August 15, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
15 
the enemy everywhere. It passed through Mericourt, 
I,ihons Hill ; ran just west of the railway to Fresnoy (where 
the French took on the line), held under its guns, though at 
long range, the road and railway junction of Roye, and thence 
swung round by Andechy, La Boissiere and east of Fecamps 
to the Matz. 
Upon Sunday yet a new element appeared, the third of the 
series of this battle. The 3rd French Army, under General 
Humbert, took up the fighting on the right of the ist Army 
— that is. across the Matz, beyond and towards Lassigny. 
This move was very significant, for it showed both the inten- 
tion and the power of the .\llied Higher Command to con- 
tinue the "manoeuvring of the enemy." On the north 
—that is, in the sector south of the Somme, and between 
the Somme and the Ancre— the Germans had temporarily 
halted the advance, and they had done this, of course, by 
bringing up. men from their reserves. By noon on Sunday 
they had more than doubled the original number which had 
met the British shock. The seven divisions identified had 
swelled to sixteen, but they were unable within so brief a 
limit of time to strengthen the whole line equally. They 
had not yet increased their weight of men in the south, and 
the attack of General Humbert was the consequence. 
Looked at in the broadest light, this third successive effort 
is simply a continuous development of the initiative, 
assumed three weeks ago and ever since maintained. 
General Humbert's task is to master, if possible, the difficult 
country of the Lassigny Hills — a high wooded group, from 
the northern escarpment of which one overlooks the whole 
plain across which the enemy must retire. If this height 
can be mastered the effect produced ten days ago by the 
capture of Hill 205, north of Rozoy, which forced on an imme- 
diate German falling-back to the Vesle, will be repeated. With 
the French on the top of the Lassigny Hills it is difficult to see 
how the enemy can remain west of the line of the Somme 
which is continued southward by the canal from Nesle to the 
Oise. The test of whether the Lassigny Hills have been 
mastered would be the presence of the French in Belval and 
Thiescourt. From the wooded heights immediately above 
Belval one has full observation, so one has from the isolated 
wooded hill which stands directly between Thiescourt and 
Belval. If the French get that line quickly the enemy retire- 
ment will have to be very rapid to be successful. Mean- 
while, up to Sunday night he was held continuously in the 
Vesle, probably at a heavy expense in men and counter- 
attacking continually, so that the line did not move. He 
got the colonial troops off the Hill of Lihons. It was retaken, 
but the pressure exercised there is significant. Meanwhile, 
the only railway he has to supply his troops to the south of 
Roye and its neighbourhood has been out of action for the 
last two days. In spite of the temporary loss of Lihons, 
Chaulnes Junction has been under fire at short range for all 
that time, and during Sunday the line was actually cut by 
the advance of the British to the station of Hallu, just south 
of Chaulnes, and the chief feature of the situation which 
arose after Sunday night was the extreme congestion of the 
roads by which the enemy can retire, send up his supplies 
:md n-inforcements, and evacuate his wounded. Hf has one 
railway line serving the Chaulnes front and two main roads, 
the one passing up through Nesle, one the road Hallu -Nesle - 
Chaulnes, and tlie road Chaulnes-Noyon-Roye. Unfortunately 
th's district happens to be lull of excellent second-class 
roads which form a close network all over it. Nevertheless, 
it is almoit as much packed and confused in that narrow 
belt between his p-esent front and the Upper Somme as was 
the Crown Prince's unfortunate army during its retirement 
on to the VeUe the other day. 
We have a most imperfect idea of the battle if we only 
watch the movement of the line. We must pic ure to our- 
selves a dense mass of confusion filling the countryside 
25 miles by 5 in the northern part and 10 in the southern 
part. All the foremost portion of this contains men under 
continual artillery fire — that is, much more than half the 
belt, and the whole of it, including its bridges across the 
Somme by which it is supplied, is heavily and continuously 
bombed from the air bj' day and by night. 
