by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

The final edition of the Capital Journal for 1914 assessed the first five months of the war:

THE WAR SITUATION AT END OF YEAR; THREE THINGS DONE
Expert Analyses War and Shows How Little Has Really Been Accomplished

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Predictions made in August that the war would end in the German empire’s disintegration and by the exile of the house of Hohenzollern have not been fulfilled and are not likely to be.

Germany’s decisive overthrow is no longer among the probabilities. The year’s end sees the Teutons being forced slowly backward, but the effort on the allies’ part to to this seems almost superhuman. Berlin’s capture would exhaust the Anglo-Franco-Russian forces to a greater extent that it would be worth.

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Belgium’s participation in the conflict, with such furious patriotism, struck the keynote of the subsequent indecision by interposing an unexpected obstacle to the Germans’ advance on Paris.

Liege and the Belgian army delayed the kaiser until a British corps had time to reach the continent,and it was this corps, in turn, which saved the French army during its retreat through northern France.

The kaiser was thrown out of his stride by these interruptions and Paris escaped capture.

But this was followed immediately by an indecisive result for the allies.

They won the battle of the Marne, but although it will rank among history’s decisive engagements, the allies were unable to follow it up.

From the Marne the Germans retreated, but the halted at the Aisne September 12 and has struck there ever since.

Why the allies permitted the invaders to make this stand on the Aisne has been one of the mysteries of the 1914 fighting. During the early part of the struggle there General French reported that it was believed the Germans had left only a rear guard in the region. Indeed, this statement may furnish an answer to the riddle. The allies, perhaps, underestimated the Germans’ strength at the outset, and, by failing to attack them in sufficient force, gave them the time necessary to recover from the exhaustion of their retreat from the Marne.

A Costly Error

If as a matter of fact, this explains the Teutons’ success in maintaining their hold on the heights of the Aisne, it was the costliest error of the war thus far.

Once entrenched, the kaiser’s troops repelled frontal assault after assault, forcing the allies to resort to flanking operations. From mid-September until mid-October the latter kept sending reinforcement northward in the hope of accomplishing something by these maneuvers, but the Germans met them each time with successful counter strokes.

Finally – October 9 – the Germans captured Antwerp, which enabled them by a rapidly dash across Belgium, to occupy Ostend October 15.