346 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 347 ber of the coalition, and the different Blüchers are, therefore, very naturally apt to differ as to what is the common business of the coalition, or its most important business at any given moment.
not on that account considered a fool. His failure was commensurate with his undertaking the world which he fought being much larger than that which Frederick at any time engaged.
But he also came much nearer complete success than Frederick ever did. And his stature as a historical figure is greater in proportion.
Evidently fighting the whole world is not such a difficult task after all. And the reason for it is simple enough. In union there is strength. In disunion there is weakness. And he who fights the whole world usually fights a disunited world.
Coalitions are notoriously weak. They suffer from what we call divided counsels. Divided counsels are, however, merely an outward symptom of the real malady from which all coalitions suffer and which renders them weak and ineffective as contrasted with the power that undertakes to fight the world.
The real malady of all coalitions, the malady which causes their divided counsel, is divided interest. Every coalition is a temporary alliance of independent powers with different and often conflicting interests. Each member of the coalition fights because of special grievances and for special aims and purposes of its own. As war aims and war plans are intimately allied to each other, the different constituent elements of the coalition can seldom if ever have the same plan of campaign against the common enemy. If they agree at all upon a common plan of campaign, it is merely as a compromise between the special plans which each of them would like to follow if its wishes alone were consulted. Such common plans are never elaborated and followed except under great pressure from the common enemy, when general defeat becomes the only alternative to a common plan, and sometimes not even then. Where is Blücher? is, therefore, in one form or another, a common complaint in such coalitions, and a fruitful source of dissension among its members. Blücher is very seldom on the spot where he ought to be in the judgment of the other members of the coalition. For Blücher always attends to his business, and his business is not always the business of every other memThe greatest of all world wars now in progress is no exception to the general rule. The strength of Germany lies in the fact that what is sometimes referred to as the Central Alliance is not really an alliance. If it ever was such, it has ceased to be long ago. There is only Germany, whose legions, like those of Napoleon during the latter part of his career, are recruited from a number of subordinate or tributary nations. Germany has achieved unity of command because Germany vassals have no separate war aims, or at least can have them only within the framework of Germany own plans for world organization.
Germany prescribes their war aims. She may, therefore, plan the operations of their troops. The situation is quite different on the side of the Allies. Before the United States entered the Western Alliance and Russia dropped out from it, there were at least four principal members of that Alliance, besides some minor ones, each with its own special aims and purposes, and, therefore, with its own strategy and plan of campaign. They were, of course, willing to render assistance to each other, like good partners, but they had not a common general plan of campaign, and could have none. They may have tried to co ordinate their different plans, and work out common plans for special joint enterprises, such, for instance, as the Saloniki expedition. But that is something quite different from the single plan of campaign which Germany Great General Staff could work out for the entire war and all fields of operation and impose upon its allies. On the whole, the members of the Alliance opposed to Germany pursued independent plans of campaign, plans that were dictated primarily by their separate and distinct interests, The Russian Revolution and the entry of the United States into the war changed the situation to a very large extent. The power with the most special interests suddenly abandoned her