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The End of the First Phase 243 tent of territory, in numbers engaged, unequalled in history, but still a campaign, like other campaigns, before Waterloo, Sedan and Sadowa had nourished the belief that nations could be crushed in weeks, even in days. So in a larger sense October 4 might be accepted as the date which saw the close of the first phase of the Great War, the interruption, perhaps temporar>', perhaps final of German expectations, but at least the termination of the period in which she had hoped to win quickly; the extinction of the dream which had dominated her military operations from Liege to the time when the Battle of the Aisne became the Battle of the Seven Rivers, of the Three Nations, for the immediate battle ground now stretched through Germany, France and Belgium, from the Swiss to the Dutch frontiers. Two months had seen the beginning of a war not the end of France, of Servia, not even of little Belgium, crushed but defiant; had seen Russia take the field and England send her advance guard to the continent.

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