that it would ultimately require three times the force that France
could put in the field to liberate French soil from the German
invader. The National Service League would have provided us with a
large army; but even its proposals were vitiated by their assumption
that these forces were needed to do the navy's work of home-defence,
and by the absence of provision for munitions, without which sending
masses of men into battle was sending them to useless slaughter. Time
was needed to remedy these miscalculations, but time was provided by
our command of the sea, about which there had been no misjudgment and
no lack of pre-vision. We made our mistakes before, and during the
war, but neither Mr. Asquith's Governments nor that of his successor
need fear comparison with those of our Allies or our enemies on that
account; and it is merely a modest foible of the people, which has
hardly lost a war for nearly four hundred years, to ascribe its escape
to fortune, and to envy the prescience and the science which have
lightened the path of its enemies to destruction.


CHAPTER II

THE GERMAN INVASION

Germany began the war on the Western front before it was declared, and
on 1-2 August German cavalry crossed the French frontier between
Luxemburg and Switzerland at three points in the direction of Longwy,
Lunéville, and Belfort. But these were only feints designed to prolong
the delusion that Germany would attack on the only front legitimately
open to warfare and to delay the reconstruction of the French defence
required to meet the real offensive. The reasons for German strategy
were conclusive to the General Staff, and they were frankly explained