Excerpt from The Children's Story of the War, Vol. 7: The First Seven Months of the Year 1917 Austrian troops push into Russia and hold the Russians in check until France was utterly crushed. The business of beating France to the ground would not, she felt sure, take long. The German navy was to help. It was to bombard the ports of Northern France, and make feints of landing troops, so as' to distract the attention of the French generals and cause them to disperse their forces. Other naval opera tions in the Mediterranean would prevent African troops from being brought to the help of France. Meanwhile the vast German armies would deploy through Belgium, and then in a mighty encircling line sweep southward and make an end of the French. Such was the German plan, and had France and Russia alone been her foes, she would very likely have carried out her programme. But as soon as it became apparent that Germany had torn up another scrap of paper, and had broken her plighted word to Belgium, Great Britain, the mightiest naval power in the world, threw down the gage of battle. At once the naval schemes of Germany were reduced to naught. Within two hours of Britain's declaration of war her cruisers were off the German ports. The German fleet was contained; it dared not issue forth in face of the overwhelming odds arrayed against it. At one stroke the German navy was rendered powerless, and thereafter for twenty-one months it refused to come out in force and abide the issue of battle. When Britain entered the war there was an outburst of fury in Germany, and for the first time the Germans knew that they were not going to have a walk-over. But they had already gone too far to draw back. Their forces were already in France and Belgium. Their plan of campaign was already in progress. They meant to stand on the defensive in Alsace, and throw forward their right wing to swing like a gate through Belgium and France, so as to encircle the French armies and thus destroy them or force them into surrender. When the Belgians, to their eternal honour, refused to allow the German troops free passage through their country, a warfare which they had not expected was forced upon them at the outset. They had to hack their way through a country in which they believed that they would meet with no resistance. A whole fortnight was consumed in the work of overrunning Belgium and deploying the right wing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.