There are the
chances of war to put one out, and of a war that changes far faster than
the military intelligence. I have made various forecasts. At the outset
I thought that military Germany would fight at about the 1899 level,
would be lavish with cavalry and great attacks, that it would be
reluctant to entrench, and that the French and British had learnt
the lesson of the Boer war better than the Germans. I trusted to
the melodramatic instinct of the Kaiser. I trusted to the quickened
intelligence of the British military caste. The first rush seemed to
bear me out, and I opened my paper day by day expecting to read of the
British and French entrenched and the Germans beating themselves to
death against wire and trenches. In those days I wrote of the French
being over the Rhine before 1915. But it was the Germans who entrenched
first.
Since then I have made some other attempts. I did not prophesy at all in
1915, so far as I can remember. If I had I should certainly have backed
the Gallipoli attempt to win. It was the right thing to do, and it was
done abominably. It should have given us Constantinople and brought
Bulgaria to our side; it gave us a tragic history of administrative
indolence and negligence, and wasted bravery and devotion. I was very
hopeful of the western offensive in 1915; and in 1916 I counted still on
our continuing push.
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