LAND & WATER 
August 23, 1917 
1 
The Paaschendaele Ridge 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE more difficult conditions of printing m 
this latter part of the war make it necessary for 
this paper to go to Press twenty-four hours earlier 
than it did some weeks ago. On this account 
my article cannot ustiallv. include any news recdved in 
London later than midnight of Monday or sometimes the 
early morning of Tuesday. 1 am unable, therefoie, to do 
more than allude to the two new offensives in Italy and in 
tront of Verdun, the first despatches with regard to whicli 
have only just appeared in England as I write. The number 
of prisoners given .so far is between 11,000 and 12,000, of which 
rather more than one-third are the Germans taken in front of 
\erdun and the remainder the Austro-Hungarians taken by the 
Italians upon the Isonzo front. There is no mention as yet 
of anv capture of guns. r . . 1 
The details so far show that the new tactic both of attack: 
arid defence has comeMnto play before Verdun and on the 
Isonzo as it has Icing been in evidence in Flanders and the 
Artois upon the British front. The attack chooses a com- 
paratively limited held, setting to each unit objectives which 
include little more than the first line of the enemy's defensive* 
organisation. This is broken to pieces by intensive bombard- 
ments far superior to anything hitlierto seen in the war, 
and made possible only by the heavy and increasing superior- 
ity in munitionment which the Allies enjoy. These limited 
objectives reached, the attack refuses further effort to advance, 
immediately prepares for the next blow, which is of exactly 
the same nature whether delivered on the same sectoror else- 
where, and the effect counted upon is a cumulative one fol- 
lowing as the result of a fairly rapid succession- of separate 
blows. % , ■ , 
As against this offensive tactic the defensive now leaves 
as few men as possible in its first organised line. These are 
the men the survivors of whom come in as prisoners ; the guns 
are drawn further back than they used to be and, briefly, 
the first line is sacrificed. The hope of the defensive is set 
in the counter-attacks, which are launched from the second 
line as soon as possible after the first phase of the battle is 
over, and it is on the success or failure of these that the issue 
really depends. If they fail, each action involves the defensive 
in very much heavier losses than the offensive has suffered. 
But if they succeed— that is, if the attacking troops having 
failed to consolidate their positions in time break or lose 
ground under the pressure of the counter-attacks — by so much 
ihe value of the first phase of the battle is diminished to the 
offensive. Of course if the success of these counter-attacks 
\vere general it would mean that the new offensive method h^d' 
failed and the new defensive methods c'cviscd to meet it had 
triumphed. Happily we now know for certain that this is 
not the case. The inferiority of the enemy is now too great 
for it to be the case, and of the total number of counter-attacks 
laupched the percentage of those that effect their object wholly 
or partially is small. One cannot yet say, however, that it is 
diminishing ; that phase will come later when the exhaustion 
of the enemy's man power has gone one stage further. 
The contrast between the Allied and the enemy's offensive 
power is here well worthy of remark. Whenever the Allies 
this summer have undertaken the breaking of a piece of 
enemy front on the West they have attained their object, and 
we have had the regular succession of, first step, loss of 
the first line by the defensive ; second step, counter-attacks 
from his second line ; then later on another attack on the new 
first line (the old second line), which in its turn goes — and so 
forth. But if we turn to the only field in which the enemy 
has been able to make an off cnsive ' in the West at all- T 
mean the five or six weeks struggle for the ridge above the 
Aisne — we are interested to note the attempted use and com- 
plete failure of the same method by the enemy. 
The French first line is not lost. There is no necessity for 
great counter-attacks from the second line ; still less is there 
a succession of offensives turning that second line into a first 
line and so forth, pressing the defensive back step by step. 
