Ma>- I 
/. 
I or 
LAND & WATER 
There is a trick that artists use to correct their drawing 
with a mirror, The reflection doubles and makes plain any 
deflection of line. Represent the events of the last year, and 
particularly those of the last six weeks turned the other 
way about. It makes an instructive picture. Let me set it 
down. 
The British and French armies were conducting a great 
combined offensive last spring against, let us say, the region 
of Lille. They had lost far more than half a million men 
without reaching the town and had inflicted (unfortunately) 
a far less number of casualties upon their opponents. Towards 
tJie close of this great but unfruitful and disappointing effort 
the Central Empires — even Austria, which was thought 
exhausted — brought up vast new forces and an unexampled 
concentration of guns on the Oise opposite Noyon on a front 
of thirty miles. 
The effort against Lille had to be abandoned. The battle 
of the Oise goes on with increasing violence throughout the 
summer of 1916. The Allied commanders discover, witli 
increasing concern, that the offensive in this case is losing 
less than tlie defensive. The German and Austrian aero- 
planes fly over tliem at will. The French and English armies 
are pushed back over an ever-increasing crescent, losing belt 
after belt, nearly snapping under the strain. They lose in 
prisoners double what they themselves have taken in front- of 
Lille. Their total casualties are 50 per cent, greater than in 
that battle, and as, autumn approaches the bending is at 
Compiegnc— and beyond. 
The change of season does halt the advance, out does 
not modify the enormous and incre asing superiority in the 
weight of metal which rains upon them. 
The Allied commanders take advantage of winter to raise 
a last reserve. Class 1918 (which as a matter of fact the 
French are still training at their leisure) is thrown hurriedly 
into the active formations. The civilian opinion of Britain 
and of France is prepared by vague but repeated despatches 
for the necessity of a retirement, and that retirement is 
effected in the month of March. It brings the AlHes back 
another thirty miles. 
It is in vain. Hardly is it completed when, on April 9th, 
the forces of the Central Empires strike again and prove them- 
selves numerically still stronger than in the preceding year, 
and ever stronger in the mass of metal at their disposal. By 
the middle of May the Allies confess to losses proceeding at 
nearly double the rate of the massacre already suffered the 
year before on the Oise, and find that they have lost, in valid 
prisoners alone, 50,000 men in little over five weeks — and 
this though the fighting season of 1917 has hardly begun, and 
the strain promises to increase indefinitely I 
Let anyone who is doubtful of the present situation so 
reverse things, putting the Allies in the place of the enemj' 
and vice versa, and I think that his doubts will not long 
remain. Can he believe that in such a situation the enemy, 
did he enjoy it, would suddenly proceed to relaxation of 
effort, and would " mark time " ? 
The question answers itself. 
Bullecourt and Roeux 
The names of the two vOlages of Bullecourt and Roeux 
have formed the main matter of the news from the front this 
week. It is important that we should understand why these 
two particular points were attacked and carried. 
First let us repeat the essential condition governing the 
whole of the pressure against the Germans upon the Arras 
front. The object is not to attain territory. It is to cause 
the enemy line to crumble. That line depends upon Douai 
as its chief nodal point. The old Hindenburg line ran from 
near Arras through Queant southward to the neighbo'urhood 
of St. Quentin. As we know all that line was broken 
from a little north of Bullecourt right away northward to 
beyond the Vimy Ridge. It is clear that the enemy did not 
expect such a breach. He constructed, and is perhaps still 
strengthening a switch line to cover Douai, but only covering 
it at a distance of five to six miles or 8,000 to 10,000 yards. And 
this switch line is the Drocoiirt-Queant line, of which we have 
read so much, and to which, it seems, that the Germans give 
names taken from the opera stage that need not concern us. 
The Drocourt-Queant fine is vital. In a sense it is the 
object of the British effort to reach it and to break it in its 
turn, whereupon the whole system of the existing German 
defences falls and an attempt at a new general retirement 
is necessary. But if the matter were put thus unquahfied 
it would give a very false impression. The attacks leading 
nearer and nearer to this line and threatening it more and 
more compel the enemy, though thoroughly outgunned, 
mastered in aerial observation and, as we are assured, mastered 
also in the quality of the infantry fighting, to bring up men 
— and to lose them — at a more rapid rate and at a greater 
expense than the rate of relief and expense in casualties 
attached to corresponding movements upon the British side. 
The attacks do not mean that a place attacked was neces- 
sarily taken or even if taken necessarily held. What they 
mean is that each by its threat to something vital compels 
the enemy to use up his remaining reserves of strength at a 
pace far exceeding the estimate which he had framed before 
the great battle of Arras began. 
What part in such a scheme is played by the two particular 
points Bullecourt and Roeux ? In other words, what com- 
pulsion is here exercised upon the enemy to mass men con- 
tinually and to lose them at this tremendous rate. We can 
only answer this question by noting the essential contours of 
the ground. 
The gradual decline of the ground from the watershed all 
the way down to the Douai plain normally gives the British 
observation over their foes. But at certam points spurs rise 
isolated, giving counter-observation. Monchy was one of 
these, for instance, and the carrying of Monchy at the be- 
ginning of the operations was of the very greatest effect in 
compelling the enemy to waste very large numbers for over 
four weeks in the attempt to recover it. When the attempt 
was abandoned all that expense had been undertaken in vain 
and the enemy was by that amount depleted of his remaining 
power. 
Now looked at in this light Roeux is the first step towards 
^ho nrrupation "f 'ini- '^iiib (if tlie higher spurs which the 
British soldiers have surnamed Greenland Hill. I have 
marked it on Map I. with a capital letter G. 
The British line before the attack went from in front of 
2kfU^ 
• 
Frttnoy 
^ Drocourt 
X 
Mez^its above, \sss^ 
