LAND & WATER 
July 26, 1917 
The Action near Craonne 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE characteristic of this week, as of several weeks 
past upon the Western front, has been the concen- 
tration of German effort against the ridge above the 
Aisne, which is marked by the Chemin des Daines. 
From the moment when the French showed their deter- 
mination to accept on this ridge a purely defensive attitude and 
to " try " the enemy's strength, the enemy has attacked again 
and again. It may almost be said that his special and 
dangerous experiment of forming " storming troops " was 
made with an eye to this particular sector. He has launched 
something like 40 great attacks on this one line since he was 
driven from the last plateau of the ridge — that of Craonne — 
on May 4th. Until this last great battle opened his 
expenditure of perhaps 100,000 men had been without 
fruit. He had lost very heavily indeed. He had gained 
nothing : A tiny crescent here and there is matched by a 
corresponding small French advance elsewhere ; his losses 
in prisoners about equal those of the French ; his losses 
in men other than prisoners are far heavier. 
What, then, has been his object in thus acting ? Politically, 
it is the common-sense object of attacking the most exhausted 
of various enemies, even if oneself be more exhausted than 
he. That" surely needs no comment. It is a perfectly self- 
evident policy. The German recruitment is annually 70 per 
cent, more than the French. The superior German exhaustion 
has compelled the Germans to borrow a year ahead of the 
French. The youngest lads they have to put under fire 
now are exactly a year yotnger than their youngest opponents. 
But if with their numerical superiority they could shake the 
numerically inferior French th(^ might hope to break up the 
Western organisation arrayed against them'. 
That is the political aspect and motive of these continued 
and very expensive attacks. They are undoubtedly com- 
bined with a clumsy misunderstanding of the French temper 
at this moment. For it is simply inevitable that the Prussian 
should misunderstand any superior civilisation. 
But apart from the political object there is a very clear 
strategic object. 
Hheuns 
\, Yerdan 
Southerm Limb 
The German line as a whole between the North Sea and 
Lorraine is a sort of set square. If either limb of the T goes 
there is disaster. The great threat, as everybody knows, and 
no one better than the enemy, is to the northern limb of the 
set square, and it is to this, at its extremity particularly, that 
the enemy's anxiety is directed. But if the other limb of the 
set square broke or fluctuated it vvould be impossible to hold 
the northern limb. He is therefore maintaining himself with 
all his energy upon this second or southern limb, at the point 
marked by the arrows, as a sort of preliminary to the main 
trial he must endure to the north, and as a sort of foundation 
for his attempt to resist that trial. 
Now he cannot remain merely upon the defensive along 
this southern hmb of the set square. He has not the men, and 
he has not the organisation for it, and he is inferior in artillery 
into the bargain. He is also inferior in observation. I do 
not know whether it sounds paradoxical, but it is a mere ele- 
mentary truth of all warfare, that if you have lost good 
defensive positions or good defensive opportunities, you have 
to counter-attack more violently ; you have to lose far more 
men ; you have, in general, to make the machine work faster 
and more expensively in order to maintain the worse hne be- 
hind the better line which you have lost. 
That is the whole meaning of the Chemin des Dames during 
the last week, and during several weeks before. The enemy 
is upon the whole overlooked in the matter of mere ground. 
He upon the whole suffers a superiority of observation at his 
opponents' hands from the air. He suffers — take the line as 
a whole — from a considerable superiority against him in 
artillery, from a moral superiority, which can only be judged 
by those upon the spot and which I do not pretend to describe, 
and from a certain though moderate numerical superiority in 
men upon the southern limb as a whole. Therefore must he 
counter-attack with the more violence and the more tenacity 
if he is to hold at all. 
One might put the matter a little theatrically, but not 
untruly, by expressing it in Spoken sentences : 
" I am standing in an angle facing west and south. I am 
expecting a tremendous blow upon the northern angle facing 
west. I. must secure the southern face of the angle if I am 
to hold at all when this main attack comes. I used to main- 
tain that southern face by defensive siege works, which I 
had strengthened for over two years, in which I long had 
superiority of artillery, and up to last April, little less than an 
equality in men, and complete power of observation over the 
ground approaching my positions. 
"All these I have lost. I lost my observation ridge at the 
end of April ; I have long lost my numerical superiority 
vfi men. I have been thrown back on a new and less perfect 
entrenchment ; I am suffering from superior artillery fire, 
and, on the whole, superior observation from the air. Yet 
I must keep my southern face firm in view of what is coming 
against my western face. My only way of keeping my 
southern face firm is to keep up an offensive-defensive con- 
tmually along the line of it. I must go on attacking to be 
able to hold at all. My chief anxiety is for men, and the 
task is terribly expensive in men ; but I have no choice." 
That, I think, is a fair statement of the position between 
that exalted platform of Craonne, which looks out over the 
plains of Champagne, and the prolonged forests of Coucy 
and theAilette, where is that angle by Laffaux in which the 
German position turns a corner, and, from facing south against 
the hatlted and awaiting French line of the Aisne and Cham- 
pagne, turns north to contemplate (with what legitimate 
anxiety the future will show) the steadily increased 
British force and its French admixture that is preparing the 
northern blow. » 
So much for the general nature of these repeated attacks 
by the enemy against the Aisne Ridge, attacks which might 
have been thought to reach their climax in the heavy disaster 
suffered by the Germans a fortnight ago, when three of their 
divisions were broken to pieces on a ten-milp front but re- 
newed with hardly more result so far in the fighting of this 
week. 
That fighting merits a particular and detailed description 
for It IS a sort of model of all recent fighting in this district' 
illustratmg its pohtical and mihtary objects; his 'barlkulay 
object to-day being the plateau of Craonne, which is the ex- 
tremity of the Aisne ndge and gives observation over all the 
Northern Champagne plain. 
The geographical nature of the Aisne Ridge must first be 
grasped. It is a long and continuous height of somethintr 
over 20 miles, runmng north of the Aisne River from Soissons 
eastward ; and the particular portion which concerns us (and 
the Germans) just now is the last seven miles of it which 
stretches from the village of Troyon to the little town of 
Craonne. 
This last seven miles of the ridge may be compared m~ 
shape to the Greek letter Pi (^), or to a football goal • a 
beam supported upon two standards. The beam is the ridge 
Itself, and the tvyo standards or legs of the letter Pi are the 
lateral ribs of Paissy and Beaurieux running down southward 
toward the Aisne and sinking in height as thev go. The ridg- 
is of chalky formation, though the stone is so hard that it 
cannot be called chalk nor compared to our chalk downs 
It is extensively quarried for building. If I am not mistaken 
