I have said that the triumphs of Germany behind the firing-line--the fortitude with which she has borne her hideous losses in life, the magnificently effective demonstration of unity, economy, self-sacrifice, industrial and financial organization, and adaptability to all the domestic conditions of war--were only things which those of us who knew the Germans expected to come to pass. They were as inevitable, in their paternalized State, the Empire of System, as were the early cannon-ball successes of the German army. We who were aware, as eye-witnesses, of Germany’s prodigious preparations for "the Day," never doubted that, having chosen her own moment for launching her thunderbolts, they would accomplish precisely the staggering blows and strangle-holds which August and September, 1914, brought forth. Although (including myself) there was not one man in ten thousand in Berlin who knew who Hindenburg was--I have merely a faint recollection of having once read his name as an army commander in _Kaiser Maneuvers_--a good many of us had an abiding impression that the Russian army was no match for the German war machine, however easily the Czar might roll up the Austrians. The victories of the German armies in the war are no surprise to the German people. They have been raised in the belief that their military power was invincible, even against a world of foes. Events in the first year and a half of the war, even though Paris and Calais remained untaken, were certainly such as to convince Germans that their traditional and child-like confidence in their armed prowess was justified.