VON FALKENHAYN, who was War
Minister when the War began and retained his office after he had superseded
VON MOLTKE as Chief of the General Staff, shows himself incurably Prussian,
refusing even to consider the possibility that any State which could wage
war effectively would hesitate to do so from any ethical or humanitarian
scruple. "Don't bother about a just cause, but see that it appears just
before men," he seems to say. "The surprise effect of gas (at Ypres) was
very great," is all the comment that tragic episode draws from him. He was
a submarine campaign whole-hogger. But he has his own soldierly virtues of
modesty and loyalty, and refuses to air his personal grievances in the
matter of his supersession by the HINDENBURG-LUDENDORFF syndicate. If, as
seems likely, he speaks the truth, as he had opportunity to see it, we must
revise our too flattering estimates of the German superiority in numbers
and attribute a good deal of the stubbornness of their defence to their
quicker appreciation of the character of siege war. The holding of
front-line trenches with few men and consequent immense saving of life was,
according to the General, practised by the German Command long before we
discovered its value. He gives a reasoned criticism, which has to the
layman a plausible air, to the effect that the relative failure of Joffre's
great combined Champagne-Flanders offensive of 1915 was due to the
overcrowding of the attacking armies.
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