September 20, 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
(f^E STERN 
EASTEn/J LIMB 
Contour Lines si ISO Fete, 
*-•—•"•— OrigintI Utin De/iniin CtriTiM fiuif/cn^ 
Tt.±iS SUWABISINa TUI FIYI SECTIONS OF THX aSBlU^ POSITION. 
Tlie first general characteristic in tliis sketch of 
tlic great defensive position which will strike the 
observer is that it consists essentially of two limbs. 
(1) The plateau running from Ci"aonne all along 
the north of the river Aisne past the town of Soissons 
to the Oise. 
(2) A long low ridge, or rather swell, which goes 
in a great curve fi-om the Aisne at BeiTj-au-Bac to 
the neighbourhood -oi the Forest of Argonne, all 
round, and behind, and then to the east of, the town 
vi Eheims. 
It will further be convenient, for reasons that 
will appear in a moment, to divide the whole line 
where it is to be examined in detail into five sections ; 
numbered from west to east, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 ; 1, 
2, 3, being the sections of the first or western limb ; 
4 and 5 of the eastern or second limb. 
The first or western limb (which may also be 
called the Soissons half), is a rather liigh tableland 
wliich has been cut by the erosion of a number of 
brooks into a series of separate platforms. All of these 
platforms or buttresses join up to the North wth one 
running level of land. The whole distinct may be 
regarded as a sort of flat-topped embankment rising 
everywhere above the north bank of the river Aisne 
along its lower reaches, from its emergence above the 
Plams of Champagne until its junction with the Oise. 
But it is an embankment the sides of wliich have 
been deeply scored by erosion ; ravines have been 
cut out of it on its southern edge by the series of 
brooks which ran from tlie summit down to the Aisne. 
This " embankment," or plateau, falls very 
gradually from east to west. It is over 450 feet 
above the river on the west, above Craonne, where 
two conspicuous summits mark its culminating points. 
Within five miles of the Oise, at and above Lombray, 
it is no more than 300 feet above that river. Its 
toti'J length from the village of Craonne to Pontoise 
on the Oise, in tlie neighbourhood of Noyon, is, as the 
crow flics, fifty-eight kilometres, or very nearly thirty- 
seven miles. 
And here we must begin that five-fold division of 
the whole line which best suits an analysis of the 
present operations. Of that five-fold division, Z/iree 
divisions belong to the AVestern limb we are now 
discussing. Against this Soissons, or western half of 
the defensive line held by the Germans, you have 
op(?ratiiig : — 
(fi) Upon the loft, between Soissons and the Oise, 
and up along the Oiae towards Noyon, the Ctli French 
army, with all those reserves it has to strengthen it. 
These bodies ai"e slowly but continuously pressing 
forward with the object of getting round the German 
right, in connection with that attempt to harass, and 
perhaps to break, those German main communications, 
the full plan of which I shall deal M'ith on a later 
page. 
(i) From Soissons, eastward and to the right, as 
far as some such point as Pont d'Arcy, you have, 
agains-t the centre of the hills, the British contingent 
operating — resisting fierce counter-attacks launched by 
the Germans, slowly proceeding against strong pressure 
to force the heights in front of them, and, having 
reached the summit of the jjlateau, to press the 
Germans down the northern slope beyond it. 
(r) To the right, or east, again, from the 
neighbourhood of Pont d'Arcy to where the Plains of 
Champagne begin, beyond Craonne, and on over the 
flats to the neighbourhood of BeiTy-au-Bac, you have 
the 5th French army engaged in a similar attempt 
upon the rather higher hills in front of them. 
So much for the first or western limb of the 
defensive line, the operations against wliich I must 
describe more thoroughly in a moment, premising 
meanwhile that in this division of the whole position 
into two " limbs " or halves, the region between 
Craonne and Berry au Bac must be regai-ded as mixed, 
and as, in a fashion, belonging to both. For while it 
belongs to the eastern plains by its open character 
(flat, without a bank), it belongs to the western 
Soissons half in so far as it lies north of the Aisne. 
(2) As to the second eastern limb of this long 
position, wliich may also be called the " Rheims " 
limb, it runs from the point of Berry au Bac to the 
Argonne through very different country. It follows 
the course of the River Suippe, and the backbone 
of it is that swell which I described last week, 
and which I have alluded to again this week, rising 
northward and eastward from the water of the Suippe, 
crowned generally with plantations, and stretching 
tlirough the tumbled rough lumps of bare plough 
land before Ville-sur-Tourbes until it reposes upon 
the Argonne. All this eastern limb of the great 
defensive position stretches through bare hedgeless 
fields cut by orderly spinneys. It lies low along the 
horizon. It differs Avholly from the wooded ravined 
and somewhat bold heights of the western limb 
between Craonne and the Oise. 
This slight swell running beyond the Suippes is, 
as I have said, the backbone of the second limb of the 
8« 
