of their 'bridge-head' in France. But there was another and even stronger reason for what she did; she was in the grip of economic fate. She was out against the Slavs for markets, for raw materials, and for wider fields to till; a million people were being added annually to her stay-at-home, kept-at-home family. But to develop that mighty Going Concern of her man-power, so strong for conquest if she could keep it going, but so insatiably hungry, she had built up Hamburg, and all that Hamburg stood for in the way of overseas adventure and home industries. Hamburg had her own momentum, and it was not eastward. Thus German strategy was biased by political necessity.
The result was that Berlin committed a fundamental mistake; she fought on two fronts without fully making up her mind on which front she meant to win. You may strike at the two flanks of your enemy, the right and the left, but unless your force is sufficient to annihilate you must decide beforehand which stroke is to be the feint and which the real attack. Berlin had not decided between her political objectives—Hamburg and overseas dominion or Baghdad and the Heartland—and therefore her strategical aim also was uncertain.
