May 23, 1918 
Land & Water 
under Kathen ; the ijth, under Hofacker ; and the 14th, 
under Gontard. 
• This central army was curiously constituted. Grunert and 
Staabs on the north were diminished. The\' had only 2 
divisions each, both in line. The other three corps were 
correspondingly swelled. This central army, like the one to 
its right, counted, as I have said, 23 divisions, 13 in line, 
5 in immediate support, and 5 used as an army reserve. 
Hutier's army on the left, the XVIIIth Reserve, which, as 
we have said, achieved the principal result, was again or- 
ganised in a special fashion. Its two wings. North and South, 
Luttwitz's 3rd Corps, and Conta's 4th Reserve, had 4 divisions 
each ; but the centre was even denser. Though it consisted 
of only two corps, the 17th, of Webern, and the gth (Oetin- 
ger's), it counted certainly 11 divisions, and possibly 12. 
It was the densest formation of the whole line. There was 
only room for 11 divisions in line, but there were 9 in im- 
mediate support, and from 3 to 4 as an army reserve. This 
disposition of the i8th Army proves not only from its den- 
sity, but from the depth of its formation, that it was intended 
to give the main blow, and tliis is what one might expect, 
seeing that it had to operate on the right of the British, 
where rupture was intended between them and the French. 
I have said that bej'ond Hutier's XVIIIth Army the ex- 
treme right of Boehn's Vllth. Army was engaged. This 
included Schoeller's 8th Corps, and the 8th Reserve, under 
Wichura, which formed the extreme left of the great action. 
Each of these corps were 3 divisions strong. 
The attack came, as we all know, in the morning of Thurs- 
day, the 2ist of March, favoured by a thick mist. Accord- 
ing to the German accounts the moment fixed for the general 
attack was twenty minutes to ten. There is evidence that 
different parts of the 50-mile Hne launched the infantry at 
different moments. The cluef novel feature in the attack 
would seem to have been the use of the two-man machine 
guns which came forward right on the crest of the advanc- 
ing waves. Another somewhat novel feature was the ex- 
treme advancement of the field pieces, which pushed right 
up with the advance of the infantry. The German corre- 
spondents have been allowed to print the fact that this tactic, 
though successful, was very expensive. 
The German account of what they had tf) meet allows the 
British only 18 divisions in the front line. When the blow 
was struck, the first day bore little or no fruit, and was spent 
at a very heavy cost in men. The second day, l-'riday, 
March 22nd, unfortunately gave the enemy, as we know, 
a breach west by a trjfle north of St. Quentin, at Holnon. 
There followed the flood of German advance, in which 
Hutier's army went furthest, and which occupied in just a 
week the whole great salient between Arras and the Oise, 
passing in front of Albert and Montdidier and Noyon. 
It was an advance in two stages, rapid as it was. For it 
was checked on the line of the Somme and the heights just 
to the east, in what the Germans call the Battle of Bapaume, 
forty-eight hours after the breach was effected. It was only 
forty-eight hours later still, upon the 26th, that Albert was 
passed in the north centre, and on the next day, the Wednes- 
day, the 27th, that the enemy entered Montdidier. The 
divisions of the French 3rd Army had been hurried up with 
sufficient rapidity just to check this tremendous impetus 
before the Amiens railway was reached. 
Thursday, the ,48th — exactly a week after the opening of 
the offensive — may be fixed as the moment when public 
opinion in Germany reached its highest note of confidence. 
There seems to have been some confusion due to the elation 
of the moment and a general confidence (unwarranted by 
the facts) that the Amiens line had been reached, and that 
the French and British armies were separated. It was not 
fully understood as yet that the French 3rd Army had 
relieved the 5th British, and that the gap was closed. There 
were elements in the situation which public opinion in^^ 
Germany could not understand, though they were grasped, 
of course, by the German as well as by the Allied commands. 
The chief of these was the momentary exhaustion of the 
attacking force. It had marched in special kit, with six 
days' rations and spare boots over and above the regulation 
weight. It had advanced in extreme cases nearly 40 miles, 
fighting all the way. It had come across the devastated 
battlefield of the Somme. Its communications, which had 
been so admirable just before the battle was delivered, had 
become, in the advance, quite insufficient. There was a halt 
of nearly a week (filled, of course, with plenty of heavy 
fighting) along the line of check, when, on April 4th, the last 
great effort of the main German original plan was made, 
and failed. 
