LAND & ^^' A T E R 
July 13, 1916 
Nature of the General Offensive 
By Hilaire Belloc 
"i [On account of the more immediate interest 0/ the new 
offensive on the Sommc, Mr. Felloe's special article 
on the Italian Front, from which he has just returned, 
is deferred to a later date] 
THE general offensive of this summer upon the 
part of the Allies is declared. 
There are four main fronts upon which this 
offensive will ultimately develop. Each will 
come into play at its own tim3 in the scheme which has 
been agreed upon. For each its moment will appear in 
succession,' as the embarrassment of the enemy — with 
the pressure upon him continually increasing and the 
points of attack multiplying — causes him to expose 
successively one portion after another of his extended 
lines. 
These four fronts, are, of course (i) the Eastern front, 
in which the enemy is opposed to the Russians ; (2) the 
Balkan front, which means no more as yet than the use of 
Salonika as a base for some future offensive movement ; 
(3) the French front, from Belfort to the North Sea, 
where the enemy is opposed to French and English 
troops, with a Belgian contingent on the extreme north ; 
and lastly (4) the Italian Alpine front. 
We shall have a fairly accurate conception of these 
four fronts if we consider the whole of the enemy's forces 
available at this moment as represented by the figure , 
27, in. which cas(?, he has put (roughly speaking) 9 J 
upoa the East, i2i upon the West, 3I (for the moment) 
upon the Italian front, and ij upon the Balkan. 
It will be seen from these figures that the great mass of 
the enemy's available force — more than seven-ninths of 
it — is upon the two main fronts Eastern and Western. 
li is clearly upon these two_ that the increasing pressure 
will be developed. The Italian front will serve mainly 
to immobilise a certain minimum number of the enemy — , 
not less I think than 25 divisions and, at this moment, 
far more. 
It is then upon the Eastern and the Western fronts that 
we will concentrate our attention, during all this opening 
and preliminary part of the general of)erations which 
are destined ultimately to disintegrate the enemy's 
" lines. 
Simultaneous Offensive 
It may be well to digress at the outset upon a very 
foolish legend which the silence observed upon the Higher 
Command of the Allies during this great war has permitted 
to arise. Those who have not grasped the general nature 
3f the operations seem to imagine that the present 
simultaneous (and rapidly extending) form of attack 
upon both the main fronts is a happy novelty due to 
some new close understanding between the Allied Com- 
mands which had hitherto been lacking, but which might 
have been earlier arrived at. There are people who 
speak and write as though the forces of the Alliance in 
the' past had through sheer incompetence acted inde- 
pendently one of the other, had thus not supported one 
another and had therefore failed to achieve some expec- 
ted result. It is almost incredible that there should 
be people capable of swallowing such nonsense, let alone 
of writing it, but it has been written, and the Germans 
have naturally taken advantage of such a legend and 
spread it as widely as possible, through their agents and 
their dupes. 
.• The principle is, after all, perfectly simple. For the 
better part of a year, the enemy had an immense pre- 
ponderance in men — up to the late spring or early summer 
of.iqis. 
.From, that date onwards — for nearly another year — 
he still had a preponderance in munitionment and es- 
f»ecially in the munitionment necessary for heavy 
artillery ft+which is the determining weapon of trench 
warfare. This preponderance, long noticeable (though 
slowly dechning) in the West, was enormous in the East. 
It permitted him the advance which he made through 
Poland durine the whole of last summer. 
Under such circumstances, a general attack would have 
been manifest folly. The thing would seem so self-evident 
that one marvels at the lack of intelligence which has 
failed to perceive it. The fact that the enemy was 
encircled in no way contradicted the pther fact, that he 
was at first in men and munitions, then in munitions 
(though no longer in men), superior to those who en- 
circled him. So long as that was the case, successive 
attacks each just ])reventing a complete concentration 
of superior forces upon one point was the only con- 
ceivable ])olicy. It is debatable whether the Alliance 
on the West and East combined is now already superior 
in munitionment to the enemy. But it is, at any rate, 
at the least, already virtually equal, audit is very rapidly 
drawing ahead in munitionment, while in numbers it is 
now overwhelmingly preponderant and increasingly so. 
Therefore there is now possible and will be possible hence- 
forward continuous simultaneous attacks multiph-ing the 
points of pressure steadily against an enemy who will 
be more and more at a loss to repair breaches and to 
support threatened points as the operation extends. 
But this simultaneous and increasing attack is not an 
afterthought or a novelty ; it is but the fmal phase of a 
military policy long foreseen and only now at last rendered 
possible of execution. 
It is worth while making this digression if only to 
emphasise the truth that the great campaign is conducted, 
not by professional politicians, nor by the newspapers 
which keep them in the limelight, but by soldiers. 
Comparison of Eastern and Western Fronts 
With so much said on this point let us proceed to 
analyse the two main fronts upon which the general 
offensive is lighting up like fire running along dry grass. 
Regarding both fronts combined, it may be generally 
stated that the enemy at the end of May — just before 
the blow fell on him — had committed himself to putting 
his chief weight in the West and to standing upon the 
East on the defensive. He had not only determined to 
go on at Verdun, he had further (on !VIay 15th) put a 
maximum group of 18 division? — all it could hold — 
into the Trentino. And he proposed with what remained 
to hold the Russians back. 
The mere figures 12 J in France, 3 J against Italy— ^ 
only 9I against Russia — would show this ; but a considera- 
tion of the line to be held shows it still more clearly. 
The smaller number upon the Eastern front was ex- 
pected to hold a line, not double indeed that of the 
Western front, but nearly double. 
It is true that the Eastern front can now be slightly 
strengthened by the withdrawal of men from the inept 
fiasco which Berlin irriposed upon Austria in the Trentino. 
But the succour is not very great. If the Austrians can 
weaken their forces upon the Italian front by ten divi- 
sions it will be the very most they can hope for. And 
ten c*>'isions will not augment the enemy's strength upon 
the East by as much as 12 per cent. 
The enemy's conception of thus holding his Eastern 
line with a minimum of men while he massed upon the 
West was due to his misapprehension of the rate at which 
Russia had been re-equipped and re-munitioned. There- 
fore, it was in the strict logic of the situation that the 
beginning of the general offensive should take place upon 
that front. The enemy had left north of the marshes, 
between these and the Baltic, no more than 49 divisions. 
It was the strict minimvuTi necessary to the bare holding 
of his lines. Even if the Russians had proved as slow 
in re-armament as heimagincd, he could not have risked 
a lower figure. It did not give him 2 men to the yard; 
In distance upon the map, it gave him little more than 
one actual combatant to the yard, and such a depleted 
force could not have held at all, had not the country been 
what it was. The whole line is a chain of marshes and 
lakes, which leaves the trenches to be defended not much 
more than half the mileage which the line makes upon the 
map. It is only the caps between successive lakes or 
