atia, would have meant setting
all the forces of Slav irredentism against Italy.

These considerations are of no practical value inasmuch as events have
taken another course. Nobody can say what would have happened if the
Carthagenians had conquered the Romans or if victory had remained with
Mithridates. Hypotheses are of but slight interest when truth follows
another direction. Nevertheless we cannot but repeat that it was a
great fortune for Europe that victory was not decided by Russia, and
that the decisive factor proved the United States.

It is beyond all possible doubt that without the intervention of
the United States of America the War could not have been won by the
Entente. Although the admission may prove humiliating to the European
point of view, it is a fact which cannot be attenuated or disguised.
The United States threw into the balance the weight of its enormous
economic and technical resources, besides its enormous resources in
men. Although its dead only amount to fifty thousand, the United
States built up such a formidable human reserve as to deprive Germany
of all hopes of victory. The announcement of America's entry in the
War immediately crushed all Germany's power of resistance. Germany
felt that the struggle was no longer limited to Europe, and that every
effort was vain.

The United States, besides giving to the War enormous quantities of
arms and money, had practically inexhaustible reserves of men to place
in the field against an enemy already exhausted and famine-stricken.

War and battles are two very different things. Battles constitute an
essentially military fact, while war is an essentially political fact.
That explains why great leaders in war have always been first and
foremost great political leaders, namely, men accustomed to manage
other men and able to utilize them for their purposes. Alexander,
Julius Caesar, Napoleon, the three greatest military leaders produced
by Aryan civilization, were essentially political men. War is not only
a clash of arms, it is above all the most convenient exploitation of
men, of economic resources and of political situations. A battle is a
fact of a purely military nature. The Romans almost constantly placed
at the head of their armies personages of consular rank, who regarded
and conducted the war as a political enterprise. The rules of tactics
and strategy are perfectly useless if those who conduct the war fail
to utilize to the utmost all the m