That effort may be called the Battle of Moreuil. It was a 
blow struck upon a grand scale to turn Amiens by the south — 
that is, against the left of the newly arrived French divisions. 
On the next day, the 5th, and even the day afterwards, 
April bth, it was believed in Germany, though in a rather 
confused fashion, that this great blow had succeeded, and 
that the Allied line was pierced. But by the Sunday, 
April 7th, the position was clear both at home and abroad. 
The original great wave was held, and the last effort to 
advance had failed with very heavy loss. It may possibly 
have been with a political object, in view of disappointment 
at home ; it was, at any rate (we are now quite certain of 
this) as a subsidiary and secondary operation, that on the 
Tuesday following, April 9th, (> divisions were launched 
against the Portuguese, holding the marshy flats at the 
foot of the Aubers Ridge in front of Lille, and against the 
two British divisions that flanked them on the right and 
the left (the one from Lancashire, the 55th, at Givenchy ; 
the other at Fleurbaix, in front of Armentieres). 
The operation had an unexpected and very rapid success. 
But precisely on that account it led to considerable conse- 
quences adverse to the enemy's cause. 
Battle of the Lys 
By the evening of the first day, the whole of the marshy 
country up to the Lys had been overrun by the enemy, 
who had broken through the defensive zone upon a sector of 
six miles. From the front of that zone to the Lys was a 
distance of three to four miles, in which he captured numerous 
prisoners and guns. He crossed the Lys by the unbroken 
bridge at Bac St. Maur; twenty-four hours later he was 
everywhere a mile or two beyond the river ; Armentieres, 
with three thousand troops, had been surrounded and had 
surrendered, and his advance had already touched the site 
of Messines on the southern edge of the ridge. 
On the night of the third day, Thursday, April 12th, he 
had added about as much again to this rapidly advancing 
salient. He was almost up to the Forest of Nieppe on his 
left. He was close to Bailleul and Neuve Eglise, at the 
foot of the Kemmel range of heights. 
It is at this moment, the night of Thursday, April 
r2th, that we begin to note the effect upon the enemy 
of this unexpected success and his determination to 
prosecute it : with all the consequences of that deter- 
mination. 
During the next two days he made very little advance, 
for the British reserves > were coming up. He wks still by 
the Saturday night out of Bailleul, and though he had taken 
Neuve Eglise he had not succeeded yet in forcing the Messines 
Ridge. He had put about 16 divisions by that time into 
the battle. 
Now that the Germans saw the British resistance stiff- 
ening with the arrival of the reserves ; now that they knew 
that the French had also had to send from their reserves 
divisions right up round to this far northern field, they might 
have checked their adventure had the original plan been 
fully maintained. But it is ^ear that in the face of the 
apparently great opportunity now afforded them in the 
north coupled with their finding themselves firmly held 
in the south in front of Amiens, they modified their plan ; 
or rather adopted a new plan and determined to press for 
all they were worth in the north. They called up at least 
9 divisions from the Amiens salient, tliverted further fresh 
divisions to Flanders, and for fifteen days maintained a most 
furious and expensive effort to reap the fruits of their 
unexpected earlier success. 
They took the Messines Ridge and Bailleul, but already 
upon the 9th day after their first attack, on April 17th, 
it was apparent that they were being led too far. On that 
day the attempt to cut off the Ypres salient from the north 
was broken by the Belgians, and on the ne.xt day, Thursday, 
April 18th, came a severe defeat. Six divisions under Bernhardi 
tried to force the line of the Bethune Canal and to cut the 
lateral communication which runs behind it. The attack 
was completely broken with very heavy losses indeed. 
Indeed the action of April r8tli is perhaps the most significant 
of all these efforts in Flanders, for it should have shown 
the enemy that the defensive could now hold him there. 
Nevertheless he still went on, having already doubled the 
number of divisions he had used up to but five days before. 
To keep French reserves in the soutli and to check any further 
movement northward, he made, on April 24th, a violent attack 
upon the plateau which covers Amiens at Villers-Brettoneux. 
He was beaten there ; but his main object for the moment 
was the north, and on the next day, April 25th, he began 
a fight which lasted thirty-six hoiurs and ultimately gained 
him Mt. Kemmel. 
With the least possible delay — not three full days — he 
concentrated 13 divisions upon the front of which Mt. Kemmel 
is the centre, and witli the early morning of Monday, April 
