mass production methods in industry, the development of mass communications media (newspapers and magazines) coupled with a great increase in literacy-all these innovations transformed the art and science of war. "In the midst of the First World War a commentator remarked that the armament of the belligerents represented as great an advance upon that of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 as its armament did upon that of Crecy, in the Hundred Years War (1338-1453) . . ." according to Cyril Falls (A Hundred Years of War, p. 15). With these modern tools at hand, the military leaders had to develop doctrines for their use. World War I was the testing ground of these doctrines.

The methods and weapons developed since 1850 made possible the Century of Total War in which we now live, a time of total war with its potential of almost instantaneous and promiscuous wholesale slaughter by the most devastating weapons known to man. Thus we can consider World War I as the first war characterized by "totality of means, totality of ends, totality of effort..." (Hanson W. Baldwin, World War I, p. 2). It is too fresh in our minds to require much review of its historical backgrounds, origins, or results.

The causes of World War I, in President Woodrow Wilson's phrase, "run deep into all the obscure soils of history." Nationalism, imperialism, militarism—all were factors. The war involved most of the European nations, either directly as belligerents or indirectly as victims. It was fought in Europe, Africa, and Asia by land armies, on the high seas by the great naval powers, and in the "wild blue yonder" for the first time in human history. Thirty nations from every continent were eventually counted among the belligerents. The war was unprecedented in scope, bloodshed, violence, destruction, and monetary cost. The exact number of men mobilized for war is uncertain; the number of direct war casualties (killed in battle or died of wounds) is estimated at between 8 and 10 million, plus 21 million wounded. In addition, many millions of civilians died of starvation, disease, ill-treatment, and neglect. Its monetary cost was about $340 billion, a large proportion of it being borne by the United States through its own expenditures for war plus the loans to our Allies (largely unpaid). We started a national debt which we have never eliminated and which will continue to burden us as we add to it year by year to pay for past wars and prepare for future wars. Centuries old dynasties (the Romanov, Hapsburg, Hohenzollern) toppled to destruction and many new nations rose from the ruins of old em

pires as the victors redrew the political map of Europe and distributed the spoils of war.

World War I began on June 28, 1914, with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, who was making a state visit to the recently annexed, predominantly Slavic, province of Bosnia. The assassin was hired by the Serbian "Black Hand" (a nationalist secret society of army officers); the motive was presumably revenge for the loss of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria in 1908.

The murder provided Austria an opportunity and excuse to humble Serbia long an obstacle to her southward drive in the Balkans. Backed by the secret support of Germany, and ignoring Russian interest in the Balkans as the self-appointed protector of all Slavs, Austria delivered an insulting ultimatum to Serbia . . . almost 4 weeks after the murder. Serbia, as expected, rejected the Austrian demands. The Great Powers chose sides, in line with their systems of alliances, and bombarded each other with ultimatums to cease mobilization. Germany demanded that Russia and France stop mobilizing, then declared war on Russia the following day (August 1, 1914). Then Germany invaded neutral Luxemburg and seized its strategic railnet for an invasion of France. Austria was already fighting Serbia when Germany declared war on France on August 3. Next morning, Germany informed neutral Belgium that her troops would occupy that nation for "security purposes." Belgium appealed for aid. Britain, which had jointly agreed with Germany, France, Austria, and Russia to respect Belgian neutrality, sought German assurances that this guarantee would be fulfilled. Germany ignored the request and Britain, in the words of the German chancellor, went to war for "a scrap of paper" (August 4).

Germany had to invade Belgium to carry out its Schlieffen Plan for the rapid conquest of France before Russia could complete its mobilization and attack East Prussia. The Plan envisioned rapid concentration of maximum German strength and a wide-swinging flank march through Belgium (and Holland, if necessary) to encircle the French Armies and avoid the Verdun-Belfort line of fortifications. The invasion of Belgium was the key to the Plan. Having destroyed or captured the French Armies, Germany could leave a small occupation force in the west and turn on Russia. Thus Germany could avoid a two-front war and a short conflict, resulting in her complete victory, seemed assured.

Britain's small regular army of seven divisions, that "contemptible little army" in the words of Kaiser William II, seemed only a negligible obstacle to the German war lords.

