the necessary increase of garrison artillery and technical troops. Moreover, when the number of those who have fought in the great war has fallen away, we shall have to aim at subjecting at least to a cursory training the men of military age who are at first rejected, but who in the course of the war have turned out to be fit for service so that when war breaks out they may form a generous source of reserves. Only so can we arrive at a real peoples' army, in which everyone has gone through the school of the standing army.

Freytag says there can be no reduction of the two years' for some arms three years' service. He attaches value to the various schemes for training boys and for turning sport to military account, but says that these things cannot provide any substitute for "real schooling in soldiering." He proceeds:

It may be asked what is the use of all this? Will not the general exhaustion of Europe after the world-conflagration of a certainty put the danger of a new war, to begin with, in the background, and does not this terrible murder of peoples point inevitably to the necessity of disarmament to pave the way to permanent peace? The reply to that is that nobody can undertake to guarantee a long period of peace, and that a lasting peace is guaranteed only by strong armaments.

time to come maintain her claim to sea power. We need not at present discuss by what means this aim is to be achieved.

on

Freytag goes to declare emphatically that the reason why Germany enjoyed peace for so long before the present war was not the strength of the movements for "fraternization of the peoples" and the many "fine speeches," but solely "the power of the German sword, which could not display its true strength until the war broke out." Freytag expects that agreements intended to banish war will be concluded between States, but he observes that all such agreements are "after all only treaties"-he might have written "only scraps of paper." He cannot believe in "a realization of true pacifist ideals"; he hopes that the world-war will have rid the Germans once for all of "confused cosmopolitan sentimentalism"; and he concludes:

In the future, as in the past, the German people will have to seek firm cohesion in its glorious Army and in its be-laureled young Fleet.

There is a little special abuse for the United States:

The fact that precisely the President of the United States of North America has advocated the brotherhood of the peoples surely ought to frighten us. America's behavior in the war has shown that pacifism, as represented in America, is only business pacifism, and so at bottom nothing else than crass materialism. This truth is not altered by the fact that it is wrapped in a hazy garment of idealism and so seeks to hide its real meaning from the innocent. Nor is the truth altered by the appeal to democratic tendencies, for precisely this war is showing that those who at present hold power in the great democracies have risked in irresponsible fashion the future of the peoples entrusted to their leadership.

Interesting are Freytag's observations on the peculiarly economic character of the war. He lays stress upon the fact that the Germans were so absorbed in their own wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870 that they never learned what there was to learn from the American War of Secession. Hence their disappointments about the blockade when their original plan to crush France had failed. Freytag says:

once.

The consequences of the blockade to which the Central Powers were subjected showed themselves at Although we succeeded in developing our war economics by our own strength, yet the unfavorable state of the worldeconomic situation has throughout the whole war been felt by us. That alone explains why our enemies found ever fresh possibilities of resistance, because the sea stood open to them, and why victories which would once have been absolutely decisive, and the conquest of whole kingdoms, did not bring us nearer to peace.

But, in a passage which is worth a good many other pages of the book put together, Freytag observes that Germany's enemies failed to take full advantage of the possibilities of the blockade. He says:

Our enemies only gradually perceived the true situation. The operations which they had begun extracted only little by little the full advantage of the world-economic situation, which was favorable to them and unfavorable to us; they did so only when they met with unexpected powers of resistance in the Central Powers.

There are some interesting references to the spirit of the various armies. The Austrians are only mentioned once or twice in the book, and then with a patronage verging on contempt. Freytag once says outright that "the Germans were on several occasions threatened with the prospect of the Austro-Hungarian Army being de

feated utterly by the far superior Russians."

As regards the Germans, Freytag says that "the want of officers made itself felt in an extraordinary way after the original heavy losses in the autumn of 1914, and otherwise brave men occasionally failed when their leaders were taken away by enemy bullets." He declares that the German Army has a traditional contempt of danger such as belongs to no other "people's army," but in this, as in all other matters, he insists upon the inestimable value of discipline and training, such as can be obtained only under a system of avowed and determined militarism. (Freytag throughout talks proudly of "the spirit of German militarism," and there is in his book none of the usual German hypocrisy on the subject.) In an interesting passage he says:

All of us, leaders as well as men, have human weaknesses, and assuredly not all German soldiers are heroes by nature. But it is precisely in thisin the fact that the weak are carried along with the strong that the educative force of this fight for the existence of Germany displays itself. The weak could not do otherwise than strive to be heroes. Reverses, such as were occasionally inevitable in this long and tremendous war, have doubtless had a temporarily depressing effect upon the troops, and, after efforts and a consumption of nerve power such as previous wars did not know, there has sometimes been a yearning for rest. But even in the third year of war the war-fire did not merely smoulder, but always burst out afresh in flame. In Transylvania and Roumania and in East Galicia in 1917 the troops showed a vigor which was not finer in the first days of the war. The charm of victory enabled them to defy all the difficulties of ground and all the evils of the weather. They would, indeed, have been no people's army, linked to the home country by a

thousand threads, if the desire had not existed for the conclusion of the long war, which demanded ever fresh sacrifices, and if a calmer feeling had not taken the place of the enthusiasm of the first months. But it was just such a feeling that was necessary for the accomplishment of such gigantic achievements in the West and in the East. What was wanted was not enthusiasm, but the living heroic sense of duty in the German soldier.

