LAND & WATER 
April, 2(), TOT7 
in other word?;, sucked into the whirlpool ot the new lighting:. 
On the fifth day of th<r battle, the I'riday, towards evening, 
wliiit must lia\e been further new lorii-s, a^^ain not specilied 
111 aniount but described in curiously euiphatif lun{,'uaj;e by 
liiu I'li'ueh word iHcniua in the ii)unmuii<iuOs, tried to recover 
what we shall see in ;i inonient to be the critical point ol 
Hnrtebise. .And a few davs before there had lieen, more 
than a day's march away in Champaxne, three violent counter- 
attacks that must have meant at least two divisions in action. 
We have here, therefore, merely by tabulating what liave 
been mentioned in despatches (certainly less than the total), 
the appearance already of twenty odd divisions against the 
Western offensive of 1917 over and above those first deputed 
to meet the shock, and those twenty odd divisions can be but 
a portion of the total moved up under necessity into an action, 
the form of which is decided by the Allied Command and not 
by the German. It is a mere guess or suggestion, but it is 
]>erhaps not an exaggerated one if we say that some ten 
divisions of the strategic reserve have actually appeared 
against the new menace. 
We can put, not accurately, but in round numbers, what 
this strategic reserve is, or rather, what it was at the be- 
ginning of the year (between which date and] the British 
offensive of the ()th, the (iermans suflered no very heavy 
losses). In round numlx'rs the (lerman lunpire had in sight 
up to the end of this summer, over and above the formations 
existing last December, a million men. Again, in round 
niunbers. alx)Ut half that figure represented men a\ailable as 
soon as they could l)e trained ; the other half human material 
that would dribble in from hospitals, from hitherto exempted 
men, etc., during the months from January to August in- 
clusive. Of that space oT lime more than three months have 
already elapsed. We may, therefore, take it that the strategic 
reserve, inclusive of drafts ready in the depots to fill the gajis 
caused in il lluough action, is equisalent to well over t)oo,ooo 
men. 
If we suppose the men actually incorporated to be about 
half the material available, and the rest to be lying behind 
filling gaps, we may suggest something over twenty -at the 
most, say, twenty-five— of the new small German "divisional 
formations to have been held in hand by the enemy before the 
■ great offensive began. It may be an exaggeration to suggest 
that as many as ten have already been sucked into the 
Western battle. I repeat, it is only a suggestion or guess : 
but 1 think it probable that when we know the facts it will 
be found a tolerably accurate guess. At any rate, the future 
will decide it for us, because we shall see by the masses of 
troops the German Empire may use elsewhere whether or 
not the unexpected strength and earliness of the AUicd 
offensive has seriously depleted this strategic reserve. 
As this article was completed the first news came in of a 
renewed blow— the third— delivered, or rather begun, by the 
Hritish on a chosen sector of 16,000 yards before Arras and 
along the critical Scarpe line. Though no details upon 
which to base a descriptirm are available at the moment f)f 
writing, it is clear that the enemy has been compelled to 
bring up in the last ten days a great mass of reserve force : 
and herein again will lie the true interest of the actions that 
will be in progress when these lines are before the reader : 
Not the advance of .so many yards in such and such points 
nor (of itself) the tale of prisoners, but the extent to wliicli 
zee have eompelled the enemy to throiv in and lose his reserve. 
The French Battle 
Tliough the main point of interest is thus the way the 
Allies are compelling the Germans to use up their reserve, 
and though this would remain the chief interest even if not 
a yard of advance were effected anywhere by the Allies in the 
West, yet my readers will naturally exiK?ct this week a summary 
at least of the movement undertaken in the second blow, the 
French action undertaken on Monday the i6th, and covering 
as did the British action, five days. 
In order to understand what took place upon the French 
front, we must conceive of three great groups of positions 
strfct^ed out upon a landscape 30 miles in extent. 
