Land & Water 
May 23, 1 9 1 8- 
The Offensive Reviewed: By H. Belloc 
FOK now exactly three weeks (at the moment of 
writing, Monday, May 20th) the enemy has re- 
frained from any continuation of his great offensive 
movement. His last fully dcx'cloped action was 
that of Monday, April 29th, in Flanders, between 
the Ypres Canal and Meteren, in which he suffered a very 
heavy defeat, the magnitude of which was somewhat obscured 
by the fact that the victors were on the defensive. 
We have ahead}' given in these colunms the reasons for 
believing that such a lialt is only a prelude to a third phase 
in this great series of actions. The enemy has shown by 
every possible indication his determination to 9.chieve a 
decision as early as possible this year ; he has put in the 
equivalent of 254 divisions — a mass of men hitherto quite 
unprecedented. To do this means that you are determined 
to get your result at onc^, and that you would rather pour 
out men from your depots than get fresh material in rotation 
from units in other parts of the line. I^oth methods of 
recruiting the strength for shock have been used, but the 
pace at which German divisions have been put through the 
mill — from three to four times that of a previous -period — 
is absolute proof that the enemy was working for as rapid a 
decision as he could possibly obtain. If, in spite of this 
he has allowed three weeks to go by without action, it is 
either because his losses liave imposed such a period of 
reconstruction, or it is because he is elaborating a completely 
new plan ; more probably it is from a combination of these 
two causes. * 
For the comprehension of the future quite as much as 
that of the past, and therefore with a practical object, we 
may use such a moment for a review of the great German 
offensive from March 21st to April 29th — five weeks and a 
half of most intense fighting upon the largest scale. 
It was divided into two phases. The first was the great 
blow upon a fifty-mile front struck between the Scarpe and 
the Oise rivers on March 21st and March 22nd, with the 
object of separating the French and the British armies and 
of destroying the latter by an advance against the flank so 
exposed. This, great effort succeeded in effecting a breach 
in the British line not far from its junction with the French. 
There followed a rapid and very expensive retirement, but, 
as in the case of Caporetto, the full results of the breach 
were not obtained. After an attempt, six days later, 
to break the wall at last erected against them, the 
great German mass in this saHent ceased its effort and the 
first phase ofMhe offensive was over by .\pril 5th — just more 
than a fortnight from the moment of its inception. 
The second phase took a curious and unexpected form ; 
unexpected to the enemy as well as to ourselves. The fact 
that its form was unexpected has profoundly affected the 
story of the great action from that moment onwards. 
The German higher command ordered an attack upon 
April gth upon a comparatively small scale (six divisions — 
four in line and two in support) upon a short sector of a few- 
miles in front of Lille. This defensive sector broke ; a 
complete breach was effected ; the Lys was reached and 
crossed within twenty-four hours, and within a week the 
whole plain up to the foot of the Kemmel Hills was in enemy 
hands. An advance comparable in shape (though, of course, 
not in extent) to the great German advance in the south 
had taken place. 
The effect of this very great local success upon the German 
higher command can now be clearly traced, though at the 
time we had no evidence to show whether it were a long- 
prepared plan or not. We now know that it was an acci- 
dental opportunity rapidly used. 
The enemy, finding himself thus possessed of yet another 
breach in the old defensive line, determined to use it thor- 
oughly. Comparatively small as was the area for manoeuvre, 
he poured in between 30 and 40 divisions, and sacri- 
ficecl men with the utmost freedom in the pursuit of a novel 
subsidiary plan to cut off the northern end of the British 
Hne and to reach Dunkirk, at least, of the Channel ports. 
This second effort, which became more and more expensive 
as it was pressed, was a strategical failure. A violent effort 
to increase the salient by its left flank in the second week 
of the fighting (led by Bernhardi, with six divisions) was 
heavily defeated ; and in the week following, after the 
exceedingly expensive capture of Kemmel HiU, the largest 
assault of all, with 11 or i;^ divisions on April 29th, was 
broken to pieces, and the second phase of the great German 
offensive came to a close. 
