“Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye
That tears shall drown the wind.”
Was it also, as with Macbeth, a case of
“Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other”?
Time will tell.
Had Germany not invaded Belgium, it is an even chance that England would not have intervened, at least at the beginning of the war.
Germany could have detached a relatively small part of its army to defend its highly fortified Western frontier, and leaving France to waste its strength on frontal attacks on that almost impregnable line of defense, Germany with the bulk of its army and that of Austria could have made a swift drive at Russia.
Is it not possible that that course would have yielded better results than the fiasco, which followed the fruitless drive at Paris?
If Germany succeeds, it will claim that “nothing succeeds like success,” and to the disciples of Treitschke and Bernhardi this will be a sufficing answer.
If it fail, posterity will be at a loss to determine which blundered the worst, the German Foreign Office or its General Staff, its diplomats or its generals.