Without clear views and an adequate understanding of the major sequences of the War, not only as regards operations and tactics, but also as regards world-politics and world-economics, without carefully balancing the new experience that it has brought us against all that it has confirmed and that has to be maintained, we shall not be in a position to draw accurate deductions for the future. Towards this the writer hopes to contribute by means of the following arguments. They are addressed equally to the Army and the nation. CONTENTS CHAP. INTRODUCTORY NOTE AUTHOR'S FOREWORD I. THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE CENTRAL POWERS II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONAL AND MASSED WARFARE III. THE INFLUENCE OF TECHNICAL SCIENCE IV. LEADERSHIP V. THE ARMY IN THE FUTURE VI. STILL READY FOR WAR DEDUCTIONS FROM THE WORLD WAR I THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE CENTRAL POWERS The grouping of the Powers at the beginning and still more during the course of the World War has been extremely unfavourable to the Central Powers. We must go back to the desperate struggle of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War to find anything comparable to it. Napoleon, too, found himself at length pitted against all Europe, but the comparative strength of the opposed forces at the beginning of the autumn campaign of 1813 was by no means unfavourable to him. The Allies at that time possessed only an insignificant superiority of numbers. Moreover, our enemies have not had to endure what Field-Marshal Count Schlieffen in 1909 justly deduced from the history of previous coalition wars: "Even when all objections have been disposed of, every difficulty overcome, even when resolution is ripened, and a powerful advance from all sides is about to be set on foot, yet in the breast of every individual the anxious question will still arise: Will the others come? Will our distant Allies take their stand at the right time?"[1]