rmy is in a far worse plight than if recourse had never been
had to the open strategic square at all. For if the operative corner,
A, is out of existence before the various bodies forming the
"manoeuvring mass" behind it have had time to "swing," then the enemy
will be right in their midst, and destroying, in overwhelming force,
these remaining _separated_ bodies in detail.

It was here that the German strategic theory contrasted so violently
with the French. The Germans maintained that an ordeal which Napoleon
might have been able to live through with his veterans and after
fifteen years of successful war, a modern conscript army, most of its
men just taken from civilian life and all of short service, would
never endure. They believed the operative corner would go to pieces
and either be pounded to disintegration, or outflanked, turned, and
caught in the first days of the shock before the rest of the square
had time to "work." The French believed the operative corner would
stand the shock, and, though losing heavily, would remain in being.
They believed that the operative corner of the square would, even
under modern short service and large quasi-civilian reserve
conditions, remain an army. They staked their whole campaign upon that
thesis, and they turned out to be right. But they only just barely won
through, and by the very narrowest margin. Proving right as they did,
however, the success of their strategical theory changed the whole
course of the war.

With this contrast of the great opposing theories considered, I come
to the conclusion of my Second Part, which examines the forces
opposed. I will now turn to the Third Part of my book, which concerns
the first actual operations from the Austrian note to the Battle of
the Marne.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Thus, after these lines were written, I had occasion in _Land and
Water_ to estimate the garrison of Przemysl before the figures were
known. The element wherewith to guide one's common sense was the known
perimeter to be defended; and arguing from this, I determined that a
minimum of not less than 100,000 men would capitulate. I further
conceived that the total losses could hardly be less than 40,000, and
I arrived at an original force of between three and four corps.

[Illustration: Sketch 32.]

PART III.

THE FIRST OPERATIONS.

In any general view of the great war which aims both at preserving
proportion between its parts, and at presenting especially th