When the war began the Allied Armies were unprepared, and were unable to withstand an offensive which was a triumph of scientific organization and almost achieved complete success. The partial success of this first German offensive had two important results: it carried the war on the Western Front into French and Belgian territory, and more than confirmed the worst fears of Allied military experts as to the efficiency of the German Army. After the Battle of the Marne, a mood of extravagant optimism prevailed. One British general prophesied in September, 1914, that by the end of March, 1915, the Russians would be on the Oder and the French and British on the Rhine. With the advent of trench warfare on the Western Front and the retreat of the Russians in East Prussia and Poland, the outlook became less rosy, and the Allies settled down to a form of war which was to last, with slight variations, until the armistice. Generally speaking, this form of war involved the subordination of Policy to Grand Tactics. Policy had for its object the protection of vital interests, more especially in the East, and aimed at securing the co-operation of neutral States with a view to strengthening the Alliance. Grand Tactics demanded the sacrifice of every consideration to ensuring victory on the Western Front. The failure of the expedition to the Dardanelles put statesmen, for a time at least, at the mercy of professional soldiers, of whom the vast majority, both French and British, were so-called “Westerners.” The ideas of these men were simple. If pursued to their logical conclusion they would have required the concentration of all Allied forces (including Serbs and Russians) somewhere in France and Flanders. The more rabid Westerners did desire this, as they honestly believed that on their front there was no middle course between a decisive victory and a crushing defeat. Others admitted a Russian, and later an Italian Front with its appendage at Salonika, but, in their eyes, the only object of these two fronts was to hold as many enemy troops as possible and facilitate a victory in the West. That victory was to be preceded by a war of attrition, which would culminate in a final battle on classic lines--the infantry and artillery would make a gap through which massed cavalry would pour. The French Staff was characteristically optimistic, the British less so. Many senior British officers had a profound respect for the German Military System, it was to them the embodiment of excellence from every point of view, and had to be imitated before it could be beaten.