What happened upon the Aisne was a \'ery great number of 
attempts (from forty to sixty, according to whether you 
counted certain minor assaults as part of the larger ones or 
as separate actions) each of them preceded by its bombard- 
ment, and each having exactly the same object as have these 
Allied offensives : the immediate occupation of the l-'rench first 
line ; its consolidation, and the meeting of the consequent 
counler-attac^^-^Well. of this very large number of separate 
blows only ii«out %\lf. a dozen succeeded in' holding even a 
short sector'-8f tlie objectives propose'd in the French first 
line, and from these the counter-attack drove the offensive 
out in everv single instanpe sooner or later. It is as though 
the British" in Flanders 'had attacked the Messines Ridge, 
let us say, over and over again, and at the end of six weeks had 
found themselves back wlvere thoy were at the beginning. 
It is true that this compjifison sutlers from the difference be- 
tween the large scale of the Allied offensives and the com- 
paratively small scale of the fighting on the Aisne Kidge ; 
But the princ»le is the'^ame and the contrast is of valtie. 
Weather and Movement 
Apart fromf he two offensives in front of Verdun and on 
the Ifeonzyi'the w'eek ]ias been marked by successful opera- 
tions upon the Flanders front extending the large crescent- 
shaped salient whicli; (based upon the old Ypres salient, 
is now the principal British sector of offence' against the 
enemy's line. 
The plan of operations is clear to the whole world. It is that 
one of dealing successive"blows, each upon a limited front, each 
with limited objectives in front of it ; each breaking some 
new piece of enemy deferisive organisation and each reducing 
the remaining defensive power of the enemy by the loss he 
suffers in men, in material, and in moral which we ha\'e 
just seen. A conspicuous test of the new method' is the 
comparative rapidity^ with which the enemy can re-establish 
each new piece of defensive organisation after losing the 
old one. In other words, the ratio between the rate of 
succession in the blows delivered, and the power of recovery 
therefrom. ' That ratio is, so late in the season, largely 
-dependent upon weather, and we see the rate of movement 
closely following the olimatic conditions of the moment. 
These govern three capital elements in the whole business : 
They govern observation ; they govern the power to mo\^ 
into and over the ground 'occupied (which wet weather turns 
into a morass of crater ponds and mud), and they govern thajt •■ 
most important element, the rapidity and perfection with 
which the men who have occupied the destroyed trenches 
can restore them (and make new ones) for the purpose of 
-meeting the counter-attacks the enemy imrhcdiately delivers. 
The two movements of the week upon this Flanders sector 
comprised a larger and'a sinaller operation. In the first, which 
occupied Thursday, the i6th, there was a very considerable and 
■ successful stroke delivered from a point just north-west of 
Gheluvelt up to the extreme left where the French face at a 
distance of 3,000 yards the outskirts of the Houthulst 
F^orest. This line is about nine miles in length, and the 
action which developed over it may be called after the name 
of Langemarck, the ruins of which place were at once the 
strbhgest'part in the enemy's organisation and the cusp of 
the '^hrvefef advance. The character and extent of the fighting 
undertakeh in this operation will be observed upon the 
attompariying map. 
It is remarkable that the enemy chose upon this occasion 
to issue a, completely false bulletin. In the first place, he 
nearly doubled the length of the line upon which the 
attack was delivered ; he spoke of it as stretching 
southward as far as the river Lys ; in point of fact, it stretched 
no further southward than the Menin road west of 
Gheluvelt. More remarkable still was the statement in the 
enemy's bulletin that the ruins of Langemarck, the retention 
of which was his principal object in meeting the blow, though 
temporarily lost by him, had been recovered. The truth was 
the very opposite of this. The British not only carried 
Langetharck and advanced to the objectives which they had 
set them, but nearly i a mile beyond : a distance which 
Was doubled three days" later. There was a serious attempt 
to press them back and tO reco\er the ruins of Langemarck, 
but that attempt completely failed. 
It is difficult to believe that this enemy bulletin was due to 
premature despatch or to wrong information conveyed to 
headquarters. The quite definite statement and its complete 
lack of correspondence with real events makes such an ex- 
■ plahation almost impossible. It is none the less somewhat 
puzzling to discovei' the motive of these occasional gross mis- 
statements. The mdsf common explanation is that they are 
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