LAND & WATER 
March i, 1917 
AcraS 
\^Cambral 
"Dent 'so far. ^ " 
prociitcecC6y:i/ie 
Somxne ojfensive 
x: 
Bapauu2£ 
Germcui Ita&s ojctoss 
C/iaazp<yne 
IV 
ipAE-B 
s the watershed between thi;("liannel and the North Sea, 
md on the far side of it the ground falls uninterruptedly 
uway on to the plains of Flanders. 
In these plains, just ten miles from Bapaiimc itself, 
stiuids the ,i;rcat nodal i)oint of Cambrai, \-ital to the 
enemy's niain communications. Why Cambrai should 
thus Ix: vital will be apparent from a glance attheaccom- 
I'anyinf"; ma]i. 
It is the •• Knot," the junclion ul all llie railways and 
roads which feed and support the great main communi- 
cation from Westphalia and the German factories 
through Belgium to the big salient of Noyon which is the 
chief feature of the (urman position in Northern I'rance. 
It is the junction, not only of the railways (and one 
i>f the j>rincipal de))ots for railway material as well upon 
this main line), but also the junction of at least eight 
great main roads, which, in these days of light tramways 
and of petrol traffic, are essential. 
The whole of the activity on the Somme is essentially 
a threat aimed at Cambrai, and it may be said with justice 
that the Bapaume ridge is the last main position which 
the enemy will hold covering Cambrai. Any further 
considerable modification here puts Cambrai in peril. 
Nor can the enemy permit such modification without 
risk of a general retirement. Before he risks that he 
must attack. 
The scheme of the thing is simple : the great sahent 
of Noyon depends upon a central main line of com- 
munication with its branch roads. The kernel of the 
whole system is Cambrai. The last high ground above 
the plain of Cambrai is the Bapaume Ridge. 
Capture of Kut 
The reoccupation of Kut-el-Amara on the Tigris by 
the British Mesopotximian forces has had, of course, a 
striking moral effect which it amply deserv^es, and which 
is of great value to our cause. But it has also a military 
meaning, the study of which is more proper to thesf 
notes. For Kut-el-Amara forms the best defensive 
])osition upon the Tigris between the Persian Gulf and 
Bagdad. 
the reason of this is that the transport of a large force 
is here tied to the river when there is no railway to aid 
it, and even with the aid of the railway an army operating 
in the Tigris Valley cannot act permanently at any great 
distance from the stream. Granted this main topo- 
graphical condition of any fighting in the region, Kut 
forms a defile, that is, a narrow passage which can be 
held by a defending force. To the right and to the left 
of it, nojlh wards and eastwards, southwards and west- 
wards, there are obstacles, that upon the former being 
the Marsh of Suweike, formed by the melting of the 
snows in the Persian mountains, the latter, less formidable, 
being the bed of the Shatt-al-Hai. 
The Turks, reaching Kut behind General Townshend 
in his retreat fourteen months ago between December 
3rd and 5th, 1915, had the effect of shutting the door 
behind the retiring force, and all the efforts to relieve Kut 
which filled the end of January, I^ebruary, March and 
the greater part of April 1916, were attempts to reopen 
that door. 
Those attempts, as we know, failed, for upon April 
29th last General Townshend, at the end of his provisions, 
was compelled to surrender a force of just under 3,000 
British and just over 6,000 Indian troops. 
In the story of the new operations, which have just 
successfully completed their first chapter by the 
forcing of the door and the reopening of the war of 
movement towards Bagdad, we are handicapped, of 
course, by the inadvisabihty upon a few points, and the 
inability upon all others, to discuss numbers and material. 
Everything has depended here, as in every other Opera- 
tion of the vvar, upon effectives and thd^ equipment, 
fo be able to bring a larger number of men together, to 
feed them, to munition them, to provide them with 
superior firing power, is the whole problem. The opera- 
tions of 1915 failed through the superiority of the enemy 
in n\unbers and in communication behind those numbers. 
So have the tables now been turned upon him with the 
operations of late if)i6 and early iqij, because the British 
are now provided with suthciency of men and material 
