8 
LAND & WATER 
July 13, 1916 
of which have filled all our press for some days, the Allied 
line has reached, at the close of this first phase, a series 
of points which show a territorial advantage eastward, 
increasing regularly from north to south until the apex 
to\iches the immediate neighbourhood of Peronne. 
There is an almost unchanged line from Gommecourt to 
the Ancre, which, south of Thiepval, first begins to show 
^ fluctuation in our favour, and which then, in front of 
Contalmaison, and covering Montauban and Hardecourt, 
runs southward and eastward until it reaches the Somme 
immediately opposite Peronne and only bends back to 
strike the Roman road again near Estrees. 
The causes which have imposed sucii a restriction upon 
the northern part of the offensive, where the heaviest 
work has fallen to the British forces, and has permitted 
a greater and greater extent of advance to the south, 
and particularly of the French, in the great bend of the 
Somme, opposite and up to Peronne itself, can only be 
justly estimated by those upon the spot, and even b}' 
these imperfectly. But they would seem to include, 
if the general consensus of eye witnesses is to be trusted, 
three among others ; first a greater concentration of the 
enemy upon the northern part of the sector attacked ; 
second (what is a function of this) an element of surprise 
to the south which was not present in the north ; lastly, 
the difference of ground. 
This last, we must especially study, not only for the 
interest attached to the nature of the advance, as it has 
proceeded up to the present moment, but also because 
it will enable us to understand the Allied task during 
the next few days in the same region. 
■ The natural feature determining all this country side 
is the upper Somme. The Somme is here so narrow that 
it would hardly be an obstacle at all, but for these two 
points ; first that its valley is very marshy, the stream 
being flanked on both sides by ponds and reedy bogs 
vhich often fill up a couple of hundred yards of the 
valley floor ; secondly, that the stream has been canalised 
and for the greatest part of the river's course in this 
region, the canal is separate from the stream itself, and 
forms, wherever it so runs separately, a considerable 
obstacle. 
Below Peronne the obstacle hardly concerns us be- 
cause the Allied forces stand upon either side of it and 
t^e connection between them is easily maintained, but 
above Peronne the stream flows from north to south, 
6ver a space of about. twelve miles as the crow files. 
It prevents, therefore, a strict covering to any attempted 
advance upon St. Quentin — the importance of which 
place will be seen in a moment — and is only to be turned 
from the north beyond Peronne by the country . between '.': 
Peronne and Combles. But the country there is very 
badly cut up and full of excellent defensive positions, 
notably the steep ridge which stands all along above the 
Tortillc to the east of that brook. 
Speaking of this great bend of the Somme, we must 
return to the contrasting character of the country north 
south of the river below Peronne ; that is, generally " 
speaking, the difference between the country over which 
the British and the left wing of the French are advancing 
and north of the Somme and the country over which the 
main part of the French forces are moving to the south of 
that river. 
This last is a large open plateau from which shallow 
and broad ravines run down towards the Somme. The 
roof of the plateau is everywhere from about 180 to 200 
feet above the level of the river, and there runs right across 
it like a sort of axis', the old Roman road which originally 
led from Amiens to St. Quentin. This road is still the 
main high road of the country as far as Villiers. Below 
the point where it crosses the river, the bridge broke 
down in the dark ages and the road beyond was for long 
abandoned. It is not even now restored to its old im- 
portance. Everywhere to the north pf this Roman road, 
as far as, and beyond the village of Estrees (which name 
like the English place name " Street," to which it corres- 
ponds, is continually found upon the Roman roads of 
the north), the French have made good. They hold 
at the moment of writing the ruins of Belloy, of Flau- 
court and so north to Biachcs. They thus are every- 
where upon the ridge which directly overlooks Peronne, 
save that they are not possessed of Villiers at the southern 
extremity of that ridge, nor have they reached Barleux. 
Their outposts are within a stone's throw of Peronne 
across the stream. They have advanced through 
fairly open country, not badly c\it up, and not Jieavily 
wooded. ' 
The whole country side is of standing interest for 
England apart from this great campaign. These were 
the fields ihrjugh which Henry V. advanced in his 
march to the crossing of the Somme above Peronne, at 
Voyennes, where he began that countermarch north- 
ward again which led him to Agincourt. 
To the north of the river the conditions of the ground 
are different. In the first place, the average of the heights 
is greater than those to the south of the river by some- 
thing like 130 feet, and this is of very great importance 
to the present operations. The greater French advance 
upon the south of the stream allows the Allies to support 
their more checked advance upon the "north by artillery 
fire in flank. Biit that fire, coming from below upwards, 
has not the eflicacy it would have if the plateaux to the 
south of the Somme were of equal or superior height to 
those upon the north. Unfortunately, it is the other 
way about,, and the French guns to the south of the 
Somme have to search out upon the north objectives 
which are usually higher than the battery firing. • 
. In the second place, all this country to the north of 
the Somme and between the Somme and the Ancfe is 
more deeply cut up and more ravined than the south. 
Thiepval, for instance, is more than 200 feet above the 
valleys bounding its ridge upon the east and the west. 
Cahtalmaison is more than 150 feet above the water level 
at Fricourt, two miles below, and even as one advances 
further away froni the Somme and the Ancre valleys 
one does not come upon a fairly level step of open upland , 
such as there is to the south of the Somme. The tortuous 
character of the contours here is very well seen in the 
windings of the light railway whicli runs from Peronne to 
Albert, by way of Combles, and which can only serve 
its purpose by taking great loops to avoid the sharp rises 
of land. 
Lastly, this northern bank of the Somme supports a 
larger number of isolated woods than the southern, and 
these offer the enemy cover. 
The Operation is not for Territory 
Of the operation in general, the thing principally to be 
borne in mind is that the Allied plan from this opening 
of the season 19 16 onwards is not confined to any one 
sector and does not even chiefly propose to itself those 
strategical effects which would result from cutting any 
one great line of communications or compelling the 
enemy to retire from any one salient. 
It is rather concerned with so pressing the enemy 
upon unexpected point after unexpected point, with so 
harassing him in his present rapid decline of useful 
effectives, with so embarrassing his judgment as to where 
he shall move to parry that new danger, reserves which 
he finds increasingly difticult to find, that at last his line 
will no longer hold at all. 
To make that line bend, to flatten a bulge in it and 
thus to recover territory, is not to advance in any way 
the progress of the Allied cause. There is nothing in 
such action savouring of a decision or bringing us nearer 
to a victorious peace. 
But the making of the enemy's defensive organisation 
to " crumble " ; the causing of his remaining spare troops 
to be moved now here, now there, with increasing difficulty 
and an increasing chance of leaving open some denuded 
sector to the numerically superior offensive power of 
the Allies ; the creating of an opportunity for striking 
%Wth final effect upon one or more such denuded sectors, 
and — consequently upon this — the destruction of a 
cordon which, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest 
link — that is the major and patent strategical object of 
the whole Alliance. It is the object at which the mihtary 
chiefs of the Allied armies aimed patiently, long before 
they had obtained that numerical superiority which is 
now more and more the determining factor in the war. 
It is the object which those institutions so peculiarly 
ill fitted for armed struggle — professional politics and a 
sensational press^ — completely failed to comprehend, and 
are only now beginning to grasp because the result of so 
much laborious military work is now beginning at last 
to appear upon the surface. 
