LAND AND WATER 
October 31, 1914 
Allied resistance) is a distance, as the crow flies of not 
less than 45 miles; foUowiug the sinuosities of 
the line, as it actually is, the front must mean 
something a good deal over 50 miles. 
Very large forces striking an expectant, defending 
but inferior body deployed ixlong such a front might 
attack everywhere in the general effort to roll back 
that defensive, or. rather, to push it back. Such lines 
fully deployed one against the other, without special 
points of concentration, we had at the beginning of 
the war. But even such a shock, fully developed 
alon<r a whole week's march of country, will almost 
certainly have to turn at last into an attempt to 
outflank. .it a. 
In a struggle of a line of ten against a line ot ten 
there is not likely to be a decision unless two of the 
ten rush at one point to get through, or tm-n round 
bv one side to catch the opponent in flank. ^ 
* You do not tear a hole in your opponent s line 
by striking it everywhere with equal force. To tear a 
hole you must concentrate upon some supposedly weak 
link in the cham. If you do not choose to attack m 
this method, in other words, if you do not choose to 
try to tear a hole through his line, the only other 
thing you can do is to get round him— to hold him on 
his line while you claw round him with unexpected 
men to the right or the left. 
Now, in this case, there can be no question of 
" clawing round," that is, of outflanking, because the 
effort is being made at the end of a long and tenacious 
line which reposes on the sea, and then stretches 
away indefinitely southwards. So there is no question 
of the Germans outflanking by the German le/(, that 
is to the south of Lille. The other end of the line — 
the far northern end on the German rzy///— reposing 
on the sea, there is no outflanking there ; for tlirough 
the sea no troops can march. 
In other words, what the Germans musf do if they 
are to succeed, and the only thing they can possibly 
do, is to tear a hole. 
But when you want to tear a hole through a line 
you naturally put all the strength you have upon 
one supposedly weak spot. You must of course have 
troops all along the line to " hold " your enemy, but 
you mass a " bolt " of men on some one comparatively 
naiTOW front, and you launch it at that point where 
you think the opposing line, from the pressure of bad 
or few forces on difficult ground, can be broken. 
Napoleon, for instance, at Waterloo, in each of his 
great efforts to break the Allied line tried first one 
place and then another. He tore at Wellington's 
left centre with his great battery ; at that left centre 
he launched Erlon. At the end of the day he laimched 
the Guard at the right centre. But what would 
historians have said of him if he had launched part of 
the Guard at the right centre and another part at the 
left centre at the same time ? 
Napoleon being what he was, historians would 
have had to try to find some explanation other than 
mere folly or confusion. And the German Army 
being what it is, possessing the tradition, doctrine, 
and efficiency in practice which we know, we are 
equally bound to find some explanation for this 
divergence of objective : this attack of the enemy, 
not along the coast alone or in front of LiUe alone 
(four days off), but at dof/i these distant points. If 
the Germans massed all the men they could spare for 
their " bolt " in front of Lille and hurled them 
against the point of La Bassce, and if by so doing 
they tore a hole through the Allied line there, they 
would achieve a result large in proportion to their 
success. If their success was overwhelming, and they 
poured through in great numbers and very rapidly, 
they would probably cut off that great body of their 
enemies which fills up the remaining fifty mile line 
between Lille and the sea. But even if they failed to 
cut off that northern group, -\\ith its hundreds of 
thousands of men, even if they failed to take them 
prisoners and destroy them as a military force, they 
would, even in case of that incomplete success, 
compel this advanced northern portion to fall back 
very quickly. They would " uncover," as the phrase 
goes, all the sea-coast well past Dunkirk to the 
neighbourhood of Calais. To win in the Lille region 
by "using there, at the La Bassee point, all the men 
they have free, would be. in itself, to win Calais. 
The thing is elementary. If I have here a 
line A— B reposing upon the sea, and C— D my 
opponent breaks me by massing superior numbers in 
a " bolt " at E, then the portion E— B will have to 
Sea 
H 
A C 
D 1 
D 1 
:'<— - 
D 1 
G 
'"" D'l 
B V 
K a 1 
n ■ 
%D 1, 
/ 
■>« D 
a 
fall back as fast as it can into some such position as 
P — B, and poor A — E can only escape the extreme 
probability of capture by pelting away backwards 
towards some such line as H — G. The chances are, 
indeed, of course heavily against A — E being able 
to get away at all after the whole line A — B is broken 
at E. When a line is broken it usually suffers 
disaster in one of its two halves and sometimes in 
both. But at the very best, and in an}'- case, the only 
chance of safety for this northern half would be to 
fall back and " uncover " all that district H — A along 
the sea-coast which the line A — E had hitherto 
protected. Even if the enemy with his " bolt " had 
not broken the line A — B at E, but had pushed it in, 
the same would be true. An ugly push into a line, 
which only nearlt/ breaks it, compels the retreat of 
one half or the other above or below the bulge ; 
because, if the line should break, one half or the other 
would certainly be in peril of disaster. 
Now all this is as much as to say that, while we 
must seek some strategic object in the Germans 
thus dividing their forces, that object is hard to find. 
A is Nieuport, II is Calais, E is the neighbour- 
hood of Lille and the point of La Bassee. 
One would have thought that the heaviest " bolt " 
the Germans could afford to gather would have been 
shot at E only, because success there would, as a 
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