ong endure:--

"They who conquer can dictate the terms of peace."

Next day Germany and Austria pleaded for cessation of war.

Within fifteen months a world's war had begun and ended, and the events
at its close had moved as swiftly as those at its beginning.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A Campaign of Errors.

So the Great War had ended.

In fifteen months the greatest tragedy the world had ever known came and
passed. One could now calmly review the awful affair with an unbiassed
mind. When one studied events during the war, there was always a
prejudice against the enemy. His virtues were only "accidents" or
strokes of luck. Our successes were always "brilliant affairs."

Yet the Great War was a campaign of blunders.

Victor Hugo said: "Alexander blundered in India, Caesar blundered in
Africa, Napoleon blundered in Russia."

After all, every book of war is a catalogue of errors, and the errors in
a campaign, though unrealised at the time by those who make them, became
palpable after the deed is done, and increase in notoriety as time
passes.

British, French and German Generals blundered through the Great War.
Only one nation came out of that awful clash of arms without criticism.
It was Belgium.

The war opened with two mistakes on the part of Germany.

The first and greatest, as it proved now she was defeated, was the
mistake of entering on a campaign that ended in her disaster.

Germany's second mistake was that of using heavy assaulting columns to
charge the Liege forts, with the resultant horrible carnage. It was the
old military rule of thumb. It went out at Liege, and the Mars of old,
with his blood-dripping sword, had to stand aside as Modern Science
stepped out of the Krupp factory with the great 42 centimeter gun. It
took thirty horses to drag the first of these monsters out of that nest
of the Prussian war eagle, and soldiers had to give way for that great
weapon as it was drawn into place, accompanied by its retinue of
mechanics and engineers, who set it up, armed, and fired it.

The monster required a concrete base; and concrete took 14 days to
harden, but the Krupp experts brought a new concrete that hardened in 24
hours, and, within a week from leaving its home, the great Krupp demon
began to batter a road through Liege.

France made the third blunder of the war as Belgium bravely held the
gate at Liege and awaited aid from France and England.

France, mistaking the main line of the Germa