that war between antagonists of fairly equal equipment must end in a
deadlock because of the continually increasing defensive efficiency of
entrenched infantry. This would give the defensive an advantage over the
most brilliant strategy and over considerably superior numbers that
would completely discourage all aggression. He concluded that war was
played out.

[Footnote 1: This chapter was originally a newspaper article. It was
written in December, 1915, and published about the middle of January.
Some of it has passed from the quality of anticipation to achievement,
but I do not see that it needs any material revision on that account.]

His book was very carefully studied in Germany. As a humble disciple of
Bloch I should have realised this, but I did not, and that failure led
me into some unfortunate prophesying at the outbreak of the war. I
judged Germany by the Kaiser, and by the Kaiser-worship which I saw in
Berlin. I thought that he was a theatrical person who would dream of
vast massed attacks and tremendous cavalry charges, and that he would
lead Germany to be smashed against the Allied defensive in the West, and
to be smashed so thoroughly that the war would be over. I did not
properly appreciate the more studious and more thorough Germany that was
to fight behind the Kaiser and thrust him aside, the Germany we British
fight now, the Ostwald-Krupp Germany of 1915. That Germany, one may now
perceive, had read and thought over and thought out the Bloch problem.

There was also a translation of Bloch into French. In English a portion
of his book was translated for the general reader and published with a
preface by the late Mr. W.T. Stead. It does not seem to have reached the
British military authorities, nor was it published in England with an
instructive intention. As an imaginative work it would have been