Such have been the general lines of the affair, llwill 
now examine them in greater detail. MM^ 
The first essential in such a study is a comprehension 
of the enemy's scheme of attack. We are the better able 
to appreciate tiiis scheme from the fact that enemy sources 
of information and enemy descriptions are now available. 
Even the roughest sketch cannot be complete, of course, 
because in the first place both the enemy and the Allies 
conceal of necessity a mass of things, and in the second place, 
because many things, though not concealed, must not be 
published lest they give information to the other side. m 
The first three weeks of March, the special training of the 
chosen units on the enemy's side being by then accomplished, 
were filled with the last accumulations of munitionment 
and with the bringing up to their points of concentration 
of these divisions, which were at the last moment marched 
up by night to complete the very great density with which 
the attack was to be delivered. 
Concentration for Attack 
Already during the two months past the roads leading 
to the sector of attack had been perfected, and so elaborate 
in detail was the whole plan that it included, as the French 
correspondents tell us, a book of about 100 pages, which was 
distributed down to the company commanders to explain 
the nature of the operation which was toward. It would 
seem that in the creation of new roads the enemy was par- 
ticularly careful to create subsidiary lateral communications. 
The night marches up to the front began on the 13th of March 
and proceeded for eight days continuously. It is to be remarked 
that the moon was in her last phase during this operation, 
and that just before the attack there was almost complete 
darkness to cover the concentrations effected. It seems 
proved that much the greater part of the final concentration 
was made quite at the last moment with the object of 
preventing information reaching us through prisoners. 
Three great armies and a portion of a fourth were aligned 
between the Rivers Scarpe and Oise, a distance as the crow 
flies of about fifty miles. The right of these three armies 
was in front of the Vimy Ridge by Arras ; the left beyond 
St. Quentin, while that portion of the fourth army which 
came in upon the extreme left was astraddle of the River 
Oise, south of St. Ouentin near La Fere. 
These armies in their order were the XVIIth on the north 
or German right, cop-,manded by Below ; the Ilnd in the 
centre, commanded by Marwitz ; the XVIIIth on the German 
left or south in the St. Ouentin district, commanded by 
Hutier. It was this last which achieved the principal success 
of the action. Yet further to the .south beyond Hutier 
again upon the Oise was the extreme right of Boehn's Vllth 
Army, a certain portion of which, as we shall see, was drawn 
into the action. 
Each of the three armies consisted of no less than 23 
divisions. It is probable that one of them was as strong as 
24 divisions. There were thus from 69 to 70 German divisions. 
But to these must be added 6 divisions which were drawn 
in from Boehn's VIltli^Army on the extreme left. So that 
in the very first developments of the affair, before ultimate 
reserves were thrown in, while the original shock alone was 
engaged, at least 75 divisions were used ; between a million 
and a million and a quarter men. 
Each Army commander had under him from four to five 
corps. But these corps were not the normal German Corps 
D'Arnicc of two divisions ; they were groups of divisions, 
some of them containing as many as six, the idea being to 
keep great masses of men under comparatively simple controls. 
We will, however, give them their corps names. Below's 
XVllth Army, on the right of north in the Arras dis- 
trict, counted, leading from right to left— the ist Bavarian 
Reserve, under Fasbender ; the 9th Reserve, under Dieffen- 
bach ; thp i8th ; the 6th Reserve, under Borne ; and the 
14th Reserve, under Lindequist. 
These corps contained between them 21 divisions, of 
which 12 were in Ijne and 9 were in immediate support. But 
Below also had under him two reserve divisions, the i6th 
Bavarian and the 24th, which he kept to the rear of his left, 
near his junction with Marwitz. 
Marwitz in the centre, commanding the Ilnd Army, also 
had five group corps : Gruiiert's, which formed the junction 
with the northern army ; and then in order from north to 
south were the 29th Reserve, under Staabs ; the 23rd Reserve 
