tried to
surround them. That was a lapse into the pre-Bloch style. Now the
Russians are again entrenched, their supplies are restored, the Germans
have a lengthened line of supplies, and Bloch is back upon his pedestal
so far as the Eastern theatre goes.

Bloch has been equally justified in the Anglo-French attempt to get
round through Gallipoli. The forces of the India Office have pushed
their way through unprepared country towards Bagdad, and are now
entrenching in Mesopotamia, but from the point of view of the main war
that is too remote to be considered either getting through or getting
round; and so too the losses of the German colonies and the East African
War are scarcely to be reckoned with in the main war. They have no
determining value. There remains the Balkan struggle. But the Balkan
struggle is something else; it is something new. It must be treated
separately. It is a war of treacheries and brags and appearances. It is
not a part of, it is a sequence to, the deadlock war of 1915.

But before dealing with this new development of the latter half of 1915
it is necessary to consider certain general aspects of the deadlock
war. It is manifest that the Germans hoped to secure an effective
victory in this war before they ran up against Bloch. But reckoning with
Bloch, as they certainly did, they hoped that even in the event of the
war getting to earth, it would still be possible to produce novelties
that would sufficiently neutralise Bloch to secure a victorious peace.
With unexpectedly powerful artillery suddenly concentrated, with high
explosives, with asphyxiating gas, with a well-organised system of
grenade throwing and mining, with attacks of flaming gas, and above all
with a vast munition-making plant to keep them going, they had a very
reasonable chance of hacking their way through.

Against these prepared novelties the Allies have had to improvise, and
on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon
it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the
disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly
diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the
deadlock, if no sudden peace occurs, can end now in only one thing, the
exhaustion in various degrees of all the combatants and the succumbing
of the most exhausted. The idea of a conclusive end of the traditional
pattern to this war, of a triumphal entry into London, Paris, Berli