e main
lines in relief, the three weeks between the German sudden forcing of
war and the seventeen or eighteen days between the English declaration
and the main operations upon the Sambre, will have but a subsidiary
importance. They were occupied for at least half the period in the
mobilization of the great armies. They were occupied for the second
half of the period in the advance across the Rhine of German numbers
greatly superior to the Allies, and also through the plain of Northern
Belgium. The operation, as calculated by the German General Staff, was
delayed by but a very few days--one might almost say hours--by the
hastily improvised resistance of Liege, and the imperfect defence of
their country which was all the Belgian forces, largely untrained,
could offer.

We must, therefore, pass briefly enough over that preliminary period,
though the duty may be distasteful to the reader, on account of the
very exaggerated importance which its operations took, especially in
British eyes.

For this false perspective there were several reasons, which it is
worth while to enumerate, as they will aid our judgment in obtaining a
true balance between these initial movements and the great conflicts
to which they were no more than an introduction.

1. War, as a whole, had grown unfamiliar to Western Europe. War on
such a scale as this was quite untried. There was nothing in
experience to determine our judgment, and after so long a peace,
during which the habits of civil life had ceased to be conventioned
and had come to seem part of the necessary scheme of things, the first
irruption of arms dazzled or confounded the imagination of all.

2. The first shock, falling as it did upon the ring fortress of
Liege, at once brought into prominence one of the chief questions of
modern military debate, the value of the modern ring fortress, and
promised to put to the test the opposing theories upon this sort of
stronghold.

3. The violation of Belgian territory, though discounted in the
cynical atmosphere of our time, when it came to the issue was, without
question, a stupendous moral event. It was the first time that
anything of this sort had happened in the history of Christian Europe.
Historians unacquainted with the spirit of the past may challenge that
remark, but it is true. One of the inviolable conventions, or rather
sacred laws, of our civilization was broken, which is that European
territory not involved in hostilities by an