We may sum up the situation of the last of the victory of 
Sunday night (upon the dispatches of which'time this article 
is written) as follows : 
One British army and a portion of a French army on its 
right effected a complete surprise on Thursday morning, 
largely through the new tactical use of tanks and low, 
armoured cars. It completely broke the front of two German 
armies — Hutier's and Marwitz's. Unfortunately, the advance 
eastward was somewhat checked by the enemy's hold at its 
extremf right against our extreme left, and esf)ecially by his 
recapture of. the Hill of Chipilly on the evening of the first 
day, because this hill commanded the main road east- 
ward. 
But on the second day Chipilly Hill was recovered on the 
north by the centre. Australian and Canadian troops 
reached positions immediately overlooking the junction of 
Chaulnes, and thereby cutting the main (German communica- 
tions with Montdidier, and the right of the French ist 
Army advanced at the same time — that is, on Friday after- 
noon and evening-^to surround Montdidier. Saturday, the 
third clay, was one in which the German counter-attacks on 
the north of the line developed and- became heavy, but on 
the south the French got clear round Montdidier, which fell 
to them at noon, and in the afternoon they advanced rapidly 
eastward a distance of some five miles from the town, the 
German retirement here developing into something of a rout. 
Before night the British troops had long had Chaulnes 
under their fire, and had actually cut the railway south of it 
at Hallu. On Sunday, the fourth day of the battle, this 
French attack on the extreme right was further extended 
by tiie entry of the 3rd Army, under General Humbert, 
striking to get the Lassigny heights, and thereby precipitating 
the retreat. The object of this successful action was to 
exhaust still further the enemy's reserve power, to continue 
that "manoeuvring" of the opponent which is the proof and 
effect of the initiative, to free the main lateral communication 
of the Allies, which is the railway from Amiens to Paris ; 
and all these objects were attained within the first three days, 
while the first continues to be developed. 
Marshal Foch : By Charles Dawbarn 
SOME poetical jjerson has declared that the Marne 
— that typically French river, so clear and limpid 
in its course between smiling banks, and so charged 
with history — has given two marshals to France : 
Joffre and Foch. It is true. If Joffre was the 
victor of the first battle of the Marne, the laurel above the 
oak-leaves which is added to Foch's new ' kepi," betokens his 
own victory of the second battle. The two great chiefs 
present contrasts in character, and even in racial type, though 
both come from the Pyrenees. But whilst Joffre is Catalan, 
ViKh belongs to the high Pyrenees. Each has the charac- 
teristics of his locality. Joffre's people are dark and Spanish- 
looking, and yet differing from the Spaniard. Their first 
quality is independence, and their last also. They have 
always been bold in their conversation with the kings either 
of P'rance or Spain, for they sit astride the two countries. 
They are a little suspicious, a little truculent, but warm- 
hearted like all the South. Moreover, they are intensely 
democratic, and have a sturdy sense of their own integrity. 
The coimtrymen of Foch are no less set upon freedom, but 
it is mixed with liglit<T and more agreeable traits. The high 
Pvrenean is, indeed, nimbler upon his intellectual feet and 
-.harper in his outlook than any other of the peoples of France, 
if it is not the Basque, whom he neighbours and resembles. 
But the Basque is melancholy, which the high Pyrenean is 
not ; moreover, the latter has a notion of humour rare amongst 
French peasants. He has also the vigour and eye-sight of 
mountain folk and their capacity for toil. Foch belongs in 
reaUty to the "pays" of Bigorre, part of the old France, 
but his character is much that of the Bearnais, whose tiny 
country adjoins. 
Foch looks a little melancholy at first sight, as if he were 
oppressed by the ills that afflict his countrymen particularly 
in the North. But, in reality, he has the bright and spon- 
taneous rjature of the true Southerner, who, however, has 
been schooled by thought and study and experience of hfe 
into a reticence from which indeed he rarely departs, save 
when some subject of science or art or the pure theory of 
his pro ession interests him. No one knows what his politics 
are, for he never speaks of them. He is a soldier first and 
all the time. Some have accounted for the slowness of his 
advance by the fact that his brother is a Jesti't and he himself 
s' a practising Cathol.c under an Anti-( lerical adnv'nistration. 
But 1 doubt the justness of the explanation. The French War 
Office was clerical in its sympatliies until at least the Dreyfus 
case, wheif General ,'\ndre began his Republican sweeping 
