" Yet with that enormous risk visible ahead, Ludendorff
continued to play the grand jeu, the great game, and did not advise
any surrender of imperial ambitions in order to obtain a peace for his
people, and was furious with the Majority party in the Reichstag for
preparing a peace resolution. The collapse of Russia inspired him with
new hopes of victory in the west, and again he prepared to sacrifice
masses of men in the slaughter-fields. But he blundered again, and
this time fatally. His time-table was out of gear. The U--boat war had
failed. American manhood was pouring into France, and German soldiers
on the Russian front had been infected with ideas most dangerous to
German discipline and the "will to win." At the end, as at the
beginning, the German war lords failed to understand the psychology of
human nature as they had failed to understand the spirit of France, of
Belgium, of Great Britain, and of America. One of the most important
admissions in history is made by Ludendorff when he writes:
"Looking back, I say our decline began clearly with the outbreak of
the revolution in Russia.
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