armies, and of the strategy and tactics on both sides, led me to the conclusion that the strategy and tactics of the French were superior to those of the Germans. At first, I had feared that the Germans would be superior; but the course of the war convinced me that their very Prussianism, that is to say, their outward orderliness and their mechanical precision, rendered them militarily weaker than the French. Prussian absolutism and, towards the end, the Kaiser’s influence, did harm even to the army, which grew stiff and relied bureaucratically upon its organization, upon numerical preponderance and upon sundry technical advantages such as the rapid movement of troops on well-built strategic railways. The French army, on the other hand, had benefited by being republicanized, by being permeated with a greater spirit of freedom and by being criticized in the same spirit. German tactics, based upon phalanxes in close formation and on the idea of turning the enemy flank, proved less effective than the French system of advancing in shorter columns marching in echelon. Even militarily, the Germans were centralist and absolutist, while the French were individualist and republican. During the war the French called their field tactics “le système D.,” that is, “se débrouiller” or “Use your wits.” And French soldiers, both individually and as leaders, knew how to use their wits.
English and French military experts often told me that General von Schlieffen’s strategical plan was good in itself but unsuited to the world war, perhaps because it was inaptly amended by General von Moltke, the German Chief of General Staff, who extended the Western army as far as Switzerland, whereas, according to Schlieffen, it should have reached only as far as Strasburg; or, as I am inclined to think, because the plan had been bureaucratized. My interest in it, as providing for a war on two fronts, and my enquiries about it among military experts, were prompted in part by the similarity between the geographical position of Germany and that of our future State. I had long noted the differences of opinion and the waverings in the German Supreme Command. The question was whether the main effort ought to be made on the West or on the East, against France or against Russia. In answering it the Germans were influenced by their leading military authority, Clausewitz, who taught them that the enemy’s strongest point must always be their objective. But who were the stronger, the Russians or the French? The elder Moltke wished, in his later years, to stand on the defensive in the West and to take the offensive against Russia with the
