I agree Steve, and I believe that even after the 1918 Spring offensives and their aftermaths, if the German High Command had kept their nerve they could still have got a decent peace out of the Entente.
Both sides were exhausted, the Americans were, with all respect, not a specially effective force, with borrowed equipment and a poor level of training in Western front conditions...certainly no better than the British New Armies had been in 1916.
Basically I believe that the war was going to be won by the side that kept the home front together longest. When Ludendorff lost his nerve in August, the rot spread too fast to stop. Just a smell of weakness was all it took, and it could just as easily been the Entente.
This isn't a variation on the "stab in the back" claptrap, later promoted by the nazis and military in Germany, but a view based on the very real utter exhaustion of all sides in 1918, with morale kept only by total uncompromising commitment to victory by military and civilian leaders.
Lloyd George himself recorded early in 1918 his fears that the war was lost..it wouldn't take much to have tipped the balance.