The Pan-Germanist programme of 1911 called for the establishment of Prussian hegemony over a territory of nearly 4,015,000 square kilometres—in other words, besides actual conquest in the East and West, it meant the indirect, yet effective seizure of Austria-Hungary, the Balkan States, and Turkey. At the beginning of 1917—before the capture of Bagdad by the English and the strategic retreat of the German troops in the West—the programme had been realized to the extent of 3,600,000 square kilometres—that is, in nine-tenths of its entirety. The basic explanation of this achievement lies partly in the fact that, if the Germans are outlaws they are very intelligent outlaws, perfectly trained for the task of seizing the booty on which they have set their hearts; partly in the fact that the leaders of the Allies, intelligent and animated by the best intentions though they are, have been quite unenlightened as to the multiple realities of the European tangle, a thoroughgoing knowledge of which is absolutely necessary for the conduct of the terrible war in progress. The proof of this ignorance lies in the recognized truth that the heads of the European states now in league against Germany were, without exception, taken by surprise when war broke out. Posterity will look on this fact with amazement. The governments of the Allies were no better prepared to direct the war intellectually than were their generals to carry it on materially. Now, the intellectual prosecution of this war presents unprecedented difficulties: it calls uncompromisingly for a detailed knowledge, not only of matters military and naval, but of geographic, ethnographic, economic, and political questions which, by reason of the scale of the present conflict, react profoundly on all military operations of general scope. As a result of this interpenetration of all the various problems, the world-conflict is not, as many people still believe, a purely military struggle, in which the mere machinery of war plays a decisive role. In spite of appearances, mind—that is, the intellectual element—dominates the material element which, though indispensable, can attain full effectiveness only when it is employed in furtherance of a definite plan of action, backed by clear thinking; and such a plan can never be formulated unless the ethnographic, psychological, economic, and geographic factors capable of affecting every great movement of a general strategic nature are calculated as carefully as the purely military factors. By reason of the potency of these many factors—invisible, but very real and powerful—it may be said: ‘This war is not a mere war of armaments—it is a war of political science.’