One may balance the German offensive in March of '18
with the weight that was piling up against them by the entry of the
Americans. One may also see now, very clearly, the paramount
importance of the human factor in this arithmetic of war, the morale
of men being of greater influence than generalship, though dependent
on it, the spirit of peoples being as vital to success as the
mechanical efficiency of the war-machine; and above all, one is now
able to observe how each side blundered on in a blind, desperate way,
sacrificing masses of human life without a clear vision of the
consequences, until at last one side blundered more than another and
was lost. It will be impossible to pretend in history that our High
Command, or any other, foresaw the thread of plot as it was unraveled
to the end, and so arranged its plan that events happened according to
design. The events of March, 1918, were not foreseen nor prevented by
French or British. The ability of our generals was not imaginative nor
inventive, but limited to the piling up of men and munitions, always
more men and more munitions, against positions of enormous strength
and overcoming obstacles by sheer weight of flesh and blood and high
explosives.
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