is perhaps more deeply indebted for her successes
during the first phases of the campaign than to the strategy of
Hindenburg or the furious onslaughts of Mackensen. German diplomacy
has been ridiculed for its glaring blunders, and German statesmanship
discredited for its cynical contempt of others' rights and its own
moral obligations. And gauged by our ethical standards the blame
incurred was richly deserved. But we are apt to forget that German
diplomacy has two distinct aspects--the professional and the
economic--and that where the one failed the other triumphed. And if
success be nine-tenths of justification, as the Prussian doctrine
teaches, the statesmen who preside over the destinies of the Teutonic
peoples have little to fear in the way of strictures from their
domestic critics. For they left nothing to chance that could be
ensured by effort. Trade, commerce, finances, journalism, science,
religion, the advantages to be had by royal marriages, by the
elevation of German princes to the thrones of the lesser states, had
all been calculated with as much care and precision as the choice of
sites in foreign countries for the erection of concrete emplacements
for their monster guns. No detail seemed too trivial for the bestowal
of conscientious labour, if it promised a possible return. When in
doubt whether it was worth while to make an effort for some object of
no immediate interest to the Fatherland the German invariably decided
that the thing should be done. "You never can tell," he argued, "when
or how it may prove useful." For years one firm of motor-car makers
turned out vehicles with holes, the object of which no one could guess
until the needs of the war revealed them as receptacles for light
machine-guns.

Nearly two years of an unparalleled struggle between certain isolated
forces of the Allies and all the combined resources of the Teutons
ought to banish the notion that the results achieved are the fruits
only of Germany's military and naval efficiency. In truth, the
adequacy of her military and naval forces constitutes but an integral
part of a much vaster system. It has hitherto been the fashion among
British and French writers to dwell exclusively on the comprehensiveness
of the measures adopted by the Germans to fashion their land and sea
defences into destructive implements of enormous striking power and
scientific precision. But the German conception of the enterprise was
immeasurably more grandiose.