LAND & WATER 
March 8, 1917 
The Bapaume Ridge 
By Hilaire Belloc 
IT is certain that the enemy having been com- 
pelled to evacuate the salient of Serre has determined 
to fall back upon what is called, not very accurately, 
" the Bapaume Ridge." It is not equally certain 
thai he can maintain himself upon that ridge. And if 
lie cannot, there may jxjssibly be restored upon this 
sector what is, however slow its successive steps, a war 
of movement, with all the very grave consequences such 
a change involves. 
We shall not understand the situation until we have 
examined in detail this succession of somewhat confused 
heights to which the English have given the name of 
" the Bapaume Ridge." 
■ The watershed between the North Sea and the 
Channel, which here separates the basin of the Scheldt 
from the basin of the Somme, runs south-east to 
north-west and passes through the town of Bapaume. 
This town is the meeting place of a number of 
ancient and modem roads, precisely because it lies upon 
the watershed. The old Roman road from the south to 
Arras followed, more or less, the high dry ground above 
the two river basins, and Bapaume came into- existence 
because it was the cross roads where this main road from 
south to north along the watershed was traversed by the 
east and west road from Amiens to Cambrai ; that is, 
the main avenue of travel from the Channel and the 
Somme harbours into the Belgic Plains of the Artois. 
The ridge, if it may so be called (for it is very broken) 
lowers gradually from north-west to south-east and is 
marked by the following succession of contours so far 
as they he within the present German lines : 
You have first on the extreme north-west or German 
riglit of the line, the village of Moncln-au-Bois. This 
village is built upon a slope running up to a small plateau, 
about a mile long by a quarter of a mile broad, which 
plateau is just above the 160 metre level. This is the 
highest point of the system. It should be pointed 
out of course, that these heights do not connote 
hills visible to the eye upon the scale of their measure- 
ment above the sea. The contour 160 metres is, in 
English measin-ement, a contour of 525 feet above sea 
level. That would be a very considerable hill if one saw 
the whole of its height at once. But the observer in 
the neighbourhood is already high up. The whole 
coimtry side is a series of rolling open fields, the water 
courses in the ravines of which are themselves more than 
300 feet above the sea, apd these bottoms are dis inct 
from the slowly rising heights. There is, for instance, 
nothing within 2 or 3 miles of Monchy which is as much 
as 200 feet below the gradual elevation upon which it 
stands. And no impression of true hill country is 
conveyed to the eye which looks eastward towards the 
so-called Bapaume Ridge. All you can say is that it 
makes an horizon for you beyond which you cannot see. 
