Germany will emerge victor or vanquished.
On March 21st, 1918, Germany opened the great engagement which will probably prove to be the decisive battle of the war. This designation has already, but not altogether correctly, been given to the Battle of the Marne. The Marne did decide that the Germans were not to capture Paris in their first great rush through Belgium and France. It did not only halt the German advance, but threw it back behind the Aisne, thus preventing Germany from winning the war in 1914. But it did not defeat the German army decisively. Nor did it make an ultimate German victory impossible. It left the German army still in the field, its strength practically unimpaired, still capable of strong defense, still with great striking power in attack. It made possible for the future a decisive Allied victory, but it did not achieve it. The German defeat at Verdun, indeed, did more harm to the German army, lessened to a greater extent its power of defense and its strength to attack than did the Marne, because through the French defense and counter-efforts, the German army lost nearly half a million men. But the battle now raging, which for convenience of reference is called the Battle of Picardy (although it embraces Picardy, Artois, and Flanders), will do more than did either the Marne or Verdun. It will place irrevocably and unmistakably upon Germany the laurel of victory or the thorny crown of defeat. It is, therefore, the decisive battle of the war. It is the final struggle of the civilized world against the domination of the beast. It is Germany's final effort, and, in order that this may be appreciated, it is necessary only to recount the conditions which impelled Germany to take the offensive at this time.
Germany's eastern ambitions attained.
A peace by compromise would be a German victory.
The developments in Russia, so entirely favorable to Germany, led many to believe that, having attained so completely their eastern ambitions, the German leaders would rest content with what they had, and, strengthening their lines in the west through reinforcements drawn from the Russian front, remain on the defensive on the western front until a peace could be arranged. With the German talons firmly fixed in the throat of Ukraine; with Poland, Courland, and Lithuania practically annexed, there was a certain element of reason in this contention. It was entirely conceivable that with such strength in the west, Germany could set in motion the machinery of a peace propaganda, and obtain a peace conference which would enable her to work out a programme of concessions in the west for concessions in the east—a peace by compromise which would answer present needs while furnishing all future requirements in case she decided to provoke another war. Thus Germany would end the war with a victory just as truly as if she had won it on the field of battle, and without the terrific loss in man power that an offensive on the western front would entail.
The Allies refuse a peace by compromise.
In constructing this theory, however, certain essentials were ignored. German voraciousness can never be satisfied. It is a bottomless pit which can be filled only by pouring into it the world. When there is nothing more to be had, Germany would perforce rest content. The possession of Russia only whetted her appetite for France and Belgium and the life of England. Moreover, the Allies, having now learned Germany, and having acquired a sense of their own safety and of the future peace of the world, had no thought of permitting Germany to remain in possession of western Russia, of Serbia, and of Rumania, and thereby not only perpetuating but actually aggravating the condition out of which grew the present war. They had, therefore, notified Germany that they would lay down arms only when she was willing to disgorge what she and her allies had swallowed, and had rectified their frontiers in accordance with President Wilson's fourteen conditions and with Lloyd George's statement on the same subject.
In other words, Germany was to be permitted to emerge from the war with a profit only through military victory; she would have to defend her conquests. This negatived the idea of a peace through negotiation.
The German people equally to blame with their government.
The letter to Prince Sixtus.