun.

Moltke, who had already disturbed the balance between the two wings which Schlieffen had contrived, upset it still more by repeated reductions in the weight of the marching right wing. He first detached active divisions to watch the fortresses of Antwerp, Givet, and Maubeuge, and then, on August 25, to reënforce the Eastern Front against Russia, in the belief that the decision in the West was already ensured! The delusion was strengthened by the roseate reports of the various army commanders, each anxious for his own credit, and by the failure of the Supreme Command to keep in touch with far less to keep control over the advancing armies. A suspicion of the truth began to dawn upon Moltke through the comparatively small captures of men and guns, and in this state of doubt the Kaiser's easy optimism irritated him: 'He has already a shouthurrah mood that I hate like death.' When disillusionment finally came in the Battle of the Marne, Moltke, more sensitive than his opponent, Joffre, lost his nerve. He felt instinctively that the loss of the Marne meant the ultimate loss of the war, and with still truer

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instinct remarked, 'We shall have to pay for all that we have destroyed.'

Between September 5 and 9 no orders from Moltke were issued to the Army Commands, and from September 7 to 9 no information or report as to the situation was sent by them to Moltke. These were the crucial days of the Marne battle, which began on September 6 and ended with the retreat of the German armies, beginning with the Second, on September 9. The fact would be incredible if it was not attested by ample evidence. This retreat was ordered rather than compelled, due to the panic fears of leaders so saturated with military convention that a slight indentation of their front and a partial bending of their flanks led them to conclude that, by the rules of the game, they were beaten. There was no necessity to fall back if they had appreciated the defensive power of modern arms as well as they appreciated the convention of strategy. The French were unperturbed by the presence of the far deeper St. Mihiel wedge which remained in their front during four years, and in 1918 the Allied commanders did not find it necessary to fall back and straighten the line even when the enemy had driven wedges forty miles deep into their front. At the Marne the German soldiers were not beaten, but only their leaders. On the morrow of this defeat Moltke was displaced, the failure of his physical vigor being made, according to customary subterfuge, the excuse for a dismissal really due to failure of moral vigor.

II

This sketch of Moltke, his character and career, is a necessary preliminary if we are to understand the problem of his successor, Falkenhayn, and the conditions which surrounded his advent to power. Moltke's confession on the eve

of war that he could not alter the rigid plan had evidently both irritated the Kaiser and disturbed his confidence in Moltke's grip on the situation, for as early as August 10 the Chief of the Military Cabinet asked Falkenhayn privately if he was prepared to take over the duties of Chief of the General Staff. During the advance through Belgium into France, Falkenhayn had uneasy qualms over the blind and headlong pace of the German onrush, and urged the need and value of securing the advance by consolidating each step in its wake. On September 3 there is an entry in his diary: 'Impressed again on Moltke . . . the necessity of occupying the north coast and also of halting for rest on the Marne.' One of the most amazing features of the war is that the Germans, with the Allied armies in full retreat, made no attempt to secure the Channel ports, which lay at their mercy. The British had evacuated Calais, Boulogne, and the whole coast as far as Le Havre, even transferred their base to St. Nazaire on the Bay of Biscay. German Uhlans roamed at will over the northwest of France, settled down in Amiens as if they were permanent lodgers, yet left the vital ports in tranquil isolation. A month later they were to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives in the vain attempt to gain what they could have secured without losing a drop of blood.

On the eve of the Battle of the Marne, September 5, there is this significant entry in Falkenhayn's diary: "The German Staff itself admits to-day that the retreat of the French is being carried out in complete order, but it cannot come to a new decision. . . . Only one thing is certain: our General Staff has completely lost its head. Schlieffen's notes do not help any further, and so Moltke's wits come to an end.' A deadly sarcasm!

The choice of Falkenhayn to succeed

Moltke was dictated not merely by Falkenhayn's record and the proved truth of his criticisms, but even more by his presence at Great Headquarters as Minister of War. For the Germans had no wish to advertise the failure of their first Chief- a confession that their plan had miscarried — and they could camouflage the change better by slipping Falkenhayn into Moltke's seat than by recalling anyone from the front. Moreover, although Falkenhayn took over the duties of Chief of the General Staff on September 14, his appointment was not publicly announced until November 3, and he retained the functions of Minister of War as well until February 1915.

