have been
subsidiary or minor and will claim only passing comment.

THE GERMAN PROBLEM

In the years that lay between the end of the Franco-Prussian War and
the outbreak of the present conflict the Great General Staff of the
German Army had carefully elaborated plans for that war on two fronts
which the Franco-Russian alliance forecast. In company with the staffs
of her two allies, Austria and Italy, Germany had formulated the
methods by which she purposed to repeat the great success of 1870.

With Italy in the war, with Great Britain out of it, it was plain that
with German efficiency and the numbers that she and her allies would
possess, Germany could count on a permanent advantage in numbers as
well as material. But the events of the early years of the century,
the incidents beginning at Tangier in 1905, and extending to the
Balkan Wars in 1913, clearly established the possibility that Italy
might enter the war as an enemy, and the probability that Britain
would decline to stay out while France was being destroyed.

If either of these things should happen, as both did, then German
soldiers recognized that Germany and her Austrian ally would
ultimately be outnumbered, although superior preparation would give
them the advantage in the first and perhaps in the second years of the
conflict. It was therefore the problem of German high command to
prepare its plans in such fashion as to win the war, while it still
possessed the advantage of numbers and before the enemy could equip
and train its own forces.

In fact the problem was this: Should the Germans hurl the mass of
their great army first at Russia or first at France, leaving only a
small containing force on the other front? The question was much
debated and remains a matter of dispute, now, when the attack
ultimately decided upon has failed. (Vol. I, 85.)

The decision to attack France, which seems to have been reached well
in advance of the actual coming of the war, involved new
considerations. Russia's mobilization was notoriously known to be a
slow thing, although it turned out far more rapid than Germany had
calculated. But at the least German high command figured upon two
months, during which it could safely turn all of its energies and
resources against France. (Vol. I, 85.)

Unhappily in the years since the Franco-Prussian War France had built
up a great barrier of fortresses from Luxembourg to Switzerland.
Granted the great superiority of German he