ad to be delivered against one or the other. Which
should it be?

[Sidenote: The French losses much greater than the British.]

An attack against the French had certain advantages. The French army was
unmistakably the weaker of the two. In the early days of the war, while
the British army was being formed, it was the French who had to stand
the brunt of the fighting. At Verdun it was the French who from February
to July beat back the German assaults along the Meuse time after time in
the most tremendous duel of the war. In the Battle of the Somme it was
the French who fought their way forward south of the river to the
outskirts of Peronne and Chaulnes. The French losses had, therefore,
been very much greater than the British. As the populations of France
and of the United Kingdom are about the same, the French people had,
therefore, suffered much more than had the British, and were
correspondingly less able to stand such a blow as Germany was able to
deliver.

[Sidenote: Much of French front is invulnerable.]

But there was one great disadvantage in attacking France. The blow could
not be delivered against the front from St. Mihiel to the Swiss
frontiers. This front is vulnerable only where the Vosges Mountains are
broken by the great gaps at Belfort, Epinal, and Nancy; and these gaps
are easy to defend and well backed up in rear by great bases of supply
excellently served by many radiating railroad lines. It could not be
delivered at Verdun, because France had not only retaken all the ground
of military value which had been lost; but Verdun had become to France a
religion, a fanaticism. To France it was a symbol of French love of
country, of French patriotism. Verdun meant France. Germany, therefore,
had no desire to test this fortified area again. This left only the
Champagne line between the Argonne Forest and Rheims.

[Sidenote: Reasons for not striking on the Champagne line.]

[Sidenote: The Allied armies would be left intact.]

If Germany had attacked this front, the British army, the stronger of
her enemies, would soon have struck, and whether Germany so elected or
not, she would nevertheless be running two major operations at the same
time--one offensive in Champagne, the other defensive in Picardy or in
Flanders. Again, suppose her army did bend the French line back, as it
undoubtedly would, how far back would it have to go in order for Germany
to reach a complete military decision? There would indeed be