text:  This parsimony of the Allied governments and their invincible repugnance to the efforts and sacrifices which could alone bring and certainly would have brought the war to an early and glorious issue is the cause of the subsequent conversion of the war into one of blockades and sieges and of its being transferred to Flanders where its progress was necessarily slow and cost enormous from the vast number of strongholds which required to be reduced at every stage of the Allied advance