April II, 1 9 1 8 
Land & Water 
The Continued Battle : By Hilaire Belloc 
THE strategical object of the enemy in this very 
rapid and, to him, intensely expensive and 
presumably final gamble, is to separate the 
French and EngUsh armies. 
What advantage has a general in separating 
two fractions of an enemy numerically equal or even numeri- 
cally superior ? He has the advantage that his army remains 
one organism while his enemy becomes two organisms, and the 
effect is vastly increased when the two halves thus separated 
are dissimilar and under distinct commands. Two divided 
halves are obviously weaker than one whole, for the one 
whole can operate with single and immediate determination, 
possessing full initiative after its success, and able at will 
to expend a minimum force in defending itself against one 
half of the defeated body, and a m^aximum effprt against 
destroying the other half. The united whole is in this military 
sense much greater than the two separate parts. That is 
why any rupture in any line, since first human beings began 
to deploy and to fight with method in large organised bodies, 
has been immensely to the advantage of the offensive creating 
the rupture. That is why, to take the classical modem 
instance. Napoleon, in the Campaign of Waterloo, struck for 
and all but effected (but failed completely to effect) a rupture 
between the two halves of his opponents, Wellington on the 
left and Blucher on the right, who were considerably superior 
in combination to his own forces. 
The enemy's first plan, as we know, was to effect a rupture 
between French and British somewhere between Cambrai 
and the Oise, that is in the sectors of St. Quentin and (or) 
Cambrai. Had he succeeded immediately he could have 
stood upon the defensive towards his left against the French 
with very small forces. For he would have had two advan- 
tages. First : Doing the thing at once he would have some 
days of grace before the French could possibly concentrate 
against him ; secondly, he would have had, protecting that 
left flank of his, the broad and very difficult obstacle of 
the marshy Oise Valley. He would therefore have had 
very nearly the whole of his forces free to roll up the British 
line, upon the flank and rear of which he would have 
debouched through the gap. 
He sUpped upon the threshold ; because the British 
resistance upon the first day, notably the magnificent organ- 
isation and fighting power of the Third Army, held him up 
with cruel losses from the Cambrai salient all the way to 
the hinge at Arras. PJaving slipped upon the threshold, 
he none the less did what he wanted to do — but thirty-six 
hours later than his time-table- — in the break through west 
of St. Quentin upon the sector of Holnon. That thirty-six 
hours made a great difference, for it permitted several days 
later what has been called "the shepherding" of the German 
push slightly northward of west from the heights just beyond 
Noyon. This important manoeuvre we know now to have 
been the work of General Fayolle when he came up just in 
time, though as yet necessarily in small force, with French 
troops to begin the taking over of the right of the British hne. 
Result of Retirement 
This "shepherding" from Noyon, coupled with the main- 
tenance of the British line intact as it retired, pivoting 
upon Arras, gave the battle front at last that peculiar fomi 
of a great right-angled triangle with its apex near Montdidier, 
which all have remarked, and which created, in spite of 
the enemy and vastly to -his disadvantage, a big open 
improtected flank of over twenty miles between Noyon and 
Montdidier, upon which flank in the succeeding days the 
French had time to concentrate. The French meanwhile 
rapidly took over not only the new open southern side of 
the triangle — that between Noyon and Montdidier — but also 
a portion of the western side of the triangle, where they re- 
placed the losses of the British Fifth Army, from the neighbour- 
hood of Montdidier to the stream of the Luce, 12 miles away 
to the north. The enemy's main object was still (after 
more than a week's fighting, and losses in the neighbourhood 
of 300,000 — say one-third of the vast masses he had already 
thrown in) to effect his breach between the British and 
the French armies. He had to make the attempt now uader 
more difficult conditions than at first because he had tliis 
open flank threatening him upon the south, but the forcing 
of a gap still remained the grand end to which all his actions 
were directed. The cutting of the main railway between 
Amiens and Paris, the occupation of Amiens itself, were 
still subservient to this main obvious and, as he hoped 
and hopes, decisive object : The separation of the Frenct 
from the Bri,tish forces. 