The first need was to restore confidence and cohesion in an army defeated through no fault of its own. The rapidity of the recovery is a tribute both to the sound body of the army and to the tonic administered by Falkenhayn's reassertion of higher control. He had seen the faults of 1870 repeated, more disastrously, in 1914, the army commanders acting independently and taking their own course without attention to a Supreme Command which was wanting in the power to control them. Falkenhayn's fault here was that he swung too far to the other extreme, centralizing power excessively in his own person. His character and manner aggravated the failings of this tendency. If he was not well served, it was partly his own fault. The head of the Operations Section was a source of friction as well as a man of limited mind, but Falkenhayn, who realized Tappen's inadequacy, declared that he did not want an adviser, only 'a conscientious man who carried out his orders punctually.' Aloof, reserved, notoriously ambitious, Falkenhayn was not the man to inspire affection in his subordinates or trust in his peers. General Stürgkh, Austrian representative

III

The reaction of the Marne on the two sides was characteristic of the mentality and predisposition of the rival commanders. The Allies, whose blind optimism had led them into disaster after disaster since the outset, were so elated and inflated by the 'miracle of the Marne' that they were carried away by their ideas of a decisive manœuvre against the German flank. In the 'Race to the Sea' they buoyantly made a series of inadequate and belated attempts to turn the German flank, until they suddenly came down with a bumpwith a bump-to find themselves desperately, and almost despairingly, struggling to hold out against the German onslaught at Ypres.

With the Central Powers the outlook of Falkenhayn was now the decisive influence, and the impression derived not merely from his critics but from his own account is that neither the outlook nor the direction was really clear as to its goal. He was too obsessed with the principle of security at the expense of the principle of concentration, and in his failure to fulfill the second he under

mined the foundations of the first. On

taking over the reins from Moltke, he still adhered to the Schlieffen plan of seeking a decision in the West, but the course he followed did not appear to have any far-reaching aim. Both in clearing his right rear by the reduction of Antwerp and in the subsequent effort to gain the Channel ports, Falkenhayn's guiding idea seems to have been merely that of 'firmly establishing the right flank on the sea' as a protection to the western territory of the Empire, with its sensitive as well as indispensable resources. . . .' His actions and his mental attitude were those of a commander striving to ward off impending defeat rather than one whose mighty army had only missed decisive victory by a hair's breadth. He erred on the side of pessimism as much as the Allies on the side of optimism. Nor, in pursuit of his limited object, did his method fulfill the Schlieffen principle of drawing from the left wing in order to mass on the vital right wing. The prolonged attacks in October and November around Ypres were made largely with raw formations, while warexperienced troops lay almost idle between the Aisne and the Vosges. Colonel Gröner, Director of the Field Railways, even went so far as to submit a detailed plan to Falkenhayn for the transfer of six army corps from the left to the right wing, but it was rejected. When we remember how close to the breaking point was the British line at Ypres, the verdict can only be that for a second time the German Supreme Command saved the Allies. At this juncture, too, Ludendorff was pleading vehemently for reënforcements to give weight to the wedge which he planned to drive into the joint of the Russian phalanx near Lodz. Without them, Ludendorff shattered the only serious advance during the war of the 'Russian steam roller' and almost surrounded a whole army. With them, the 'almost'

might have been deleted. But Falkenhayn missed the chance by delaying to send the reënforcements until failure in the long-drawn-out Ypres offensive had passed from assurance to fact.

Early in 1915 Falkenhayn, persuaded at last of the strength of the Allied trench barrier, took the momentous decision to stand on the defensive in the West. But his object in so doing seems to have been vague. His feeling that the war must ultimately be decided in France led him to distrust the value, as he doubted the possibility, of a decision against Russia. Hence while he realized that the Eastern Front was the only practicable theatre for operations in the near future, he withheld the necessary reënforcements until his hand was forced by the threatening situation of the Austro-Hungarian front. And even then he doled out reserves reluctantly and meagrely, enough to secure success, but never in quantity and time for decisive victory.

It is to his credit, however, that he realized a long war was now inevitable, and that he set to work to develop Germany's resources for such a war of attrition. The technique of field entrenchment was carried to a higher pitch than with any other country; the military railways were expanded for the lateral movement of reserves; the supply of munitions and of the raw material for their manufacture was tackled so energetically and comprehensively that an ample flow was ensured from the spring of 1915 onward