numerical. The theory of the French--as their national
temperament and their Roman tradition compel them--is based upon an
_envisagement_ of inferiority: moral, material, and numerical.

There pervades the whole of the modern German strategic school this
feeling: "I shall win if I act and feel as though I was bound to win."
There pervades the whole French school this sentiment: "I have a
better chance of winning if I am always chiefly considering how I
should act if I found myself inferior in numbers, in material, and
even in moral at any phase in the struggle, especially at its origins,
but even also towards its close."

This contrast appears in everything, from tactical details to the
largest strategical conception, and from things so vague and general
as the tone of military writings, to things so particular as the
instruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. The German soldier
is taught--or was--that victory was inevitable, and would be as swift
as it would be triumphant: the French soldier was taught that he had
before him a terrible and doubtful ordeal, one that would be long, one
in which he ran a fearful risk of defeat, and one in which he might,
even if victorious, have to wear down his enemy by the exercise of a
most burdensome tenacity. In the practice of the field, the contrast
appeared in the French use of a great reserve, and the German contempt
for such a precaution: in the elaborate thinking out of the use of a
reserve, which is the core of French military thought; in the
superficial treatment of the same, which is perhaps the chief defect
of Germany.

It would be of no purpose to debate here which of these two mental
attitudes, with all their consequences, is either morally the better
or in practice the more successful. The French and Latin tradition
seems to the German pusillanimous, and connected with that decadence
which he perceives in every expression of civilization from Athens to
Paris. The modern German conception seems to the French theatrical,
divorced from reality, and hence fundamentally weak. Either critic may
be right or either wrong. Our interest is to follow the particular
schemes developing from that tone of mind. We shall see how, in the
first phases of the war, the German conception strikingly justified
itself for more than ten days; how, after a fortnight, it was
embarrassed by its opponent; and how at the end of a month the German
initiative was lost under the success--only