at design had not been publicly
proclaimed, that no people or nation would either know or
understand the vast enterprise of conquest on which Prussian
autocracy had embarked.

_Error Number Five._

The unexpected resistance of the Belgians.

The German armies were held only a few days, yet the delay of
those few days changed the fortunes of the world.

_Error Number Six._

The splendid stand of France which was a complete surprise to the
Great General Staff. They believed that France was degenerate,
torn by scandals, and that a sudden assault would land the
German army in Paris. In this connection it was another great
error for the Germans to have sought Paris, important from a
sentimental but not a military point of view. They might better
have occupied first the north coast of France, and from there
could have conducted the German submarine campaign with deadly
effect.

_Error Number Seven._

We have seen what a shell the Russian Empire was, but in July,
1914, the Great General Staff believed that Russia was on the
edge of a revolution. Barricades had been erected in the streets
of Petrograd and the Staff believed that the revolution, which
has since divided Russia, was in the making. Instead of this the
Russian Empire lasted for nearly three years and the Russian
troops and generals inflicted many a hard blow not only on the
Austrians but on the German forces.

_Error Number Eight._

Germany was confident that the United States had been so
propagandised, so covered by bribes, by paid newspapers, that the
export of supplies to the Allies could be prevented. Another
error was the barbarity shown in the sinking of the _Lusitania_
by which it was sought to terrorise Americans into withholding
from England and France the privileges of international law, and
of the definite treaty of The Hague in 1907, in which Germany had
joined and which gave to private individuals the right to supply
munitions of war to any belligerent.

_Error Number Nine._

Thinking that the Emperor, by posing as a Mohammedan in the East,
could with the aid of the Turks stir all Mohammedans to a Holy
War.

The Germans laboured with the Mohammedan soldiers captured by
them. I saw many fine looking old Sheiks from the desert entering
the Foreign Office in Berlin. The Eastern world was filled with
German spies. But the Holy War was a failure, and the hope that
the races of Asia and Africa would rise in favour of Germany was