March 23, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER 
plateau of Doiianmont, was on tlie afitli) was strategically 
a very bad defeat indeed, if we count defeats and 
victories merely in terms of receding from or approaching 
towards strategic success. 
It was only after this original plan had failed that 
what I have called the obvious and normal method, the 
method that would have been the only one attempted if 
that obstacle of the Meuse had not existed — was resorted 
to by the Germans. Their main action in all the second 
phase of the battle was hammering at the two wings — 
that is, at the neck of the salient : Vaux at B and the 
district west of the Meuse at A. 
Now of this ground west of the Meuse the decisive 
line is the Charny ridge, as we saw last week and the week 
before. But to get even to the approaches of the Charny 
ridge you have to carry the Goose Crest from five to eight 
thousand yards in front of it, and the key of the Goose 
Crest is obviously that culminating western point of it 
which is called the Mort Homme. Such a point could be 
carried either by direct assault or by getting round it and 
rendering it untenable. The first method has again 
been tried this week, and the second is at the bottom of 
the occasional attacks to the west, one ot whicli on a small 
scale was delivered as late as last Monday, the 20th of 
March, in the wood near Avocourt. True, this last if 
really pushed home might carry height 304 which domi- 
nates the Mort Homme. But in its first development 
it has had little or no effect. It has emphasised a slight 
local salient between Bethincourt and Avocourt and it 
has got behind the easy slope leading up to hill 304. But 
it has only gone a very little way so far (Tuesday) to 
turning the Mort Homme position. With the German 
claim to prisoners I deal later. 
It is therefore with the main attack upon the Mort 
Homme, a frontal attack delivered directly against its 
slopes a week before, upon the Tuesday and the Friday of 
last week, the 14th and i6th March, that we are par- 
ticularly concerned. For these were the biggest bids for 
the Mort Homme that the enemy has made since he began 
his efforts upon the west of the Meuse. 
Before we look into that effort in detail, let us re- 
member what the Germans, profiting by the lessons of 
the past, both upon their side and upon ours, have deter- 
mined to be the true way of mastering a modern defensive 
position. They do not propose to carry such positions 
by one initial blow. They have found, as we have, that 
the first line can be rendered untenable at a certain loss 
of men, but that to proceed immediately against the 
second line behind it is almost certainly to fail. They 
have designed, therefore, to proceed by steps. The 
first line is overwhelmed with a vigorous bombardment, 
attacked and occupied with, as it is hoped, not too much 
loss. An interval of two or three days tlien passes during 
which the second line behind is exactly noted, the guns 
brought up for a new bombardment, further munitions 
brought forward and probably fresh troops as well. All 
this done, the second line is attacked— and so forth, 
until the main position is in their hands. 
It is obvious that the value of this method and its 
comparative successs or failure must be measured in 
terms of expense. If you get the first line with an ex- 
penditure of munitions and of men and your second with 
a further expenditure of munitions and of men— and so 
forth — such that the final result has not cost you more 
than the effect in loss it will ultimately produce upon the 
enemy, then you have succeeded. But if. because you 
have under-estimated the power of the defensive, because 
your bombardments have not overwhelmed it as much as 
you thought they would, or because your infantry did not 
come on as vigorously as you had hoped they would, 
your expense in men and in material altogether exceeded 
your calculations, then, even if you ultimately get the 
position, you will have paid too high a price for it, and 
you will be in a worse case after the mere occupation of 
the territory than j'ou were before you began the attempt. 
To put an extreme case. 
Supposing such a position as the Goose Crest, the 
mere preliminary to an advance along the west of the 
Meuse, was only carried after you had thrown away all 
the men whom you thought it worth while to throw 
away for the capture of the Charny ridge itself beyond. 
It is obvious that you would have failed. You would 
then be in the position of a man who found that the mere 
journey to a place where he intended to invest his capital 
had actually cost him all his capital ; an unfruitful venture. 
The object of the defensive, then, against such tactics as 
these, is to make the enemy lose as much as possible, 
even in the first preliminaries of the advance. We do 
not yet know, for the effort is not yet over, whether the 
Germans will reach the main ridge at all. We do not 
know whether they will even carry the Goose Crest as a 
whole, but we do know that the intervals over which they 
act are getting longer and longer, and that instead of 
proceeding by successive sharp and decisive steps, they 
have in the case of the Mort Homme, which is the key 
of the Goose Crest, gone back and forth without even a 
local decision for now much more than a fortnight. Their 
last effort is an example of the measure of their failure. 
I will now turn to the detail of this. That detail can 
only be understood with the aid of such a sketch map as 
Sketch IV, showing the enlargement of the ground which 
upon Sketch III, is enclosed in a little oblong frame. 
Sketch IV shows the contours of the ground in front 
of, and to the north and east of, the Mort Homme, over 
CrcwlPbod 
braMnt:^ J[J 
V^mcvUlc 
.■^S^^§Sm& 
Avocourt" 
Homme i 
Sketch showing position of the Mort Homme and Salient of Bethincourt 
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