[Sidenote:  Ready for a great blow in the West.]

Realizing that she could not wait without serious danger to herself, Germany mustered all her resources in the west for the great blow she was to deliver.  The problem which confronted the German General Staff was to destroy one of the two great armies, that of France or that of England.  Both could not be handled together.  Germany did not have the strength.  The attack had to be delivered against one or the other.  Which should it be?

[Sidenote:  The French losses much greater than the British.]

An attack against the French had certain advantages.  The French army was unmistakably the weaker of the two.  In the early days of the war, while the British army was being formed, it was the French who had to stand the brunt of the fighting.  At Verdun it was the French who from February to July beat back the German assaults along the Meuse time after time in the most tremendous duel of the war.  In the Battle of the Somme it was the French who fought their way forward south of the river to the outskirts of Peronne and Chaulnes.  The French losses had, therefore, been very much greater than the British.  As the populations of France and of the United Kingdom are about the same, the French people had, therefore, suffered much more than had the British, and were correspondingly less able to stand such a blow as Germany was able to deliver.

[Sidenote:  Much of French front is invulnerable.]

But there was one great disadvantage in attacking France.  The blow could not be delivered against the front from St. Mihiel to the Swiss frontiers.  This front is vulnerable only where the Vosges Mountains are broken by the great gaps at Belfort, Epinal, and Nancy; and these gaps are easy to defend and well backed up in rear by great bases of supply excellently served by many radiating railroad lines.  It could not be delivered at Verdun, because France had not only retaken all the ground of military value which had been lost; but Verdun had become to France a religion, a fanaticism.  To France it was a symbol of French love of country, of French patriotism.  Verdun meant France.  Germany, therefore, had no desire to test this fortified area again.  This left only the Champagne line between the Argonne Forest and Rheims.

[Sidenote:  Reasons for not striking on the Champagne line.]

[Sidenote:  The Allied armies would be left intact.]

If Germany had attacked this front, the British army, the stronger of her enemies, would soon have struck, and whether Germany so elected or not, she would nevertheless be running two major operations at the same time—­one offensive in Champagne, the other defensive in Picardy or in Flanders.  Again, suppose her army did bend the French line back, as it undoubtedly would, how far back would it have to go in order for Germany to reach a complete military decision?  There would indeed be no such decision in sight, almost regardless