The chapter on "The Technical Developments of the War" contains little that is new, but there are interesting passages on aircraft and air raids. After remarking that aeroplanes have acquired a superiority over airships in land warfare, Freytag says:

The Zeppelins are extraordinarily sensitive. They have to keep at considerable heights, because they provide very large targets. This reduces the accuracy with which they can aim bombs. They also need a large expenditure of labor and materials, and they have to be housed in sheds. The brilliant invention of Count Zeppelin provided a weapon which, especially at the beginning of the war, was of great moral importance, and was also of indisputable value, because with the Zeppelin we got over to England; but in this sphere also the large fighting aeroplane has taken its place. . . Aviation obviously has a great future. Its possibilities of development are

numerous.

As regards air raids Freytag is free from any considerable measure of hypocrisy. He says:

Unfortified places of no military importance have had to suffer. The bombardment of these places is in itself objectionable, but the limits of what is permissible are in this matter in many ways elastic. A new weapon opens up its own paths, as is shown, for example, by the submarine war. In any case, in this struggle of the peoples with its economic background, the

war is turned more and more against the enemy countries, and the principle hitherto accepted that war is made only against the armed power of the enemy is in this as in other spheres relegated to the background.

Freytag's chapter on "Leadership" is in many respects interesting. Having admitted the failure at the Marne, he discusses various aspects of the trench warfare, and he examines the German substitution of "breaks through" for the classical German strategy of outflanking. He argues that the Germans could never outflank the Russians, because of the enormous area of the country and of the length of front, which was so great that even a smashing blow at one wing did not affect other sectors. As to "breaks through" Freytag makes remarks which are interesting in view of the present campaign in Italy. He says:

The preliminary condition of success was always the moral and tactical superiority on the side of the attacker, and a corresponding violence of mass effect. The fact (Freytag makes only one casual reference to Verdun in the whole course of his book) that we did not possess this moral and tactical superiority in sufficient measure in the West has always relegated to the background the idea of breaking through the enemy front. What has to be done is not only on a comparatively limited front to break in upon the enemy with concentrated masses-these masses will immediately be exposed to outflanking on both sides-but to force in a more or less considerable part of the enemy front and then to develop strategically the break-through which has succeeded tactically. The extent of the success will in every case depend upon the local conditions and the strategic situation.

Throughout, the lesson which Freytag is most concerned to teach is that the new experience does not displace, but must be grafted on to, old knowledge. He repeatedly declares that the

importance of outflanking strategy has not been affected by the lessons of the war; what Germany must try to do is to obtain by "policy" a better starting-point for her future wars. The following passage may be taken as Freytag's real "deduction from the world war":

If, as we hope, policy succeeds in future in preventing the recurrence of such a menacing situation, or at any rate in producing the effect that we

The Times.

shall have greater freedom for violent and decisive blows in one direction, then the war will take a different shape and will be more like former wars. Our business, therefore, is to maintain the fundamental ideas of war as they lived in the German Army up to the year 1914, to soak them in the experiences of the present war, and to make the fullest technical use of these experiences but to do all this without giving an entirely new direction to our thinking on strategy and tactics.

they risked the existence of the State and of the dynasty. Still they were once more ready to risk all for all in view of the immensity of the advantages which a victory would bring to them. The victory of 1866 doubled the population under the sway of William the First and more than doubled Prussia's armed strength and wealth. It raised Prussia to the rank of a real Great Power, and gave her the predominance in Europe. The War of 1914, if successful, would far more than double the population governed from Berlin and would give Germany the predominance throughout the world. These were gigantic stakes. It was worth while risking once more all for all.

Austria-Hungary has become Germany's vassal, and Bulgaria and Turkey have become vassals of the Central Empires. These four States have together a population of about 150,000,000 and for all practical purposes they form now a single political unit absolutely controlled from Berlin. By merely preserving the status quo before the War, and without allowing for Germany's vastly improved strategical position by her domination of the point where three continents meet, that country would have more than doubled her population and armed strength. It must be obvious to all that if peace were now concluded reestablishing the status quo ante bellum, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey would not be able to recover their independence. They would remain. Germany's vassals politically, militarily, and economically. It follows that а drawn war would considerably more than double Germany's strength. If on the other hand the Central Powers should be victorious and retain their conquests and dictate a peace, Germany would no doubt keep the lion's share. She would retain part of Eastern France and

Belgium, containing together perhaps 10,000,000 inhabitants, and her annexations in the East would increase her population still further. If Germany should take the Baltic Provinces of Russia and Poland and attach these to herself, her population would be increased from 67,000,000 to about 100,000,000. As Belgium and Poland are the two most important industrial centers outside Germany on the Continent of Europe, Germany's economic power and wealth would be more than doubled. Poland, Belgium, and Eastern France are exceedingly rich in coal and iron which furnish weapons of war and munitions of every kind

Possibly Germany would, as Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg and other German statesmen have repeatedly declared, re-establish the independence of Belgium and Poland under vaguely mentioned "guarantees," which would safeguard Germany from another "aggression" on the part of her rapacious neighbors. The nature of these "guarantees" has been made known to the world through numerous indiscretions of leading Germans who have outlined them in detail. The most authorized description of these guarantees is contained in the remarkable disclosures made by Mr. Gerard, the late American Ambassador in Berlin. has stated in his book:

He

From the time when Chancellor Hollweg first spoke of peace, I had asked him and others what the peace terms of Germany were. I could never get anyone to state any definite terms of peace. On several occasions when I asked the Chancellor whether Germany were willing to withdraw from Belgium he always said, "Yes, but with guarantees." Finally, in January, 1917, when he was again talking of peace, I said:

"What are these peace terms to which you refer continually? Will you allow me to ask a few questions as to specific terms of peace? First,