confusion which would make any such plan impracticable. Only the
desperate situation of the French being without reserve could have
compelled its second consideration, as it represented the extreme of
that military inefficiency which makes wasteful use of lives and
material.

_Second._ The British could attack along their front as a diversion to
relieve pressure on Verdun. For this the Germans were fully prepared. It
fell in exactly with their plan. Knowing that the British New Army was
as yet undeveloped as an instrument for the offensive and that it was
still short of guns and shells, the Germans had struck in the inclement
weather of February at Verdun, thinking, and wrongly to my mind, that
the handicap to the vitality of their men of sleet, frost and cold,
soaking rains would be offset by the time gained. Not only had the
Germans sufficient men to carry on the Verdun offensive, but facing the
British their numbers were the largest mile for mile since the first
battle of Ypres. Familiar with British valor as the result of actual
contact in battle from Mons to the Marne and back to Ypres, and
particularly in the Loos offensive (which was the New Army's first
"eye-opener" to the German staff), the Germans reasoned that, with what
one German called "the courage of their stupidity, or the stupidity of
their courage," the British, driven by public demand to the assistance
of the French, would send their fresh infantry with inadequate artillery
support against German machine guns and curtains of fire, and pile up
their dead until their losses would reduce the whole army to inertia for
the rest of the year.

Of course, the German hypothesis--the one which cost von Falkenhayn his
place as Chief of Staff--was based on such a state of exhaustion by the
French that a British attack would be mandatory. The initial stage of