April 5, 1917 
LAINU it WATER 
plans and of preparing an offensive elsewhere is the 
criterion of his success or failure, and that power would 
be tested by his power to hold the centre at St. Quentiu, 
and his power to keep intact the pivot near Laon. He 
gambled upon both these points holding. The whole 
interest of the present moment lies in the effoirt which 
the Allies are making to render his centre untenable and 
to shave his pivot. 
St. Quentin, though no more than a geographical 
area, gives a convenient name whereby to test this part of 
the scheme. For if he loses St. Quentin he loses the line. 
It is equally true that, even if lie retain St. Quentin, he 
must keep the pivot intact or lose the whole. 
The battle for- St. Quentin, therefore, is, almost for the 
first time in the whole course of this war, a battle in which 
a well-known town has a true strategic meaning, quite 
apart from any political importance it may possess, and 
we can judge success or failure by the retention or the 
loss of a place which is not fortified, which means nothing 
of what towns 'used to mean in the old wars, but which 
from its situation in his line is vital and determinant. 
We are therefore justitied in analysing carefully his 
present powers of holding that place. When wc 
have analysed this " the Battle for vSt. Quentin," we can 
turn to the other side of the problem wnich can be fi.xed 
by no dehnite place name (it can hardly be called the 
Battle for Laon) and which is essentially a struggle for 
the pivot or hinge upon which the line of which St. 
0,uentin is the centre depends . 
St. Quentin hes in a sort of shallow cup north-west of 
the little stream which is still called the Somme, and 
which is one of the head waters of that river, about hve 
miles below its source. It is a large manufacturing 
town and of special strategical importance fronj the fact 
that it is the meeting place of seven great main roads 
and a great number of small ones. It is at the same time 
the junction which several railways (light railways and 
single lines) make with the gTeat international trunk line 
between Paris and Berlin.. Its lower part, near the 
stream, the canal, and the railway station, stands about 
150 feet above the sea, and that level is our datum or 
base line for the contours we are about to descmbe. 
From the western side (which, is that from which the 
AlUes are approaching St. Quentin) two separate groups 
of heights, separated bj' the little marshy streams of 
the Upper Somme, and the canal following them, com- 
matid the town. The first, upon the north and west of 
the Somme. may be called the Heights of Holnon (though 
they do not locally bear that name), because Hohion 13 
the principal group of houses- distinguishing them. 
Tfiey might also be called the heights of Savy, did not 
the village of Savy itself lie in somewhat of a hollow. 
If we shade upon Map 11. everything below the loo 
metre contour, that is, everything less than about 15c 
feet abo\e the bed of the. Somme and the lower portions 
of St. Quentin town, we have a very fair idea of tht 
shape ot this northern or Ivestern plateau dominating 
St. Quentin. ' . 
On the other side of the stream the contours are a 
little more complicated. We can understand them by 
dividing them into three groups. If we here pursue the 
same method of shading everything below the 100 metrxi 
contour, that is, everything less than 150 feet above the 
stream, we shall get three more or less well-defined flat 
banks or wide ridges which distinguish all that country 
side and which have been studied in detail by recent 
military historians, because they were the battlefield 
of tlie struggle between Faidherbe and the Prussians in 
January 187 1-. • 
The first of these, immediately covering the town, may 
be called the Ridge Mesnil-Cjauchy. I have marked it 
with a dotted line and the numbers i — i on Sketch II. 
It has a double crest at the two points marked with a 
cross upon that line, from each of which one sees the 
whole of St. Quentin laid out before one like a map. 
These crests in the slightly undulating plateau ai^e about 
215 feet above the Somme. 
The next crest (which I have marked 2 — 2 upon Sketch 
II.) may be called the Crest of Urvillers. Its highest 
point, at Urvillers itself»-.is as high as the twin summits 
of the first crest. ,♦<-.*- r 
Lastly, there is the third ridge which is generally 
called the Ridge of Essigny (which I have niarked on 
the Sketch map by the numbers 3 — .5). It has also on 
its very flat bare surface a summit marked by a cross, 
the same height as the others, that is some 215 feet above 
the water level. 
With so much grasped we can proceed to study tlie 
advance which has been made upon the town. 
The British north of the Somme had fought their way 
by Sunday last to a line marked upon Map 2 by the 
first series of black dots. They had taken Vermand. 
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