That is the whole of the battle. It is on this accoun: 
that he had been attacking, under conditions which arevirtuallA 
those of open warfare, without as yet full support from hi^ 
heavy artillery, with continued immense losses, and always 
between Montdidier and the Somme — that is, up6n the sector 
where the British and the French armies join. 
The whole first week of April was proof that the enemy 
in spite of the grave risk which will be presented by his open 
southern flank if he does not rapidly obtain a decision, and 
in spite of losses at three times the rate he has ever risked 
over so long a period in the past, and in spite of the faci 
that those losses are coming at the end of his national 
exhaustion in men, still thinks it worth while so to act in 
such^ situation because he beheves that he can get through 
and separate the British armies from their French Allies. 
We have here one of those rare cases in the preseat war 
where the map alone is sufficient to tell the whole tale. 
The Present Enemy Thrust 
If the reader will look at Map i, with its contrast between 
the line at the end of the 9th day of fighting — Easter Eye — 
with the line at the end of the 17th day (last Saturday 
April 6th, the dispatches sent on which day are the latest 
available for this article), he will appreciate that the great 
rush after the enemy's momentous success just west of 
St. Quentin was stopped roughly upon the line River Ancre- 
Moreuil-River Avre-Brook of Doms-Montdidier. But he 
will further note that since what General Foch has called 
"the Dam" was built up against him his great weight of 
effort has been to break down that dam upon one sector. 
and this sector precisely that upon which the French and British 
armies meet. There is clearly apparent upon Sketch i the 
shaded "dent" which he has made during the first week of 
April, and that dent is as clearly the continuation of his 
effort to separate the two armies. To make this small 
advance, he threw in — and thought it well worth while to 
throw in — at least twenty divisions, first and last, including 
fresh material. He fought two actions of the utmost vio- 
lence, the first putting him on the west bank of the Avre 
but still leaving him east of Moreuil ; the second, upwn 
Thursday and the end of the week giving him the marshy 
low-lying land between the Avre and the Luce, Moreuil and 
its wood, and the heights upon which that wood stands, 
and, as a furthest point, the ruins of Castel. 
In other words, before he began this violent second effort 
of his in the first week of April, he was six miles from the 
Amiens railway at his nearest point and 12 miles from the 
centre of Amiens town. At the end of it he had an advantage 
of >hree miles more. He was only nine miles from Amiens 
town and only three from the railway track. But it is not 
his approach to the railway (which can be supplemented by 
the main western line from Beauvais as well as by the single 
line in between), nor even his approach to Amiens, exceed- 
ingly important as that point is, which is the measure of his 
object or of his nearness to realising that object. The motive 
of this slight advance is ultimate penetration between the 
British and the French. If he fails to make such a gap. 
even by further advance, he has failed altogether. If he 
makes it even after a slight further advance he has succeeded. 
The tremendous movement after St. Quentin was a conse- 
quence of the break at Holnon ; but the test of whether 
Holnon would break was not the rate of advance imme- 
diately before the break. The vast affair in Italy last 
autumn was due to the break at Caparetto ; but no previous 
advance heralded that break. 
We postulate, then, as giving its whole meaning to the 
present situation, that the enemy is deliberately risking a 
bad strategic situation with arKT5pen flank, and is deliberately 
risking immense losses in his last stage of national exhaus- 
tion, because that open flank will cease to count, and those 
losses can in his estimation be afforded if, before it is too 
late, he breaks the link between the two Allied armies. 
We have next to ask ourselves what total of loss — irrepar- 
able in so short a time — would decide the issue against him 
should he find himself at that loss without having achieved 
his end. 
At what does he estimate that maximum loss up to which 
he is prepared to go before he must admit that he has lost ? 
