Since German strategy was based on the knowledge that a long war would be disastrous and the hope that a short one was made possible through quick action and by the enormous firepower of the day, the expectation that the war would be over by Christmas was probably more current in Germany than anywhere else.

A returning American businessman wrote in a trade journal (Iron Trade Review, Nov. 19, 1914: "The people in Berlin were very optimistic. I was in Berlin October 20 to 22, and a man who was supposed to be on the inside told me that they would capture Paris inside of ten days and the war would be over before Christmas. My opinion is that the war will least a year and possibly longer."

But ill-informed Britons (and presumably others) had the same desperate hope. From the Saturday Review (London), Sept. 29, 1914:

"But the gigantic part of the task lies yet before us; and we have no more patience with the comfortable armchair view that it will all be well over 'before Christmas.'"

So in the early autumn of 1914 the "armchair view" (which obviously was not that of the military or intellectually responsible politicians) was being rejected even by the press.