LAND & WATER 
July 20, 191O 
The Offensive in Picardy 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE offensive upon the two banks of the Somme 
has continued during the course of the week 
in a fashion which the experience of now eight- 
een days has taught us to consider normal. 
Its main features are common knowledge. The River 
Somme divides into two unequal areas the field of opera- 
tions : a smaller one to the south between the Roman 
road and the river ; a larger one to the north between tlie 
Somme and the Ancre. The former was rapidly occupied 
up to the great bend of the Somme in front" of Peronne 
by the French in the first days, of the offensive. They 
have remained upon the advanced positions they there 
took several days ago while upon the north of the Somme 
the extreme left of the French, and boyond them the whole 
mass of the British forces, have occupied the same space 
of time in forcing their line more gradually 'forward. 
The causes of the slower advance north of the river 
have already been suggested in these colunuis. 
Equally common knowledge from ample description 
in our Press is the nature of this slower advance to the 
north of the Somme, the alternate periods of intensive 
bombardment followed by the infantry work which, in 
wave after wave, continues to master one belt of territory 
after another. 
The process had reached upon Monday the line 
of dots upon Map I. It ran just in front of Thiepval, 
included the whole of the ruins of Ovilliers ; crossed 
the high road from Albert to Bapaume, between 
the ruins of Ovilliers and those of Pozieres (which the 
advance has not yet occupied). It then ran north of 
Bazentin Le Petit straight across to the wood called the 
Wood of Deville, which lies just east of and touches 
the captured ruins of Longueval. So far as can bo 
gathered from the communiques hitherto published the 
whole of this wood was in the hands of the British by 
Monday night. ' At this point, just beyond Deville Wood, 
the hue turns a comer, just including the strongly fortified 
ruins of Watrelot Farm, leaving the ruins of Guillmont 
in the hands of the enemy and thence running almost 
due south to the Somme upon a line which is in French 
hands and includes the ruins of Hardecourt village. 
South of the Somme, of course, the line extends right 
up to the marshy fields opposite Peronne. The village of 
Biaches, recaptured for a moment by the Germans, is now 
firmly in French hands as is the farm called La Maison- 
ette, the ruins of which stand upon a bold projecting 
rounded knoll 150 feet above the 'Somrne and directly 
overlook Peronne. The little wood between Biaches 
and the Maisonette would seem to have still had a few 
Germans in its extreme north-eastern end when the 
French communique of Monday was sent out. 
So much for the geographical position upon Monday. 
But as we all know thoroughly by this time, geogra- 
phical 'position is but one indication of success or 
failure, and the great offensive has many other 
features more important in themselves and of greater 
value as indications of the success it has hitherto main- 
tained than the mere occupation of an advance over these 
Picardy fields. 
The operation here, as throughout all Europe is — to 
repeat once more a formula which, though stale, is the 
foundation of the whole matter — an effort to make the 
enemy's lines " crumble." It may be that before the 
crumbling process becomes decisive there will be an actual 
break. It is to be hoped, and if it should take place it 
will be an immediate and perhaps decisive advantage. 
But the plan is not primarily a plan for producing such 
a break. 
It is primarily a plan for attacking the enemy with the 
utmost vigour not only in several places at once but in a 
gradually increasing number of places as the plan develops. 
And these attacks, whether their scene be Picardy or the 
Trentino or Volhynia or the Carpathians or the front 
before Riga or the sector covering Baranovichi junction, 
each of them compel an enemy concentration. Each 
of them in compelling such a concentration puts an 
irnmediate strain upon the lateral communications to the 
right and the left. Each of them leaves the enemy in 
doubt as to where exactly he should throw (and in what 
quantities) his rapidly diminishing reserves of men, and 
to all this one must add the actual numerical loss inflicted 
by foes who are now his superiors in man-power and at 
least his equals in mimitionment. 
This vast action in Picardy upon which all our eyes in 
this country are directed is one of actually six points now 
blazing fiercely, for we must add to it the great furnace 
of Verdun ; the now violent actions pressing the Austrians 
in the Trentino:; the Russian thrust upon the Carpathian 
Border ; the double action north and south in the sahent 
of Lutsk ; Evert with a blow just struck and another 
to come in front of Baranovichi. Everywhere it is the 
same story. Everywhere the enemy concentrates in what 
he believes will be sufiicient strength, and everywhere the 
strength of the Allies, though it has not yet by any means 
reached its maximum, ultimately masters the ground. 
In this particular case of the great Picard offensive we 
are arrived at a point in its advance which is of consider- 
able topographical interest because that advance has all 
but reached a series of positions from which the country 
to the north lies under direct observation. 
It is a matter of some importance to the comprehension 
of the battle and I must deal with it in detail. 
Topography of the Franco-British Offensive 
The valley floors of the Ancre and the Somme are 
roughly 150 feet above the sea. 
The country betwee* the two streams over which the 
British are advancing is to the eye confused and rolUng. 
It seems at first quite an unordered jumble of rounded 
plateaux separated by valleys now shallow, now steep, 
like the seas that tumble when there has come a cross 
wind after a gale. But there is none the less a plan under- 
lying this apparent chaos, for generally speaking, the 
whole land is rising from the Somme and the Ancre 
eastward and northward, and from the fields once culti- 
vated by the men of Montauban, of Contalmaison and 
Hardecourt, one sees before one an horizon ridge when- 
ever one is standing upon an open flat of the plateaux. 
This horizon ridge is not even, it has dents and valleys 
cutting it. It is none the less fairly defined to the eye 
as upon the map, and you may say that it runs very 
nearly due east and west from the neighbourhood of 
Pozieres upon the Albert-Bapaume road to the neigh- 
bourhood of Sailly upon the Peronne-Bapaume road, and 
its highest points are more than 300 feet above the rivers. 
I have marked it upon Map I. by the letters A and B 
at either extremity. 
When I say " ridge " I do not mean, of course, anything 
sharp and steep. It is only a succession of swells of land 
and the actual summits are so rounded and shght that they 
can with difficulty be discovered. But from below as one 
comes up from Albert and from the Somme the whole 
of these flattish lumps in series form a sky hne. The 
highest point of all the countryside is, I think, at the 
point A just beyond Pozieres upon the Albert-Bapaume 
road. At any rate, walking along that road in the old 
days of peace one saw all the countryside to the north and 
east before one from that hill top. But the ridge, as you 
go on eastward, is only a few feet less high. The Wood of 
Foureaux, for instance, which the English have christened 
" The High Wood," and which stands — or stood before it 
was shelled — in a long line against the sky from the ground 
below, is only 15 or 16 feet lower than the point upon 
the high road, and there is a field to the east of (luinchy 
village (which I have marked with an " X ") which, though 
lower than these two points, is very conspicuous, and was 
formerly the site of a semaphore station when news was 
conveyed by signals from the Belgian frontier to Paris. 
The reader will note, I think, with interest, that 
the British alignment upon the- north is now all but touch- 
ing this culminating series of flat heights which are, by the 
