312 Mr. Solomon J. Solomon [Feb. 18, 



was very little over half that of the Allies. In that safeguarding 



of life, art and concrete cunningly incorporated in the artistic 

 schemes played the major part. 



Years of preparation assured to the Germans the probability of 

 fighting only in enemy country. They had no unconcealed camps. 

 They already knew that camps of tents and huts, as we had them, 

 could not be hidden, and the means they devised, which they call 

 " Verkleidung von Lagern," if not discovered, w T ould enable them to 

 move their troops in secrecy. Those troops were billeted in the 

 larger towns with the population, where they were immune from 

 attacks by us. The Germans compelled the townspeople in places 

 nearer the battle zone to remain \ they knew the value of their 

 protecting presence. 



In the few incriminating photographs in my possession, strikingly 

 enough, the covered areas were found to be located 15 kilometres 

 (a night's inarch) from the larger towns and from one another, with 

 something like Prussian precision. The troops would march from a 

 town like Bruges by night to Aertryke, lie concealed during the day- 

 light under an imitation aerodrome provided there, and the next 

 night would move on to another covered camp at St. Pierre Capelle, 

 which is 5 miles from their Nieuport front. From Courtrai, 

 Gelewhe, another covered area is just 15 kilometres, and a few miles 

 from the Ypres Salient. So that we may infer that this covering of 

 extensive areas was the pivot of German strategy. 



The interchange of troops would go on undetected, and con- 

 centrations be made by these means in the case of an intended 

 offensive. 



Ludendorff brought about the disastrous March surprise "by the 

 concealment of 40 or 50 divisions in anti-aircraft shelters imme- 

 diately behind his front." 



When our troops followed the retreating Germans a few months 

 later they came across this netting intact, under which Ludendorff 

 crowded perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 men in every hundred yards 

 square in the early morning of March 21, 19 is. And these troops 

 are described as swarming like bees out of a hive only 400 yards 

 away. How came it about that, although by then the air authorities 

 had been warned of the concealing methods employed by the 

 Germans, LudendorfFs artificial landscape, dotted here and there 

 along a 50-mile front, remained undetected ? The answer is not far 

 to seek. There were several factors ; but the general lack of artistic 

 perception was the chief, and the war by this time had become as 

 much as anything a war of pictures. 



Also what the German reviewers now admiC as the "colossal 

 extent of masking " made our authorities incredulous. Detection by 

 the inexorable laws of light and shade went for nothing. The 

 intelligence denied it and the difficulties involved were thought in- 

 superable. It did not occur to them that we in peace time should 



