LAND & WATER 
October 4, iyi7 
The Second Blow in Flanders 
By Hilaire Belloc 
Bi:i()RE coii»idfring the details of the action fought 
dui-ing Tufsdav. Wednesday, and Thursday last 
wi>on the British front, it is well to establish again 
the nature of the present position. 1 hough we 
can forecast nothing of its future it is of the highest interest 
because at any moment it mav become critical for the enemy. 
The position is this : The Central Empires and their Alhcs 
have all told, some ten million men in unilorni, and ratlier 
over si.\ million of them organised as lighting forces in the held. 
The balance, with the exception of all th? men in depot, do not, 
and will not form anv part of the lighting force either now or 
in the future. Of these forces the German Lmpirc provides, 
as it has provided for many months past, one-half and most 
of the men in hospital. 
It has 2Y) divisions in the held. Exactly how many men 
a German division counts on the average at the present we 
cannot tell to within a few units, but it is something 
under 12,000. The number of battalions of infantry which 
is included in a present tierman division is rarely more than 
nine, though there are a sufficient number of exceptions and 
independent bodies to bring the total number of battalions 
to 2.^14, which is the present number of German battalions. 
Of these 2,J34 battalions, 1,369 are upon the West against 
the French and English. 
As to the exact average strength of a German battalion at 
this moment we, again, are not informed with exact precision, 
but we know it within faiiK- close limits, and we can say with- 
out grave error on either side that some 700 bayonets upon 
the average is very near the mark. In other, words, _ the 
phrase a " Gennan" battalion " signifies to-day about /gths 
the strength it signified during the first month of the war. 
W'c then have about 050,000 German bayonets, but less 
than a milli(m, upon the Western front. The mere statement 
of that number in connection with a line over 300 mOes long 
and with the opponents it has to meet is sufficient to explain 
why the enemy now stands upon an increasingly anxious 
defensive. In material the handicap is still heavier — and 
the difference is increasing. 
Now to this main aspect of the situation we must add a 
second— the enemy's anxiety upon the question of man-power 
for the future is also increasing. He happens for the moment 
to be passing through a temporary crisis which we must 
not exaggerate. He has nothing of class 1918 left in his 
depots, and he is only just beginning to bring into the field 
Class IQIO, three-quarters of which, have now had about 
four months training. This " bridge " between the two 
classes may provoke a momentary exceptional strain. but it 
cannot be permanent , and may be neglected. M hat is per- 
manent and serious for the enemy is the fact that the rate of 
loss, as compared with his Western opponents — even excluding 
the Americans— is growing. It is probably not growing posi- 
tively : but it is growing relatively to the corresponding loss 
upon the other side. The whole of the German class igiS has 
passed through the fire this summer, while the corresponding 
French class has been in barracks the whole time, and is still 
in barracks, and not to be put into the held until later. Ger- 
many vill already have lost many boys out of class igiq 
through sickness, death, wounds and capture this autumn 
and winter before the French youths, a year their senior, come 
under hre at all. In other words, the German Empire, which 
was, only nine months ago, a year behind the French in men, 
■ is now a vear and a quarter behind them. This comparison 
with the French shows nothing but the position against the 
most exhausted of the Western Allies. The position of the 
English anti Italian recruitment is far more favourable. 
Now, under these circumstances the enemy has been com- 
pelled to a strictly defensive policy. The thiiig is a necessary 
consequence of the general situation, and of what is properly 
called politics apart " the last phase of the war." It is 
no more than repetition to state it. It is obvious to cAcry eye. 
