A German professor, writing to a friend imprisoned in France, commented in passing upon these qualifications of his countrymen in a letter which M. Joseph Reinach soon afterwards gave to the public. One passage in that document is worth quoting. The professor holds that even if the worst comes to the worst, Germany can always conclude a "white peace" which will leave her the formidable glory of having held the whole world in check, will consolidate her prestige in Europe and enable her, twenty years hence, when she has made good her losses, to establish permanently her dominion. "My confidence is based on German patriotism, on German sense of discipline, on German genius for organization. But it is founded above all else on our enemies' incapacity for organization. Ah, if our adversaries could enhance the worth of their resources by acquiring our gifts of initiative and method, we should be lost! I am thrilled by the picture of what we could accomplish if we were in the places of the English and the French and by the thought of the danger that would confront us if they but knew how to utilize the force of their allies as we have availed ourselves of those of Austria and Turkey."
Those reflections find their fairest comment in the events of the twenty months that have passed since the opening of the campaign.
Our enemies' reading of those events is instructive. The Austrian Press hails them as satisfactory. Even the Socialist organ[106] declares that, in the qualities that go to the attainment of success, "Austria holds the first place." The Austrian General Staff wrote eight months ago: "Our troops have now been fighting for a twelvemonth.... A whole world of enemies rose up against the Central Empires, and more than once our army had to bear the brunt of their formidable onslaught. To-day, they hold but small tracts of territory in western Galicia and Alsatia, whereas Germany's hand is closed in a tight grasp on Belgium and the richest provinces of France, and in the north-east the allied forces of Austria and Germany have penetrated well into Russian Poland. The cannons' muzzles are turned against the most powerful fortresses of the Tsar, and in the Dardanelles our third ally keeps watch and ward imperturbably."