March 29, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
19 
The Battle of St. Quentin 
By Ililaire Relloc 
'E shall not understand the nature and mean- 
ing of the German retreat, and its present 
\/\/ central feature, the Battle for St. Quentin, 
T T imless we grasp the map in its largest features. 
Whvn we have so grasped it we shall not be able to 
say where that retreat will end (or rather halt) ; still 
less what its fortunes will be, or the consequence of its 
obvious perils to the enemy. But we shall be able 
to understand the material with which we are dealing, 
and until we understand the main points of that it is 
impossible to study the subject at all. 
Nature of the Original Line 
The line across the west to which the Germans were 
pinned after their defeats on the Marnc and the first 
battle of Ypres, may be called The Ori^uial Line. I 
have indicated it upon Map I with a succession of letters 
0-0-0. 
It was not a line chosen by the enemy. It was a line 
to which he was constrained. He dug himself in as he 
could and where he could, often taking advantage of 
crests to give him observation, but in some sectors suffer- 
ing from a very unfavourable situation. As he was in 
immensely superior strength for a long time after being 
]:>inned to this line and had a still greater superiority in 
luunitionment than he had even in men, he was able, 
upon the wiiole, to force himsdf upon local positions 
which thus gave him an advantage in superiority, though 
not everywhere. 
This line he felt at once to be what it was, a siege line, 
and he tried liard to break out. He tried lirst towards 
the north and later at Verdun, and in both attempts he 
failed. 
Nevertheless this line gave him certaui very great 
advantages, which were the more apparent as his tenure 
of it continued, and the two unexpected factors of sujiply 
and submarine warfare developed. These advantages 
may be sunmiarised as follows : 
(i) It put under his power and occupation the chief 
manufacturing districts of the North of France and 
Belgium, and particularly the great coalfield which is 
marked upon Map 1 by stipling at X ; the great manu- 
facturing region of Lille and all the manufacturing plant 
of Belgium. 
(2) It put into his occupation and power the iron- 
bearing region at Y, part of which he had annexed after 
the war of 1870-71, but part of which had remained after 
that war in French territory. 
(3) It kept all the destruction of war far from his own 
soil and on the soil of his enemies, thereby exasperating 
and wearing down those enemies and, what is more 
important, preserving his civil population from the strain 
of invasion. When one's army is fighting upon the 
enemy's soil, one can always make one's civil population 
believe that one is winning. Napoleon, in the very 
