June 6, 19 18 
Land & Water 
pushing up of the lighter missile weapons so that they work' 
as almost part of the infantry, etc. 
This new tactic gave him upon March 22nd, the second 
day of his attack, the result he desired. He (iid what no 
one had yet done upon either side of the west during all 
these years, he broke right through the full width of the 
defensive zone in front of St. Quentin. There followed the 
loss of 50 miles of the old solid front, and the creation of his 
great salient, the apex of which stands just outside Amiens. 
Though his effort had cost him a very heav}' price in. men, 
he could count so many prisoners and the destruction of so 
much material that by the end of March, when he found 
himself held, the advantage was still clearly upon his side. 
He had restored a war of movement, he had made a wide 
breach in the solid line upon which the Allies depended for 
their power of resistance while awaiting American reinforce- 
ments; and whereas most of his lighter cases would return 
from hospital to the field in a comparatively short time, 
very many of his opponents, lightly wounded and even 
unwounded, were definitive or permanent losses to their 
side because they were prisoners. On the other hand 
the enemy could observe these two points. First, that 
he had failed in his topographical "object of separating the 
British from the French armies ; next, that his continual 
offensive, save where there was a rapid success and a great 
haul of prisoners, would necessarily' be far more expensive 
to him than to the Allies. The defensive woVild meet him 
with forces deliberately inferior to his own, far less in pro- 
portion than the difference between the totals of the two 
sides. In other words, the defensive, if successful, would 
keep a considerable reserve in hand, while he had a strict 
limit both in time and number wherein to effect his purpose. 
If he lost more than a certain budgeted amount of men 
in a certain time he would, even allowing from his new 
recruitment from the younger classes, lose his superiority 
in numbers, which would be fatal to him, and after a certain 
number of months, if he did not succeed within the limitation 
of his possible losses in defeating the British and the French 
armies, the American reinforcement would turn the scale 
enormously against him. Putting all this together, the 
effect both of his great success affd of his limitations must 
have been to make him argue somewhat after this fashion. 
" I have superiority of numbers^ I have interior lines, I 
have the initiative, I have a homogeneous force. But, 
following out a' strategical plan of a clear geographical sort, 
they have not given me the full result they might have done. 
Now I have also as an asset my new tactic. Perhaps I can- 
not always break the line, but I can try first here and then 
there, and sometimes succeed. If I make it my principal 
business not to reach this point or that, nor to separate this 
body from that, but to strike repeatedly at one place and 
another until 1 have ruined the origmal defensive line ; if 1 
make dispositions to follow up immediatpK- any success ; if 
I leave my general plan vague and to be moulded by cir- 
cumstance, but keep for my main principal the mere deliver- 
ing of very heavy blows, 1 may within the limits of time— 
which are inexorable — succeed in disintegrating the whole 
defensive system of the Allies. I may so exhaust their re- 
serves, shake their morale, military and civilian, impose 
upon them the heavy business of perpetual movement along 
exterior lines, as to put them out of action before the end of 
the season." 
The Russian Analogy 
Wo must remember that the enemy's success against Rus- 
sia had proved to be in the main a success of this kind, and 
that the unexpected development of the Russian situation 
has had a profound effect upon the mind of those who govern 
Germany. They had intended being in a vast superiority 
of material to achieve a military decision by a carefully 
calculated strategical plan which should destroy the armed 
forces of the Russian Empire. They had created one salient 
after another all through the summer of 1915, and in the 
last one, that of Vilna, they very nearly reached A true 
military decision. 
Nevertheless they failed, and what ultimately happened 
was something quite unexpected. The tremendous strain 
had the moral effect of disintegrating Russian society and, 
through it, the army. It was as though a battering ram 
driven at a wall had failed to break down that wall, and 
had yet so loosened its structure that the wall came down 
in tlic next high wind. Or it was like the case of a hunter 
who shoots and thinks he has missed his ganje, but finds 
later that he has wounded it, and that it has died ^as an 
indirect consequence of the wound. 
