May lo, 11JI7 
LAND & WATER 
II 
The Allies' April Offensive 
By H. Bidoii 
In the /ollowin^ arliclc Profcssoi' Bidoii, the very distin- 
'^tihhed French military critic, discusses the recent actions- 
of the British and French Armies on the Western Front. 
A T the end of April what are the results of the British 
/% offensive which opened on the 9th, and of the 
Z__m French offensive which opened on the' i6th .■' 
I ^» Regarding the matter from the most general point 
of view, the Italian press is unanimous in declaring that the 
offensive has diverted the menace which was supposed to be 
"langing over the Trentino. The Gazzetle del Popolo said as 
iiuch on April 14th : " We are .confident that this power- 
ul resumption of the offensive by our Allies has made the 
nenace of a ' punitive expedition ' against Italy more remote, 
nd that upon our front the plans which have been so much 
I liscussed will not materialise." On April 19th the Corriered' 
JlaliavfTotc: " The new I'^ranco- British action . . . is holding 
Hindenburg up on almost the whole Western Front and dis- 
tracting him from undertaking other enterprises which he 
contemplated in the spring." These instances could easily be 
multiplied. Again, On April 26th, the rr/6/(«a wrote : " From 
a militan,- point of view the Franco- British action is of great 
importance in the economy of the war. While Germany was 
preparing to collect all her forces and reorganise her fronts 
with a view to a desperate attack upon the most sensitive 
])oints of the enemy defences, the Anglo-French offensive has 
upset all her plans and, at any rate for some time to come, 
has entirely deprived her of the initiative." 
There seems to be no doubt about it. It is cjuite certain 
that Germany had formed two large masses of reserve, one in 
France, comjjrising some fifty divisions, the other between the 
Rhine and the Danube. Tiie latter was intended, according 
to some people, to operate against Italy and, according to 
(rthers, to assume the offensive in France. All these hypo- 
theses are idle. What is clear is that a ])owerful strategic 
reserve existed in Germany, within practicable range of either 
of the theatres of the war. AnU it is equally certain that the 
Franco-British offensive compelled the enemy very rapidly 
to expend an important part of his reserves. On the French 
front, between Soissons and Rheims, the hne was held at the; 
beginning of the action by thirteen divisions : the enemy flung 
i wclve new divisions into the furnace anrl only at that cost was 
able to prevent his hne from being broken. When it comes to 
be reaHsed, this staking of the enemy reserves will be found to 
be the story of the battle. 
What is the general plan of the battle ? Both friends and 
foes agree that, the Germans having denuded the centre of 
their hne between Arras and Soissons, the Alhes attacked on; 
the two flanks between which the enemy was retiring, the 
British troops attacking on the Arras front, the French troops 
attacking to the east of Soissons. It was thus a question of 
double pressure upon the enemy's flanks : a repetition, 
with much more powerful means, of the plan of September 1915. 
British Troops 
It is scarcely incumbent upon me to say anything here about 
the British offensive, which is well known to the British public. 
If, however, it is permissible for a French critic to express his 
opinion, he will say how greatly people have been struck in 
I'rance not only by the valour of the British troops and by their 
offensive power, but also by the plan followed in the action. 
AH the previous offensives proved abortive because they ended 
in a point ; the units which were most jieiietrating, or most 
fortunate, drove a wedge into the enemy line and were speedily 
fixed thfere tliemselves. held and strangled by their own suc- 
cess. In order to avoid this danger the British command pro- 
ceeded on a progressively widening attacking front, on the 
principle of the rings caused by a stone thrown into the water, 
and the line of progress of the British Armies described, not 
a sharp point, but a shghtly convex curve. We can see from 
this the mistake made, certainly with intention, in the German 
communiques when they speak of an attempt to break through, ' 
The War Office was able to retort, on April 24th, that there 
liad never been an attempt to break through, in the sense in 
which they used the term. It was much rather a stretching 
of the enemy front, driven back everywhere by a divergent 
attack. And this stretching was capable of bringing about 
two consequences : one, that the enemy line, reaching the 
limit of its elasticity, might break ; the other, that while re- 
tiring on one zone the enemy line might expose adjacent zones 
which would form sahents bound to be enveloped. 
