6 
LAND & WATER 
August 2, 1917 
balanced the Increasing Allied superiority in the West. 
But on the negative side, the effect was less than migth 
have been imagined. I mean the numerical relief afforded 
' to the enemy was not what it might have been under a 
war of other conditions. This war on account of the great 
numbers employed in it, has taken the form of immense 
siege lines, hundreds of miles in length and stretched out to 
touch upon either wing obstacles which cannot be turned, 
such as the sea or neutral territory. Such lines depend for 
their very existence upon continuity. If you will fight in 
this fashion, you cannot dispose of your forces save within 
a very narrow margin of movement. You cannot " watch " 
an enemy with a few detached bodies. You cannot threaten 
an enemy advance with a smaller force than may fall upon 
his flank, etc. The existence of the army and of the State 
depends upon the line remaining unbroken, and this truth 
continues to be true until the armed forces menacing that 
line are no longer in being. That their future action is doubt- 
ful, that their quality is deteriorating, does not absolve you 
from the necessity of at least holding the line with some mini- 
mum number of men — of leaving no gaps in it. 
Now the eastern lines, excluding the forces in Macedonia, 
are made up of trenches which, in their total development, 
cover a thousand miles, their right reposing upon the Black 
Sea, their left upon the Baltic. Apart from the lowering in 
value of the opposing forces this line could be held by a very 
much smaller number of men than would have been necessary 
in another climate or in other geographical conditions. The 
presence of immense marshes in its centre, of very many 
woods, of broad rivers in places identical with the line and in 
the north of numerous lakes and swamps, supplemented the 
defensive organisation. Nevertheless it would be impossible 
to hold such a line at all with less than a certain minimum 
number of men, and that minimum was reached by the 
Germans and Austrians (helped by a certain number of Bul- 
garian and Turkish divisions) a month or so after the outbreak 
of the Revolution, that is, in the month of April of this year. 
Had the enemy attempted to hold the Eastern line with less 
than this minimum it would not indeed have cracked, for 
there was no pressure upon it. But there would have been 
gaps in it of which the enemy, should he move, would at once 
take advantage, and a line broken is a line destroyed. 
In that phrase " should the enemy move," lay the whole 
problem. A definite separate peace with an organised govern- 
ment capable of imposing its will, is one thing. A weakened 
or distracted enemy is quite another. Such a peace would have 
permitted the enemy to bring very large bodies indeed west- 
ward and would have altered the face of the war in a fashion 
exceedingly different from that which we have witnessed so 
far in 1917. Though much of the German material used on 
the north of the Eastern line is bad, 3'et the balance of good 
material is so large that it would have formed at once a most 
imposing striking force to be used, whether for reaching the 
.iEgean ports or as a menace to the Italian front or, more 
decisively, upon the West, and at the same time it would have 
provided a new reservoir of men for armies which approach 
this year the limit of exhaustion in such reserves. But an 
uncertain political situation is quite another matter. The 
Revolution having taken place, the enemy Governments 
could not count upon any enduring solution. An ofter 
of peace from one section was not proof either that the remain- 
ing sections would remain passive or that some counter-move 
tnight not undo the faction which for the moment had proved 
most powerful. 
Allied Western Offensive 
At a moment when it was still uncertain whether the 
Russian Revolution would have this effect of dissolving the 
Russian military discipline or no, the French and British 
armies were pursuing their common task of maintaining the 
fullest possible pressure against the enemy in the West. The 
best and most immediately discoverable effect of their success 
in this task was the rapidity with which they followed up 
the German withdrawal to the St. Quentin line. So rapidly 
' wks the engineering work of restoring roads and communica- 
tions proceeded with that the British attack, the opening of 
the 191 7 offensive, was rendered possible as early as Easter ; 
the preliminary bombardment was over upon the morning 
of Easter Monday, and at dawn of that day the infantry was 
"launched against the Vimy Ridge and the positions to the 
south of them. The Vimy Ridge, with its power of observa- 
tion over the plain beyond, was taken at a blow, and all the 
villages immediately in front of the British positions to the 
south fell upon that same day, April 9th, or within the two 
next days. Exactly a week later, on April if th, the main 
French offensive was launched on the other side of the 
."corner " which the German line turned at the extremity of 
this great salient. It was delivered upon a very broad front 
of some fifty miks and met with greater opposition and 
» attained its objectives with greater difTiculty than had the 
British effort of the week before. But it succeeded in a 
struggle of five days in mastering the greater part of the 
Aisnc Ridge, the main German defensive position to the west, 
and all the first defensive system east of Rheims. In the 
neighbourhood of Rheims itself the height of Brimont resisted 
all attempts at capture. But a little later the group of hills 
known as the Moronvillers Heights on the eastern extremity 
of this front between Rheims andthe Argonne, and giving full 
observation over the vast plain of Champagne in the north, 
were mastered. 