But a strictly defensive policy in the old days, when artillery 
was supplementary to infantry, meant something very 
different from what it means to-day, when artillery conquers 
and infantry occupies. Too much of our present conceptions 
of a defensive are based upon the old model, and we forget 
that a modern defensive line faced with the modern develop- 
ment and power of artillery, and of other mechanical and 
chemical contrivances which arc but the extension of artillery, 
cannot stand fixed up to the breaking point as the old siege 
line did. It must give lx;forc it breaks, and it can iK)Stponc 
breaking point by making it self " elastic," it may sa\c 
itself from breaking by peqietual limited methodical retire- 
ment. Continued successive and comparati\ely small retire- 
ments, step bv step, where there is ample space to play 
with, and where no grave jxilitical or strategical consequences 
follow upon retreat, is a policy which may conceivably be - 
maintained for a very long time. But upon the ^VVcstern 
front, the space with which the enemy can " play " is very 
limited, and both political and strategic circumstances 
severeh- limit his power of retirement without disaster. On 
the political side his great asset is that he is hghting upon 
foreign, and especiallv upon l-'iench territory. He is per- 
petually harping upon this " asset," and he has at this stage 
in the lighting" the right to do so. It makes the task of 
maintaining internal discipline possible, and at the same time 
it enables him to work hard at the game of persuading neutral 
and even belligerent fools that tliore is a t;talemate. So 
much for the Political ad\antage which his retirement would 
destroy. He would similarly suiter on the Strategic side, for 
his position in the West covers, but only immediately cov^^rs, 
certain of his main 'sources of supply in iron and coal, and a 
strip of the Belgian coast, which thougli not essc-ntial to his 
submarine campaign and his use of mines, is very \aluablc; 
to the same. 
Hold on Materials 
Now, to retire even with elasticity, that i' , without allowing 
his line to be broken, upon the salient in front ( f Vpres, and 
to do so with anv rapidity, is to render very shortly his hold upon 
the sea-coast, and his hold upon Lille and the coal and iron 
to the south, impossible. If he merely stood up to each 
successive blow, lost the crescent it was designed to occupy, 
and so, week bv week or fortnight Ijy fortnight, went back- 
wards, he would certainly be compelled to a general retirement 
before the end of the ye,ar, with all the tremendous conse- 
quences at home, in neutral countries and among the Allies, 
in material power and in moral of his army which that retiic- 
ment would mean. 
Let us feee what alternative he has before him to regular 
and cumulative retirement of this sort. 
He can do one of two things. He can make the progress 
of superior opponents ^ difficult by holding his first lines in 
strength and by gambling against their withstanding most 
of the successful shocks delivered against them. That was 
what he did last year upon the Somme. The danger of 
pressure from Russia was then still considerable, but he was 
far better oft in men than he is now, and in spite of the very 
great expense of this method he gambled upon if. 
The gamble was, successful inasmuch as it enabled 
him to hold out unbroken to the winter of last year, wlien the 
weather stopped tjie active offensive, but it compelled him 
to a very earnest, though -futile public bid for peace in 
December, followed in March by an inevitable retirement. 
This retirement from the great salient of Noyon was not 
strategically disadvantageous, though politically he regretted 
it. It straightened and shortened his line and made him 
sacrifice nothing of material or strategic importance. 
In the fighting of this summer and autumn he might have 
continued this method. He did not do so because the British 
superiority in guns and munitionment of every kind is now 
not only so great, but so rapidly increasing that what 
was dangerously expensive on the Somme w'ould have been 
disastrous in Flanders. He has been therefore compelled 
gradually to adopt a new method. It is a method of numerous 
isolated posts which hold the front line with a minimum of 
men ; of artillery drawn behind the front lines much further 
than it used to be ; in other words, deliberately sacrificing the 
front line to the blow the opponent launches, but trusting to 
the power of the courrtcr-attack to restore the position, or at 
any rate check his enemy's advance. The gamble here is 
upon the proportion of losses such a method may in\-olve. 
The counter-attack has always been and always will be> 
but to use it in this particular way for the recovery of a belt 
of territory sacrificed is novjl and tentative. You lose in 
yielding to the first blow men, material and moral — above 
all moral : you gravely risk much greater losses, if your 
counter-attack fails. The loss in material indeed is not very 
great. You do not lose guns as they were lost in the fighting 
of last year, but you lose men in quantities ;yid your men 
lose heart. 
Still, it is the only way left. Comparatively rapid yielding 
