April 19, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
front of Foch. It had already been knocked to pieces some 
days before the'Marae at Guise. A portion of it made the 
only considerable German error in the midst of the Austrian 
front.- It suffered the principal reverse of the great advance 
on July 14th on the Somme. It was here agam to fulfil 
its reputation for misfortune. 
The first overwhelming tide of the attack succeeded. A 
few hundred Australians were taken prisoners and the extreme 
German right appears to have reached the little height on 
which the mill of Lagnicourt stands to the north-west of those 
ruins. But this first and very partial attack had taken place 
before dawn, and it was just as day broke, about half-past 
five, that it seems to have reached its maximum cx])ansion. 
As has so often been the case with tlie (n-rman army in 
the West during the whole of this great war, there seems to 
have been an inability to " carry on." Wiiether because the 
infantry has been tied to its guns over much or because the 
type of German discipline adversely atiects the initiative of 
regimental command and especially' of the individual man — 
whatever was the reason — the su(;ccssful and very large Ger- 
man force permitted the Australians to rally. At half-past 
seven the counter-attack by the British was delivered, and 
it had the most amazing "^result. ' Not bnly did the very 
eonsiderable ( lerman bodv break before it' but what is really 
remarkable it completely lost direction. Instead of fighting 
its way back to its own gaps in the wire, a great part of it 
blundered against its own ' entanglements, and was there 
caught and shot to pieces. 1,500 dead were found upon 
the reoccupied ground alone. 300 prisoners were taken. 
What mass of dead and wounded should be estimated over 
ai«d above the corpses counted within sight of the British 
we cannot tell, but we can confidently say that in such 
open fighting and under such punishment not much less than 
a fourth of those who had made the attempt were out of 
action bfefore this battle, which marked last Sunday, was 
concluded. 
The action was of especial value as affording a test in 
detail and upon a considerable scale of the German theory 
that conditions of movement and of fairly open warfare would 
be to their advantage, especially against tlie new British 
armies. The verdict here has definitely gone against them 
and the lesson will not be. lost. 
So ended what must be called, take it all in all, the 
greatest operation in the military history of England. 
It had filled a week. It had covered a front of a whole 
county. It had been fought under the most desperate 
<?)nditions- of weather and of fatigue, and it had proved com- 
pletely successful. 
The General Result 
Now what is the general result, what is the military effect 
of a great blow like this ? The enemy is told tiiat its 
object was to " break through " and that, as a fact, it 
did not break through. 
The statement is quite false. The time-table of an' offen- 
sive of this sort, the arrangement of the preliminary bom- 
bardment, tlie steps taken for advancing munitionment and 
guns (the reallv heavy task) after success, sliould success be 
achic\ed, in no way presuppose the immediate rupture of 
the whole enemy line. It might conceivably take place 
through some bit of exceptional bad management on the part^ 
of the enemy, or through sudden demoralisation on a large 
scale, but the experience of many months had taught all 
the highly industrialised nations, that is, all central, southern 
and western Europe^ and in particular, industrialised Britain, 
which is now beginning to play so great a part in the field, 
that a sudden rupture of the enemy line is not the object to 
be looked for, and that any great expense of men and material 
in the sole object of attaining it, will be largely wasted. The 
business of the Western Allies to-day is to use their superiority 
in numbers, character, munitionment. and tactical skill, so 
as to render a larger and larger sector of the Western line 
fluid, to keep a cl6se pressure upon that extending space of 
doubtful defensive, so as to prevent the enemy's getting 
" elbow room " ; to make the enemy perpetually lose more 
men and material under the effort than the attack loses, 
and above all to make him lose far more in proportion to his 
remaining resources : To increase the harrying effect not 
only by the regular extension of the fluid line, but by the 
increasing uncertainty as to which of many points he is n'^xt 
prepared to hold, to throw him into a regular succession of 
dilemmas between the respective advantage of holding this 
and yielding that (for example, to-day Douai and 
I.ens ; yesterday St. Ouentin and the old positions round 
Arras ; to-morrow the trunk line through Cambrai, or the 
exceedingly valuable political point of Lille) ; and in general 
by perpetually imposing one's initiative to increase what is 
rapidly becoming an intolerable strain. 
