A Journal of Opinion
New York Saturday, August 3, 1918
has had abundant time to prepare both for attack
and counter-attack. It is a more dangerous army
to deal with than it was last March and April, and
the same is true of the French army with its Ameri-
can auxiliaries. It is wholly improbable that the
German Staff will be able to put its residue of of-
fensive power to any effective use. The retirement
from the Marne salient is none the less decisive be-
cause it has been a matter of deliberate choice and
it is being carried through without excessive loss.
The Germans, even if they keep the initiative, can-
not turn it to any better account than the French
and British did in 1917. It would look as if they
may soon be obliged once again to accept a defensive
strategy, fortify the strongest line which they can
lay out and defy the Allied army to disposses them.
Their colossal effort to obtain a decision on which
the prestige of the ruling class in Germany rests
would have failed.
T is as certain as anything can be in the neces-
sarily uncertain game of politics that the result
of a German defensive strategy will be disintegra-
tion both in Germany and among her Allies. As we
have frequently pointed out, the offensive, under-
taken expressly for the purpose of compelling the
western powers to accept the annexationist eastern
treaties, was in its domestic political significance a
coup d'état. It meant a triumph for the military
parties in the fight between it and the liberal forces
in Germany which had been going on throughout
1917. The German liberals have not hesitated
frankly to draw this conclusion. They have been
demanding through such papers as the Frankfurter
Zeitung either the frank assumption of political au-
thority in Germany by the Supreme Army Com-
mand or else an equally frank and complete resump-
tion of control by politicians. The falling back on
defensive military strategy in the west would neces-
sarily involve the second of these alternatives, and
the politicians who would come into power would be
men anxious to obtain a peace by understanding and
ready to sacrifice a great deal for such a peace.