ABSTRACT
For much of the war excessive optimism, not just a British phenomenon, was a psychological barrier to a realistic vision of the war, making it difficult for the British to assess accurately the German Army and to adjust to an unfamiliar continental warfare. The British high command’s self-belief in refusing ‘to conclude that by the rules of the game we were beaten’2 and its ethos, expressed in the motto ‘We’ll do it. What is it?’,3 was its greatest strength, a powerful asset in motivating the army, when the other armies of 1914 all succumbed to mutinies. Believing in ‘the relentless offensive spirit, which pursues its object with dogged determination till it is achieved’,4 most officers agreed with the sentiment that ‘no matter what happens, this war has got to be won for once & for all even if it takes years to do it’.5 But this was a two-edged sword as faith in victory too often degenerated in the early years of the war into a fatal lack of realism within the hierarchy, termed variously as ‘the cult of optimism’,6 ‘the “Cavalry Spirit”’,7 and the ‘offensive spirit’.8