Can the enemy counteract such a state of affairs ? Of 
course, he can — for a time. He has not created his strategic 
reserve for nothing. He is not deliberately anticipating his 
future income in men as a mere spendthrift would ; he has 
in hand, incorporated in the depots and near the field, a 
large remaining body of spare force. 
But this ceaseless, successful, and I had almost said, 
triumphant pressure upon the decisive Western front ddes 
not leave him the free use of that force. He must draw upon 
it to save what he can of the Western front, and by so much 
be the weaker for an offensive elsewhere. The greater tlie 
pressure the less lie is able to be certain of what he can spare 
elsewhere. Suppose he is so pressed that he determines at 
last not to attack anywhere else, but to use against this same 
Western front all the income he had anticipated, he will 
not even so completely restore the balance, and meanwhile he 
leaves himself in jeopardy upon the other front. 
We know — it is now common knowledge— and the 
evidence of it has been in the possession of the Allies for 
months, that he is working to restore somewhere a war of 
movement. He is in particular concentrating his very 
■ last reserve of labour upon the material for more mobile and 
less heavy pieces. Nor indeed can his large anticipation of 
income in men have itself- any other object. 
But this sort of action upon the Western front is not de- 
signed to give him the conditions he desires. There is no 
cliance of a mobile war at present (in his sense) anywhere 
between Rheims and La Bassee ; and the more we shake back 
his line and follow it up, the smaller becomes the area upon 
which any even successful rapid retirement could restore to 
him that " elbow room " which he requires. 
The French Offensive 
On last Monday. April ibth, the Ifritish forces were mainly 
occupied in consuhdating what they had gained, save to the 
north where they were still feehng the continuous pressure 
being exercised round Lens. A general account gave the 
total of over 14,000 prisoners and not far short of 200 guns. 
But the conclusion of the first great blow which the 
British had undertaken was but the signal for the delivery 
of the second offensive, the task of the French. 
This offensive took place along the whole valley at the 
Aisne from just below Missy, which is the very point of the 
sharp salient the new line makes with the old, to the imme- 
diate neighbourhood of the town of Kheims. It is a front, 
as the crow flies, of abvut 25 miles. 
This article has to be prepared for press upon the Tuesday, 
and has therefore no material before it, unfortunately, 
beyond the first despatcli received in the morning of that day 
from the French Higher Command. But that despatch is 
sufficient for us to give the main lines of what took place. 
Tiie F'rench offensive is designed to shake the southern 
pivot of the sp-called Ilindenbuig line, precisely as the British 
effort of the past week had so thoroughly broken the northern 
pivot of the same. It was an attack round the corner of the 
salient directed forward against and towards the region of 
Laon, by the name of which town tlie southern pivot may 
be conveniently remembered, as the northcrn'is remembered 
by the name of the town of Arras. ' 
Tlie region may be sharply divided geograpliically into 
rtwo sections. There is first the rather abrupt limestone 
• plateau, very difficult country, considerably wooded, which 
''■rises sharply up from the northern bank of the Aisne river 
•(and terminates on the bold promontory of Craonne. 
'This is the western half. The eastern half is all in the 
i'perfectly bare open undulating plain of the Champagne, from 
*-ievrerv part of which one sees the distant mass of the Riieims 
i^'Cathedi^l, the central landmark of the whole region. 
'I /."frhe point marking the eastern extremity of the western 
• asfection is Berry-au-Bac — that is. Berry of the ferry — 
if which is a place where the great Roman road from 
Rlieims to Laon crosses the Aisne. East of this point the 
! -tiiie .of the opponents is roughly marked by the canal from 
the Aisne to the Marne, which connects the town of Rheims 
with the Aisne and has upon it upon either side points 
the names of which are famous in the fighting of the last two 
years — Sapigneul, Loivre and in particular the hill and fort of 
Brimont, which has been the platform for the bombardment 
: of Rheims, and its cathedral ever since 1914. 
It is ^lear that the best opportunities for an advance were 
to.be, found here, in the open country, and we are not surprised 
to; se? indicated in the Frencji communique a more consider- 
able belt of forward movement here than further to the west. 
Exactly how far the operations of the Monday carried the 
■ FrenC:h line the despatch is too laconic to inform us.^We 
