n advance, massed the main
army of her forces along the upper Meuse from Belfort, two hundred miles
away from the right position.

Britain's first blunder was in not being prepared to immediately help
Belgium. So the Krupp monsters smashed that Belgian gate and the German
hordes swept towards Paris.

Britain somewhat retrieved her delay by quickly rushing to block the
triumphant tide of Germany. And two British army corps saved the war by
holding up five of Germany's best armies at Mons; holding them whilst
they waited for the French to move up from their first mistakenly-held
position; till, finding that aid not forthcoming, they fought back to
the Marne.

Germany now blundered once again. Its aerial scouts failed to see a
great French army coming at its right flank; failed to note it, because
it came so swiftly out from behind Paris. It drove the German right
towards its centre, past the British forces, which, catching the Germans
on their flank, smashed them back to the readied trenches on the Aisne
Ridge.

Then the Germans came round the north of Belgium, and Britain blundered
again in sending a force of marines and reserves to hold Antwerp. They
had to ignominiously retire as they found the country too flat for
offensive manoeuvring, and they had arrived too late to do the
necessary extensive trenching which really meant the making of
artificial land contours. That British force, however, helped to cover
the retreat of the Belgian army.

Germany's final mistake was holding their position on the ridge of the
Aisne. It could not have retreated without fearful loss as that ridge
was the last conformation of any military value in the practically flat
country between the Aisne and Liege.

After the war, experts maintained that it would, for many reasons, have
been better strategy for Germany not to have crossed the Meuse in the
first place.

The Germans were fired with the false idea that the capture of Paris
meant the end of French aggression.

They had forgotten the lesson they learnt in 1870, when the capture of
Paris did not end that campaign. They had forgotten the lessons of the
Boer War, that the capture of the South African capitals did not
terminate that long struggle.

They had their fixed plan. It had been prepared many years before and
been put away till required, though military strategy had moved along in
the meantime. At the first blast of war they blindly threw themselves
across Belgium with