LAND & WATER 
March 29, ici7 
crash of defeat at Lcipsic in 181.). and with disaster 
clearly in front of him, maintained that state of 
mind among the French quite easily so long as he 
was lighting in the enemy's country, and the sense of 
defeat only caine to the i'Yench when l-rance itself was 
invaded in iiSi4. \\hat this factor in the situation 
means anyone witii a little wisdom and detachment 
can apjireciate b\- contrasting the feeling towards the 
war in this country, which is not invaded, and the feeling 
towards it in France, which is. 
(4) The point at which the line had crystallised upon 
the North Sea Coast, though it had lost him the supreme 
advantage of commanding the Straits of Dover, still gave 
him command of the mouth of the Scheldt, of the neigh- 
bouring Dutch Coast, and gave him an all-important 
base for operations in the North Sea at Zecbrugge. 
These ad\antages were so great that they very much 
more tiian comj>ensated him for a certain grave dis- 
advantage ajiparent in the shape of the line. 
'ihis gTa\e disadvantage consisted in the fact that 
the line as a whole suffered from a great awkward salient 
generally called the Salient of Noyon from the town 
which lay nearest to its apex. He fully appreciated 
the ultimate weakness which he would suffer on accoimt 
of this accident. But he also appreciated the truth 
that his advantages \ery greatly outweighed that dis- 
advantage 
The Noyon Salient 
Now what was the specific disadvantage of this Noyon 
sahent, the r»)ex of which I have indicated oh Map 1 
by the large letter S ? 
It is curious that the novel features of trench warfare, 
which are nothing more than the old siege probfems on a 
larger scale, should have confused people in this matter 
and should have made them think that a salient was no 
longer dangerous because the war upon it was not a. war 
of movement. A salient always possesses and always 
will possess certain disadvantages, because those dis- 
advantages are in the nature of things. They vary in 
detail, of course, according to the nature of the fighting 
and the size of the salient, but, fundamentally,..they are 
the. same. The disadvantage of holding a sahent (the 
men who have been round Ypres for more than two 
years could tell you something about it) is essentially 
that a salient compels you to fight facing two ways at 
once. 
This inevitable weakness of a salient shows itself in 
all sorts of different ways. On a small tactical 
scale there is the danger of getting a body of troops cut 
oft" or crushed. On a tactical scale again, even in a war of 
positions, there is the danger of having a small salient over- 
whelmed by converging fire. Neither of these dangers were 
present of course in the case of a large strategical salient 
like that of Noyon, especially when it vV-as held under 
siege conditions, that is, by fortified lines with an ample 
sufficiency of men and guns to maintain them, l^ever- 
theless. the great strategical salient of Noyon aftorded 
its own peculiar peril, to understand which a simple 
diagram will suffice. 
If I am holding a straight line hke the line M-N in 
diagram II then, supposing it cannot be turned at either 
-of its flanks M or N (supposing, for instance, these flanks 
repose upon neutral territory or the sea) I am safe so 
T\ 
\ 
X 
'Tvf 
11 
^ 
^^ V V 
1 
|0 
yV 
^^^^^ 
\ \ 
T 
long as the line is not positively shattered. If a violent 
offensive makes a dent in my line, as at O in diagram II, 
I can slightly modify the whole (or even leave the dent 
standing if it is not too deep) and yet feel secure, or I can 
retire by quite a short distance along the whole stretch, 
as to the dotted line behind M-N, and be in the same 
security as I was before. Nothing will be disastrous save 
a complete and sudden rupture at the point of attack. 
But supposing that instead of holding a straight line 
like M-N, I am holding a salient of the shape X V Z with 
its apc.\ at Y, the position is wholly changed. Let an 
(qually \iolcnt oft'ensive be directed along a "transversal " 
as along the line T-T. whether from both sides (which 
is the best plan if one has the men) or even from one side 
only, and observe what happens. If the oft'ensive makes 
a very considerable dent (as for instance the shaded 
})ortion at V) the position of your bulging line below the 
dent is increasingly imperiiled. To reduce the peril 
of being in a salient at all you have to straighten your 
line towards the chord of the arc, that is from the curve 
X Y Z to the dotted line X-Z behind it, and that means the 
bringing back of a. great number of men and guns and 
material by converging roads so that they get more 
and more crowdoi together, and to do all this imder 
the jMc-ssure of an enemy who is not only pursuing but 
is ])resent upon both sides of the movement. To eft'ect 
this from a salient, that is, to evacuate a salient, is 
obviously therefore, more and more difficult in proportion 
as your salient is sharper, and in proportion to the dis- 
tance through which you have to bring your men back ; 
for with every extra march you have a greater chance of 
confusion and delaj-. 
As the eftect of the offensive along the transversal 
increases you are more and more constrained to evacuate 
the salient under peril of a particular form of disaster, 
which form is this : 
That if your retirement in the narrowing salient gets 
crowded and falls into disarray, your whole line is destroyed 
as a military deience over the whole stretch of the salient, 
for a body of men in confusion is no defence at all. It 
is worse than if they were not there. 
Successful pressure, therefore, upon a transversal 
compels the force holding the salient to retire, or rather 
to attempt retirement. But the object of the pressure 
is not to cause retirement but to produce such a state 
of aft'airs during that retirement that the salient shall 
fall into confusion and that the proper taking up of 
a new fortified straighter line behind it shall fail. 
Hence it is that the Germans and Austrians when they 
planned the destruction of the Russian armies in 1915, 
struck with all their might upon the transversal of a 
salient, to wit the salient formed by the lines across 
Galicia, and the lines along the Carpathians, with their 
apex at the upper waters of the Dunajetz River. As we 
all remember they very nearly succeeded through an 
immense superiority in munitionment. 
They did not eft'ect a complete rupture in the Russian 
lines as they had hoped, but they threw the salient into 
complete disarray, captured great numbers of prisoners, 
and compelled an immediate. retirement over a great dis- 
tance with very heavy losses. 
Now if we turn again to Map I we shall see that the 
chord of the arc, the base line a retirement to which would 
eliminate the Noyon salient for the enemy, runs along the 
trajectory marked 2-2-2 just covering Lille, Valenciennes, 
Maubeuge, Mezieres, and so to Verdun. Nothing short 
of this would eliminate the peril formed by the salient. 
A shorter retirement would simply shift the apex of the 
salient to another place, but leave it, if anything, 
sharper than before. 
But a great retirement of this kind to what has generally 
been called (from the river obstacle upon its left half) 
" the line of the Meuse," would be an operation in- 
evitably costing very heavy sacrifice in men and material. 
The maximum wddth of "the retirement would be nearly 
100 miles, and the body of troops to be moved, seemg 
how the Germans were concentrating upon various parts 
of their line, would be more than half the whole of the 
German army in the West. 
The Allies attacked on the Somme along the trans- 
versal going south-east from Albert. They had already 
attempted a year before a double attack along a 
transversal further back ; the English at Loos, south 
of Lille, the French in the Champagne east of Rheims, 
