The ideas of these men were simple. If pursued to their logical conclusion they would have required the concentration of all Allied forces (including Serbs and Russians) somewhere in France and Flanders. The more rabid Westerners did desire this, as they honestly believed that on their front there was no middle course between a decisive victory and a crushing defeat. Others admitted a Russian, and later an Italian Front with its appendage at Salonika, but, in their eyes, the only object of these two fronts was to hold as many enemy troops as possible and facilitate a victory in the West. That victory was to be preceded by a war of attrition, which would culminate in a final battle on classic lines--the infantry and artillery would make a gap through which massed cavalry would pour.
The French Staff was characteristically optimistic, the British less so. Many senior British officers had a profound respect for the German Military System, it was to them the embodiment of excellence from every point of view, and had to be imitated before it could be beaten.
In the autumn of 1915, the era of Allied counter-offensives began. The slaughter on both sides was immense, but no appreciable results were achieved. While these operations were being carried out, Bulgaria joined the Central Empires, the greater part of Servia and Albania was over-run, and, according to an official report on the operations against the Dardanelles, “the flow of munitions and drafts fell away.”
Throughout the whole of 1916, the war of attrition was waged in deadly earnest and exacted a ghastly toll. By the end of the year no decision had been reached on the three main fronts, but the richest part of Rumania had fallen into the hands of the enemy.
Public opinion in both France and Great Britain seemed to approve the methods of the Westerners. The French naturally desired above everything to drive the invaders out of France, and the British people had become resigned to a war of workshops, which was lucrative to those who stayed at home.
From a purely military point of view, the attitude of the Westerners was comprehensible. The Western Front was close to the Allied bases of supply, it had good communications, the climate was healthy, on this front the Germans were encountered, and they formed the backbone of the hostile combination. Undoubtedly a victory in the West was the ideal way to win the war. No one disputed that, but at the end of 1916 that victory was still remote. Germany’s position on the Western Front was very strong, her army was homogeneous, her communications were superior to ours, and her recent conquests in the East had mitigated the effects of two years of blockade.