Unfortunately the best laid plans can go awry; so did the Schlieffen Plan. A small allied force delayed the German advance long enough for the French to concentrate along the line of the Marne River, remove some incompetent commanders who had failed to meet the test of combat, and bring up reserves from the Paris Military District via the famed "taxicab army." The German generals fumbled, the Allies won the "miracle of the Marne" (September 7-9, 1914), and after a few more fruitless maneuvers, both sides were stalemated. The war settled down to 4 years of trench warfare, short and bloody offensives for a few worthless acres of ground, and a policy of attrition. Millions of footsoldiers huddled in dugouts and trenches, protected by sandbags and barbed wire entanglements. Artillery, trench mortars, machineguns, hand grenades, and picks and shovels became of supreme importance. Thousands of cavalry idled in rear areas while optimistic generals talked of "breakthroughs" and "battles of pursuit." The offensive attacks of 1915, 1916, and 1917 degenerated into veritable blood baths, exterminating the flower of European

manpower.

Germany had the upper hand from the start. She wiped out two or three Russian Armies on the Eastern Front, helped the Austrians eliminate stubborn Serbian resistance, and invaded Rumania to secure the precious Ploesti oil reserves. Bulgaria and Turkey joined the Central Powers in the floodtide of German victory, and the Turkish Armies menaced Britain's Suez lifeline to India and Australia. The Allies were forced into several sideshow operations in the Middle East to protect the Suez Canal, in the Dardanelles to open a sealane to Russia's Black Sea ports, and in the Salonika area to support the weakening Greek and Serb Armies. Italy wavered before accepting the highest bid and joined the Allies, but she too soon required Anglo-French aid. Germany waged unrestricted submarine warfare against Allied and neutral shipping in the attempt to break the naval blockade imposed by the British fleet and in the hope of starving the British Isles out of the war.

As the stagnation of trench war and the blood price of blundering attempts to break the deadlock rose higher and higher, all of the belligerent nations became victims of a great war weariness,

but the military leaders would not hear of any efforts at a negotiated peace. Russia was the first to collapse under the strain, for it was the least modernized and industrialized of the belligerents and thus the most vulnerable to the stress of modern total war. The Tsar abdicated and a revolutionary government took control in March 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution of October-November 1917 took Russia out of the war and opened the Ukrainian granary to Germany's hungry population. However, the balance of manpower was restored by the entrance of the United States on the Allied side (April 6, 1917) but it would be more than a year before American manpower and munitions could be significant.

Two new weapons appeared in World War I; both were destined to restore mobility to modern war. The airplane, conceived at first as only a reconnaissance tool, developed into a long-range extension of the artillery arm as it began to carry heavier and heavier cargoes of bombs. The tank, invented to break the deadlock of trench war and to protect the infantry from the deadly machinegun, became an important combat arm in its own right, with its own doctrine and tactics.

The Russian withdrawal enabled Germany to transfer many divisions to the Western front and recover the manpower superiority it had frittered away at Verdun. The German general staff, under the inspiration of General Erich Ludendorff (the real power behind the figurehead of General von Hindenburg) developed new infantry tactics of infiltration. Germany struck in March 1918 before the bulk of American manpower could make itself felt. A swift attack opened a huge gap in the British lines (March 21-April 9, 1918) but the gallant stand made by Haig's army slowed the German drive. Ludendorff launched fresh attacks farther south, against the French Army (May-June 1918) but sufficient American troops (raw but eager) were at hand to support the weary French. These drives were also halted. By July Germany had exhausted its forces.

The Allies launched a series of offensives between August and November which the Germans could not withstand. Ludendorff was forced to resign on October 27, 1918. The war went badly for the Central Powers on other fronts, and one by one Germany's allies surrendered-first Turkey, then Bulgaria, then Austria. The German Navy, locked in harbors since the Battle of Jutland (1916), was crippled and made impotent by a series of sailor mutinies, which spread rapidly to the civilian population. The

German Government fell, Emperor William II fled to Holland after abdicating his throne, and a new regime asked for peace. The war ended by armistice on November 11, 1918, and the victorious Allies began the long and painful process of dividing spoils and making peace treaties which would render their recent enemies impotent. One unanswered question remained: Had the world really been made safe for democracy?