C :,unting from west to east the first group, which I will 
call tlie Craonne Ridge, is a peculiarly shaped very strong 
limestone plateau, the backbone of the German resistance 
against the English in the summer of 1914. This ridge ends 
in a very sharp promontory falling steejily upon the plain 
of Champagne. Those who are acquainted with Black Down' 
on the borders of Sussex and Hampshire, will have a fair idea 
of that promontory which liears upon its height the little 
town of Craonne. Then comes a stretch of rolling open 
Chamjiagne country until you reach the neighbourhood of 
Rheims, about 12 miles away, and a couple of isolated heights, 
the one north-west, the other cast of Rheims form the second 
or central group. These two heights, separated one from the 
other by a distance of about seven miles are, the westernmost 
the hill of Briinont, the easternmost the larger more complex 
group of Nogent. 
Lastly, seven or eight miles again to the east of Nogent, 
you have a whole group of heights which form the third 
bastion in this long curtain of positions : The very sparsely 
inhabited wooded hills which are generally called the group of 
Moronvillers from the little village in their further northern 
slope. 
The French attack neglected the central positions and 
struck against the westernmost and easternmost, that is 
against the Craonne Ringe and the Moronvillers Hill group. 
It seized the greater part of both these positions and the 
l'"rench army now lies in possession of such portions of them 
IS commantl the rest. 
"Break Up"' v. "Break Through" 
Before we look at the action in detail let us clearly under- 
stand what the French as well as the English are after. They 
arc not after a break-through, though that may happen 
sooner or later. They are alter a break-up. Their business 
IS to put the (German line tlirougii so severe a trial that it 
sliall first of all call up like a blister the mass of the German 
reserve (as we have seen) and finally continue to pound it 
until it loses integration. 
Catch words are liorrible things and have become more 
horrible since they became the necessity ui bad journalism 
and worse politics. But if e\cr tliere was an occasion when 
it was le^'itimate to use them iuv the puipose uf rubbing in an 
important pubHc lesson, it is in connection with this German 
talk of " breaking through." 
If evcrj'one watching this gigantic battle of the West 
would bear in mind the phrase "' not breaking through but 
breaking up " and never lose grip of it, ^he whole of public 
opinion would be informed. It would cease to consider 
mere advance over ground, it would cease to exaggerate special 
tactical points ; it would put in its right proportions and 
character the enormous new task, and let us hope conclusive 
task, which our ancient civilisation opened with the guns of 
Sir Douglas Haig on Easter Sunday. 
To go back to first principles : The object of An army in 
the field is to put out of action the army opposed to it. 
An army is put out of action by the loss of its fighting power 
in such a degree (compared with the corresponding lo?s of its 
opponent) that it can no longer maintain the struggle as one 
organism against another. 
^ This loss of fighting power is effected in one of two ways : 
Numerical loss, and loss of organisation. Soinetimes one 
factor predominates, sometimes the other. Both are present 
in any defeat. At Sedan, for instance, and at the capitula- 
tion of Metz the loss was almost entirely numerical ; the only 
two existing regular armies of the French were cut off from 
supply, compelled to surrender, and all their inen and 
all their guns ceased in a military sense to exist. At Waterloo 
the loss was mainly loss of oi'ganisation, that is, the mere 
numbers of killed and wounded would not have decided the 
matter. What decided it was the breaking up of the armv 
from an organisation to a mass of dust by the blows inflicted 
upon it. 
In a war of positions, each party facing the other on a Une 
which cannot be turned and each insufficient numbers to hold 
such a line,' two main types of decision are possible : The 
first type is the breaking of the line over a sufficiently wide 
gate to allow the victorious side a passage right through. 
The second process consists in disintegrating the line 
by pressure over a very great part of its length exercised by 
superior against inferior power until the line gives way in 
one or several places. Detailed local \-ictories immediately 
follow. The whole defeated force rajiidly gets inferior in 
numbers and organisation and, though stillcapable of falliflg 
back is less and less able to stand the blows dcUvered. 
The French, therefore, had for their object to make the 
German line suffer as much as possible, and this was done 
by pushing at specially selected points forward after hammering 
the trench system to. bits with the superiority of gun power, 
and between these selected points causing pockets or small 
local saUents to bulge out from which the enemy either failed 
to retire — and therefore suffered a heax-^,' loss in prisoners 
and guns— or retired with \-cry great loss" though not leaving 
prisoners Miind. Further it" was their business to get hold 
of the observation points which had been of such value to the 
enemy in establishing his innnensely strong positions; and to 
seize the higher ground, his counter-attacks up hill against 
