The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: guessed that the western offensive will be chiefly on German soil
by next June; it is a mere guess, and I admit it is quite
conceivable that the "push" may still be grinding out its daily
tale of wounded and prisoners in 1918 far from that goal.
None of the combatants expected such a war as this, and the
consequence is that the world at large has no idea how to get out
of it. The war may stay with us like a schoolboy caller, because
it does not know how to go. The Italians said as much to me.
"Suppose we get to Innsbruck and Laibach and Trieste," they said,
"it isn't an end!" Lord Northcliffe, I am told, came away from
Italy with the conviction that the war would last six years.
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