LAND AND WATER 
October 31, 1914 
Allied resistance) is a distance, as the crow flics, of not 
less than 45 miles ; following the sinuosities of 
the line, as it actually is, the front must mean 
sometliing a good deal over 60 miles. 
Very large forces striking an expectant, defending, 
but inferior body deployed along such a fi-ont might 
attack everywhere in the general effort to roll back 
that defensive, or, rather, to push it back. Such lines 
fully deployed one against tlie other, -without speciid 
points of concentration, we had at the beginning of 
the war. But even such a shock, fuUy developed 
along a whole week's march of country, will almost 
certainly have to turn at last into an attempt to 
outflank. 
In a struggle of a line of ten against a line often 
tliere is not likely to be a decision unless two of the 
ten rush at one point to get through, or turn round 
by 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 j'ou must concentrate upon some supposedly weak 
link in the chain. If you do not choose to attack in 
this method, in other >\ords, 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 
Lis 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 left, that 
is to the south of Lille. The other end of the line— 
the far northern end on the German right — reposing 
on the sea, there is no outflanking there ; for throuo-h 
the sea no troops can march. 
In other words, what the Germans must do if they 
are to succeed, and the only thing they can possibli/ 
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" yoiu- enemy, but 
you mass a " bolt " of men on some one comparatively 
narrow front, and you launch it at that point where 
you thmk the opposing line, from the pressure of bad 
OT few forces on difficult ground, can be broken. 
Napoleon, for instance, at Waterloo, in each of his 
gi-eat efforts to break the Allied Hue tried first one 
place and then another. He tore at Wellington's 
eft centre w^h his gi-eat battery; at that left centre 
he launched Erlon. At the end of the day he launched 
the Guard at the nght centre. But what would 
historians have said of him if he had launched part of 
the Guard a he nght centre and another part at the 
left centre at the same time ? 
hrve hadtTrv\'r? f '* ^' ^?' ^""^ ^«^W 
ii..ve had to try to find some explanation other than 
"eintwl/f ^;.'^^^---. ^n^ the German W 
an^pffi '* •'' P°^««««i"g «>o tradition, doctrine 
and efficiency in practice which we kno^ we are 
Z^r^rfJLf -- explanation' f:;tS 
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, with 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 
neighboui-hood of Calais. To win in the Lille region 
by using there, at the La Bas.see 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 
H 
Sea 
A 
^ 
■ D § 
D I 
D " 
B 
D 
V 
I 
D 
AC^r. o -1 . ouiut; f.xDianation 
divergence of objective : this attack of the encmv 
not along the coast alone or in front of Lme alone 
(four days off), but at t,oth these distant points S 
eucvess. If their success was overwhelming, and they 
faU back as fast as it can into some such position as 
"T^M^^ P^^'' ^~^ ^^^ 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 L. When a line is broken it usually suffers 
disaster m one of its two halves and sometimes in 
bo.h. But at the very best, and in any case, the only 
chance of safety for this northern half would be to 
tali back and " uncover " all that district H— A abn^ 
the sea-coast which the line A— E had hitherto 
protected. Even if the enemy Avith 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, 
waich only nearly breaks it. compels the retreat of 
one half or the other above or below the bulcre ; 
because, if the line should break, one half or the other 
womd certainly be in peril of disaster. 
Isow all tills is as much as to say that, while we 
thus dividing their forces, that object is hard to find. 
boo^t/r .^'*^"Pfi ^I i« ^^^> E is the neighbour- 
hood of LiUe and the point of La Bassee. 
f 1,. n '™''''^ ^^7*^ il^ox^gU that the heaviest " bolt " 
snot at L only, because success tliere would, as a 
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