On June 5th an operation, highly locaHsed in extent, but of 
capital importance, took place to the south of Ypres : It 
was the capture of the Ridge of Messines or " White Sheet " 
by the British. This action was of the first importance, not 
only for its immediate and ultimate results, but as an example 
of the advance made by the British army in the British 
organisation and of its complete superiority over the enemy. 
The time-table was perfectly observed ; every objective 
reached at the moment set down for it ; every post of obser- 
vation upon the heights captured and easily maintained and, 
most remarkable of all, the total losses inflicted on the enemy 
were more than three times those incurred by the assailants. 
Indeed, the total British casualties were very little more than 
the number of valid prisoners alone brought behind the 
British lines. 
■ The remainder of the month of June and nearly the whole 
of the rnonth of July formed upon the West a period of 
preparation for the French and British armies, the results 
of which are still to be seen at the moment of writing and 
have not yet matured. But the same period was occupied 
by the enemy in a series of perpetual reactions very expensive 
to himself, but necessary to the maintenance of his line. In 
order to understand the cause and the nature of these, we 
must appreciate the fact that after July 5th, when the British 
had carried the Messines Ridge, the enemy had lost every 
observation post originally possessed by him between tlie 
Vosges and the North Sea, with the exception of the Pilkem 
Ridge, north of Ypres, and the two groups of hills in the 
immediate neighbourdood of Rheims, the Brimont Hill and 
Nogent I'Abesse. Exactly a year ago he had, between the 
Vosges and the North Sea, all the points of observation ; he 
overlooked the French from the heights above Verdun, from 
Moronvillers, from the hills near Rheims, from the Aisne Ridge 
and from the heights south of Peronne. He overlooked the 
British from the ridge west of Bapaume, from the Vimy Ridge, 
from the ridge of Messines. In 1917 all this state of affairs 
was reversed. Having thus lost his fully-prepared defensive 
positions and his observation posts, he had no choice but 
to maintain himself by perpetual and expensive reaction ; 
the fortunes attending these reactions were fluctuating ; he 
had occasional local successes ; he twice obtained a footing 
for a moment upon the Aisne Ridge, and also for a moment 
he recovered ground on the Moronvillers Hills. But he always 
later lost these advantages and had done no more than 
maintain himself in his inferior and consequently expensive 
new positions. Towards the end of this third year of the 
war he recovered by a coup de main the bridgehead which 
the British had just taken over from the French at the mouth 
of the Yser, while he had, at the very end of the period under 
review, upon July igth, recovered a footing on the California 
Plateau, which is the highest point of the Aisne Ridge, over- 
looking the Champagne Plain. But three days later, these 
advantages were lost to him again and the whole of the ridge 
recovered. The battle still is continuing at the moment in 
which these lines are written. 
So far as Russia was concerned, [it was still {uncertain 
whether the Revolution had paralysed offensive power or no 
when, upon July ist, a powerful blow was struck by Brussilof 
against the eastern line opposite Brzezany, followed exactly 
a week later by a second blow, delivered south of the Dniester, 
which thoroughly succeeded in breaking the Austrian front 
here, carried the town of Halicz, reached Kaluscz and for a 
moment threatened Stryj with all the strategical conse- 
quences of such an advance. It looked for a moment as 
though the whole Austro-German front south of the Pripet 
was in danger. Unfortunately, at the very close of the period 
under review, the effect of the Revolution appeared in its 
worst form in units recruited from the capital. These regi- 
ments, belonging to the nth army which covered Tarnopo) 
and lay between Brody and Brzezany, notably the 607th, de- 
liberately betrayed their trust and abandoned their positions. 
A wide gap opened in the whole Russian front, of which the 
enemy took immediate advantage, and rapidly spread to a 
sector of some 40 miles and compelled the withdrawal of the 
forces to the north and to the south. This disastrous move- 
ment is in full operation at the moment of writing these lines ; 
whether or when it can be arrested, and what will be its 
ultimate result, cannot be told, H. Belloq 