An example of the first hypothesis is provided by the region 
to the east of Arras. The fighting there was on'a line from 
Arleux to Roeu.x. consisting of villages lying about a mile and 
a quarter ai)art on an average and situated at the head of val- 
leys open towards the east and separated by plateaux. Sup- 
pose the British troops are advancing from a mile and 'a quar- 
ter to the eastward. The enemy's new line of defence will 
still consist of a series of villages, I'-resnoy — Neuvireuil — Fres- 
nes — Biache ; but these villages, instead of being a mile and 
a quarter apart and flanking one another so conveniently, 
will be nearly two miles apart from each other and their flank- 
ing will be not nearly so good. Instead of being tucked away 
out of sight in the heads of the valleys, they will be lower down 
in these same valleys, wider at this altitude and less easy to 
close. And lastly, the intervening plateaux, wider and often 
parcelled out, will thus form a much less coherent line of defence 
The front, which measures about 4iimile> froni Arlcux to 
I^oeux, measures rather more than hve between Fresnoy and 
Biache. That means another half di\ision to be put into the 
line and taken from the reserves. Tlius the consistency of the 
defensive line diminishes as the enemy retires. 
An e.vampleof the second hypothesis, namely the e.xpostu-e 
of fi.xed points by the withdrawal of moj^ile points, is furnished 
by the region of Lens. Before the battle the British lines 
wound round that town without enveloping it ; to-day, as a 
result of the withdrawal of troops placed to the south, Lens is 
enveloped on three sides and is virtually doomed. 
The French Armies 
Let us now pass to the attack of tiie French armies between 
Soissons to the west and Saint Hilaire lo Ciraiid to the east. 
As everybody knows, this offensive was spread over two days. 
On the 16th two French armies attacked between Soissons 
and Rheims ; on the 17th, a third army, further to the right, 
advanced in its turn to the east of Rheims. The enemy can have 
had no difficulty in perceiving that the object of the two first 
armies was to switch his reserves into their direction and that 
the attack of the third army, supervening twenty-four hours 
later, would be of a decisive nature. 
Fach of the armies engaged had an entirely different terrai* 
before it. The army on the left, between Vailly and Craonne, 
facing northwards, started from the banks of the Aisne and 
had to ascend a slight and long plateau stretching from west 
to east and separating the Aisne from the Ailette. This pla- 
teau, which interposes a barrier more than three hundred feet 
high between the rivers, does not constitute a continuous wall. 
It is indented with deep ravines which cut into its mass and 
give it on the map the appearance of an oak leaf. Moreover, if 
its elevation is observed, its base is composed of clay, its centre 
of sand and its summit of a thick layer of limestone. The 
plateau on the summit bears good crops of grain and beetroot, 
but owing to the lack of water there are hardly any human 
habitations on it. The sand belt lower down is entirely covered 
by light timber but it, too, is as bare of habitations. These 
arc found lower still, where the sand meets the clay, where the 
water percolating through the limestone and the sand, flows 
out on to the clay. The plateau is thus surrounded by a girdle 
of villages built at its foot. On the side overlooking the Aisne 
there is a village nesthng within every one of its indentations, 
exposed to the south and screened from the north wind. On 
the eastern side the plateau ends in a point overlooking the 
plain of Champagne, just as Land's Knd overlooks the Atlantic. 
The town of Craonne stands on a terrace at this point. 
The P'rench thus had a very difficult obstacle to surmount. 
What were the results of th eir offensive ? It cannot be denied 
that on their right they failed before Craonne. P>ut people 
who have seen only their failure here have not paid sufticient 
attention to the excellent results obtained on the ceniW and 
on the left. The centre did not only reach the summit of the 
plateau but descended the northern reverse, which looks over 
the Ailette, in the region Ailles-Cerny-Courtecon. The left, 
co-ordinating its movements with those of the right wing o£ 
the adjoining army, the army marching from Soissons to Laon, 
obliged the enemy to evacuate the whole of the great plateau 
which contains the Fort of Conde, and to retire three miles. 
The army of Western Champagne, which attacked between 
Craonne and Rheims, in a north-easterly direction, was, on the 
contrary, in a plain. This plain is divided into two sectors by 
the Aisne. The left sector, between Craonne and the Aisne, 
is a kind of great gate opening on to the plain of Champagne. 
But this opening was defended in its centre by a strong jiosition, 
Villo anx Bois, n kind of wooded islet subdividing the plain 
into two lateral channels. This fJirtress of \'ille aux J >ois was 
carried. The right sectoi-, between the Aisne and Rheims, 
also lies in u plain ; but it is protected by two successive 
