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lest we too yield to the human weakness for formalism. We would do well to recall now that, in 1917, this failing came forcibly to the front. A large number of officers believed and taught that the power of the defensive had so increased, that a break-through on the Western front was out of the question. Even after Cambrai and the warning of Riga, these arguments persisted - persisted with unfortunate effect till the German guns on the "Michel tag" forever settled the debate.
It would of course be a mistake to discard altogether the means and methods employed in trench warfare, for undoubtedly there will be other sieges. Almost every war has had one or more of them. Generally they have been more conspicuous in annals then their effect on the war warranted. For sieges have shown one thing very clearly: an army besieged is an army lost, unless aid come from outside - lost, because it is an army without power to take the offensive, without mobility, without therefore the power to seek a decision in battle. Hence in our discussion of war, the siege will be regarded as an exceptional manifestation and relegated to its place as such. The lessons we shall study from the World War will be taken, in large part, from the series of operations beginning March 21, 1918, which have aptly been caled by a French writer the Battle of France. 
It is the battle and its different phases that most interests us, and that will be our principal theme in a study of war. In what follows it will be assumed that the two contending forces do not differ widely in strength. Obviously where one adversary greatly exceeds the other in strength, victory can be secured in violation even of the principles of the conduct of war, though at an enhanced cost where these principles are seriously departed from. In dealing with such unstable factors as human emotions, there can be no 
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