For forty years the great nations of Europe had had universal service. Every able-bodied youth, unless his government chose to excuse him, became a soldier. For forty years the diplomatists had held the balance of power so delicately poised that the mighty armed forces all kept to their own sides of their frontiers. It was in the era of modern invention and man's mastery of material power that these great armies were formed and trained for the war that was to test their steel. Where Napoleon marched a hundred thousand men along parallel roads, the modern general sends his millions on railroad trains. The problem for each nation when war came was to concentrate with a greater rapidity than its adversary its enormous masses of men and guns against the enemy; and success in this was not due as in former days to speed of foot over good highways such as the Romans and Napoleon built, but to organized railroad and automobile transport or rather the prompt employment of all the industrial resources of the nation for war alone. Out of the conflicting reports day by day emerge to the observer as he reviews the progress of the war, with the map before him, plans of campaign as simple in their broad lines as in Caesar's or Alexander's day. Generals fighting with a million or two million men under their command have held to the same principles as if they had only ten or fifteen thousand. All schools of successful warfare have believed in the offensive; in quick decisive blows which take the enemy by surprise and find him unready if possible. They hold that the army in rest must always be beaten by the army which takes the initiative. This partly explains the frequent small actions indicated by the reports of trenches taken in assault along the western front, while the lines occupied by the armies did not radically change. Such actions are the natural expression by any spirited force of its sense of initiative. Unless you sometimes take some of the enemy's trenches, he will be taking yours. By striking him in one section you may prevent him from striking you in another. Von Moltke and the other great German generals were only following in the footsteps of Napoleon when they taught that the offensive should be the first thought of every soldier. The offensive naturally seeks to flank its adversary. Lieutenant General Winfield Scott once stated that if two lines of men, without any officers, were placed in a field, one line would inevitably try to get around the end of the other. The immensity of the forces, the power and precision of modern armies in defense has lengthened the battle fronts from a mile or a mile and a half in Napoleon's time to hundreds of miles.