action. Given this condition, it did its best, did all and the only things possible.
On the other hand, the Allies, once they were all in the campaign, were bound to have the advantage if they could escape immediate ruin. Their strategy was just as logically imposed upon them as the German upon the Kaiser. All things considered, they played it, if not so brilliantly, with sufficient skill. Looking back now it is possible to see real and remarkable coordination. When Germany struck at France, the French and British retired, but the Russians drove over into East Prussia and compelled the Germans to weaken their offensive in France. When the Germans invaded Poland, it was the Russians who retired, the French and British who stormed up into Flanders.
In sum, looking back over three months of war, what seems impressive is not any real or apparent failure of German strategy, but the unexpected adequacy of Allied strategy. Given the advantage of time, the eventual superiority of numbers, the immediate control of the sea, the Allies could only be defeated decisively in the opening weeks of the war, if they could be brought to battle under exactly the conditions the Germans desired. But German strategy could not impose these conditions upon the Allies, because German resources were not large enough; the statesmen had set a task for the soldier beyond his strength. Napoleon with supreme genius failed at the same task in 1814 in his most splendid campaign. He wrote: "When Napoleon, who so often and so brilliantly had beaten superior numbers with weaker bodies, wanted to enforce victory with an army so much weaker than those of his enemies that even the most famous local victories could no longer change the proportionate numbers, he succumbed, and he was bound to succumb."
Napoleon's failure was absolute, Germany's remains relative. But to argue from failure that the attempt was foolish, even to ascribe superior genius to Allied strategy, is to go beyond the evidence. In 1914 the problem of the Kaiser's generals was that of Napoleon in 1814. In the earlier instance the nearness of success has for all time justified the strategy. The same is fairly to be said of the later experiment, and in neither case was there any conceivable alternative.
The Empire of the East
THE war in Europe has lasted three months, and it is too soon to say what it is all about. The issues at stake in any war rarely emerge quite clearly until the settlement is in sight. Before the war began, it looked like a madman's dream to make a hecatomb of all the armies of Europe over the grave of the Austrian archduke, very much as the Scythians sacrificed slaves over the dead bodies of their chiefs. In its early weeks it took the dramatic form of a struggle to avenge the violation of Belgian neutrality. It may become, before it is ended, a battle for world empire in which the chief stakes will be distant colonies and "places in the sun."
But one issue behind all these phases will certainly persist. It is a war for the empire of the East. From the Continental standpoint, this struggle is really the postponed sequel of the two Balkan wars. The inner meaning of the original Balkan League has hardly yet been grasped by public opinion in western Europe. When Servia and Bulgaria concluded a secret treaty of alliance in the spring of 1912, under Russian auspices, they had two objects in view. One of these was the liberation of Macedonia from Turkey, primarily for Bulgaria's benefit. The other, which Russia regarded as the chief object, was an attack upon Austria, and the creation of a great Servia at her expense.
I have been told by Balkan diplomatists who had themselves seen the treaty that it provided clearly and precisely for Bulgarian cooperation in such a war. That was not generally known in England and France, but it was well known to the German government. It led to the last menacing increase in the peace effectives of the German army, which were defended at the time as the answer of the German powers to the menace of Pan-Slavism. There followed by way of reply reorganization of the Russian armies, and the return in France to three years' service.
This colossal struggle for the hegemony of the East has been the volcanic foundation of European politics ever since Russia and Austria quarreled over Bosnia in 1909. It has been imminent ever since the Balkan League was founded in 1912. If the war is fought to a clear decision, if either group of powers can master the other, the destinies of the East are sealed. In the one event the German Powers will dominate the Balkans, Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean; in the other it will be a Slavonic hegemony which will stretch from the Adriatic to the Persian Gulf.
It is something of a paradox that with this momentous issue hanging over it, the Balkan Peninsula, outside Servia, is only just beginning to be involved in war. Too many old resentments have stood in the way of a straight pursuit of national interests. Take, for example, the case of Roumania. She has much to gain from the defeat of Austria, for three million Roumanians await impatiently their liberation from the onerous Magyar yoke. It is customary to explain the early inaction of Roumania by the fact that the late King Carol was a Hohenzollern. In vain would he have been born a Hohenzollern had not Russia alienated the
