Hay 22, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER. 
tipon the water) must not only be defended by the 
number of men which are the least required to 
hold it, but must also be able to concentrate men 
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rapidly here or there, tvherever an attack wpon a 
-particular point is delivered. This is particularly 
the case when those who are preparing an offensive 
are superior in number both of men and of 
weapons to those awaiting, and that is the case at 
this moment in Flanders and France, so long as 
the Eastern field draws the enemy away in great 
numbers. 
The enemy holds his line, which we will 
suppose divided into a number of ideal sections, 
A, B, C, D, E, &c. He is threatened by an attack 
in force against him on, say, the sector C, along the 
arrows (1) (1) (1). He must concentrate as quickly 
as he can large bodies of men upon C to withstand 
the shock. He must draw men up quickly from, 
say, A, B, E, and F. And that, as a fact, is what 
the enemy has continually done since his defensive 
campaign in the West opened. Whenever the 
attack has produced a dent in his lines, he has, at 
intervals of from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, 
and sometimes a little more, brought up from 
other parts of the line reinforcements which have 
strengthened the threatened place, and often 
recovered the territory lost. 
Now, to bring men thus up and down the line 
continually there are needed good communica- 
tions, which nowadays means railways (as well 
as good roads for petrol traffic) running every- 
where a little behind the line of the trenches, and 
roughly parallel to that line. These communica- 
tions are called lateral communications. 
The military correspondent of the Times has 
very well described the strength of the German 
positions by the metaphor of a " crust," which, if 
it is broken, has behind it a far less persistent 
resisting medium. To keep that crust intact the 
enemy must, whenever a blow is delivered against 
it, mass men by using these lateral communica- 
tions. 
Now, supposing that a commander opposed to 
a defensive line of this kind intended to strike 
his blow for breaking it upon a particular date, 
towards which date he was accumulating great 
masses of ammunition, and in view of which he was 
disposing his men and reinforcing as largely as 
possible the armies at his disposal. Supposing, for 
instance, that date were roughly the first half of 
October, how would he proceed in the period pre- 
ceding that date ? What would his preparations 
be against the enemy during September, August, 
and July ? 
It is obvious that when he struck he would 
not strike in one place only. It would be im- 
portant for him to embarrass the enemy materially 
)y engaging him in many points at once, so that 
le should have difficulty in reinforcing any one 
Eoint at the expense of another, and to embarrass 
im morally by leaving him during such a com- 
bined attack bewildered as to where the main 
blow would fall. 
Therefore we might expect that on a selected 
number of sectors, perhaps half a dozen, sporadic 
activity would be displayed by the offensive, 
though he had no intention of breaking through, 
as the effect of any of these partial attacks would 
have the intention of leaving the enemy nervoua 
about every one of these half-dozen threatened 
points, and that is exactly what we have seen 
happening during the past few months. 
But apart from that he would have a much 
more complete and detailed object in his attacks. 
He would desire to seize, as the ultimate result of 
each such effort, points from which he could coth^ 
mand the lateral communications of the enemy. 
Observe the effects of this. 
Supposing the line to consist of twelve seo- 
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tors, numbered in the above diagram 1 to 12. In 
the preparation for the offensive, sectors 3, 6, 8, 
and 10 have been particularly attacked, but at 
different times. Now 3, after that 10, later on 6, 
then 3 again, then 8, then 10 again, and so on. 
The effect of all these attacks has been to 
make the enemy continually move men up and 
down the line along his lateral communications, 
the railways (and roads) A B, and organise the 
whole system which has rendered these lateral 
communications, with their depots of ammunition 
and their hospital arrangements and all the rest^ 
essential to him. 
Now, when the main attack is delivered 
at the end of all this preparation, if upon 
these sectors 3, 6, 8, and 10 the offensive hat 
secured points a, b, c, and d, from which he can 
gravely incommode the lateral communications bf 
shell fire, what is the result ? The result is that 
the enemy, already bewildered and confused by a 
general attack in several places at once, and begin- 
ning to move his troops according to his guess as 
to where the most violent attack will ultimately; 
develop, finds his power of moving them gravely; 
embarrassed, or, perhaps, in one or two places, 
actually cut. The offensive meanwhile knows at 
what point he has been most successful in 
threatening or even severing the lateral communi- 
cations and what effect this has had in starving 
of men one of the sectors to the north or to the 
south of such a place. If he finds a grave weak- 
ness developing on the enemy's side on another 
sector on account of this interference with the 
lateral communications, he will at once direct a 
special effort against that point, and, in general, 
his success in breaking the enemy's line or so 
threatening it that it must withdraw, will mainly 
depend not only upon the previous reduction of 
the enemy's forces through loss during the months 
of fighting past, but also upon the command of 
the enemy's lateral communications which that 
fighting has gained, 
5* 