We may take it that after the partial— but only partial- 
success of the March offensive, which was obviously traced 
upon a fixed and simple plan, the enemy' relied more and 
more upon the delivery of successive blows, now here.rnow 
there, and his power to follow them up immediately if they 
should prove successful, trusting to chance and circumstance 
for the moulding -of the battle which might ensue. He 
failed in his first blows east of Arras and south of Ariiiens, 
an operation undertaken five days after his last far to the 
north in the sector of Lille was unexpectedly successful. 
He followed it up at once, fought very hard for three weeks 
from A])nl 9th to April 29th ; having begun w-ith only six 
divisions, ended by putting in nearly 40, and then, having 
pushed his losses near to the hmit he had allowed himself, 
he had to break off to recruit. He halted a whole month, 
and struck again, as we know, with 25 divisions on Monday 
last, May 27th, at the extreme other end of the line, where 
he could compel his opponent to the greatest fatigue and the 
longest delay in the moving up reinforcements. Had the 
blow failed, we should have seen a short delay and another 
blow elsewhere. Succeeding, as it did, he at once exploited 
it along the line of least resistance, pouring through, and 
then, when his very success had put him in seme peril, turned 
to ward off that peril, and at the same time to see what 
chances pressure no longer southward but westward would 
give him. He is not thrusting for Paris, he is not carrying 
out a geographical plan : ho is working to break us up piece- 
meal as State and Armies. He looks at. the map and per- 
ceives that of the old defences regarded as almost permanent 
between the Swiss frontier and the North Sea, there now 
remains north of Kheims nothing but a short sector on the 
marshes of the River Yser and the bow running from in 
front of Arras to the neighbourhood of La Bassee. He pro- 
poses to continue the process, simply taking advantage of 
every opportunity as it arises, until, as he hopes, dis- 
integration shall ensue long before American reinforcement 
can turn the scale. 
Now, in such circumstances, there are two points clearly 
before us. On the first, only a negative judgment can be 
rendered, though it is important to have that negative 
judgment well defined and fully possessed by the public at 
home. On the second, a positive judgment is not only 
possible, but imperative. The first point is the fact that 
the enemy, by restoring a war of movement, has not given 
advantages to his own side only, even though he has superior 
numbers to challenge a war of movement is to challenge 
brains. He cannot in it continue to enjoy his present advan- 
tage of his new tactics of surprise against hitherto untouched 
sectors. He is taking his risks. The .second point is that, 
since a main part of his calculations is the effect of new condi- 
tions upon the whole mass of the nation, so it is quite clearly 
our duty in this terribly grave moment to meet him by as 
complete a civilian discipline as possible, and to refuse to 
allow aj)}' movement of his, or anj' success in the near future, 
to affect the national will. ^, 
As to the first point ; although our judgment can only be 
negative, it is of the first importance to keep it sound and 
cool. 
Initiative 
The enemy has the initiative, he has the numerical pre- 
ponderance ; that is, we for the moment are first following 
what he does, and he not following what we do. That is 
the meaning of the word "initiative." He, so far, dictates 
the form of the battle. And his numerical superiority 
means that he cannot only dictate the form, but exercise 
the pressure ; therefore, he is on the offensive, we are on 
the defensive. It is the judgment of a fool to regard an 
offensive as victorious in itself, and a defensive in itself 
as a mark of defeat. The defensive is a phase during which 
he who has the less opportunity plays with space and time 
as best he can, to his own advantage, until the offensive can 
be resumed by him in his turn. We must consider our 
commanders during all the defensive phase, even though it 
may last for months, as men making for victory quite_ as 
surely as though they were advancing day by day and 
reporting the capture instead of the loss of positions, men, 
and guns. We m.ust not regard them as men necessarily 
destined to achieve victory. That is a convention which 
many worthy people have thrust upon the public under the 
idea that merely to say that you are certain strengthens 
your temper. It is a very base state of mind ; no one is 
certain of victory ever. Victory is decided by forces higher 
than mankind. But in the development of manoeuvre, 
victory is granted, as a rule, not to mere superiority of 
nnmber, unless it be overwhelming, but to superiority in 
will, decision, and rapidity of thought. 
The eiiefny may advance from this to that, he may report 
such and such captures, and we may be certain that he will 
make the very best he can of the shop window. But he 
knows, just as well as we ought tO|know, that the problem is 
