August 2 2, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
THE WAR: By HILAIRE BELLOC 
Recovery of the Initiative 
A Survey of the Two Offensives 
WE approach the end of the second great step 
in the progress of the war since Foch recovered 
the initiative, and we await the third. The 
moment is suitable to a survey of the two 
great battles, and to some appreciation of the 
strategical situation they have created in our favour ; and 
to this task I will apply myself in the present issue. 
First, however, I must "deal with the news of the week 
which concerns the now nearly stable front in the Santerre 
a few miles west of the Upper Somme valley. Upon this 
front there are three names perpetually occurring in the 
communiques : Chaulnes, Roye, and the Lassigny Hills. Of 
these three the latter alone has now any significance in the 
form of the battle. When we read of this or that approach 
to Chaulnes or to Roye we are no longer reading of an effect 
produced by the approach, for Chaulnes and Roye have 
long lost their local value upon this front. Both places are 
meeting points in the communications of the enemy, and 
one of them, Chaulnes, was the junction where the railway 
line feeding Jlontdidier branched off. But Chaulnes came 
under fire at quite short range upon the second day of the battle, 
and thenceforth ceased to be even of local importance. Nothing 
is- passing through it. It is no longer a point of junction of 
roads in use. The same is true of Roye, but here there was 
for some time a different position. Roy/e is an even more 
important road centre than* Chaulnes. From the German 
side. alone five great roads converged upon it, and whereas 
at Chaulnes there is a transverse, road 4,000 yards 
behind, which can be used when Chaulnes itself is under 
close fire, at Roye you have not this advantage. When 
Koye can no longer be used the nearest good transverse 
road is 7,000 yards back. Therefore the enemy expended a 
great deal of his strength in preserving l^oyc, and for several 
days the French lines to the west of it were kept off in a 
sort of semicircle running through Tilloloy, Armancourt, 
A'ndechy, and Fresnoy. The radius of this semicircle was 
about 7,ooo-yards, and though that put the road junction 
near Roye and within Roye under heavy and close fire, it 
did not put them absolutely out of use. During the present 
week this r.erman defence west of Roye has broken down, 
and Roye is now out of the German map of local communica- 
tions. The French 'are on the hill called Caesar's Camp, 
immediately overlooking the town in the hollow below at 
less than 1,000 yards, and to the south of the Avre 
\'alley they are onI\- a few hundred yai;ds further (ff on the 
plateau of St. Mard. Roye, therefore, has gone the way 
of Chaulnes. V • 
The third point, the Lassigny Hills, have a local value 
which I have frequently pointed out here— the value of 
giving observation. over the plain to the north and therefore 
over the southern sections of the enemy's supply and relief. 
The trench object is to attain all the observation posts 
along the northern edge of these hills. They have obtained 
them over the western end of the northern edge, but not 
along the eastern. They have reached the summit on the 
eastern side, but that is not enough. The summit here is 
an open clearing in the forest, with the farm called Attiche 
occupying it. One has to get forw ard about another thousand 
yards to a mile before one looks down clearly upon the roads 
of the valley below. 
All these points are, of course, of purely local importance. 
Even our complete control of the Lassigny Hills would not • 
do more than put the enemy in the dilemma between holding 
a local salient under observation and at considerable loss, 
and the giving up of another belt of ground to the south of 
his positions. It would in no way affect the general situation. 
It would only clinch the second battle, which, as we have 
said, is now drawing to its close. 
THE FIRST ATTACK 
From these special points of minor importance let us 
turn to a survey of the two battles. The first, as we know, 
opened by the counter-attack of the French near Soissons 
at daybreak upon Thursday, July i8th. By ten o'clock in 
the morning that counter-attack had proved a ccmplete 
success, and from that moment the nature of the war in the 
west was transformed. There followed a great action 
between . Soissons and Rheims which has been called the 
Second Battle of the Marne, and which lasted seventeen 
days. It is divided into three fairly definite sections ; the 
first section comprising the first four days of the action, 
from Thursday, July i8th, to the Sunday, July 21st. This 
phase was marked by the enemy's change in policy from one 
of immediate retirement to one of resistance upon the most 
advanced line possible. This statement is based, of course, 
only upon conjecture, but the evidence for it is fairly clear 
though we have no documents to prove it. We find the 
enemy in the first shock of the surprise rapidly moving 
back, recrossing the Marne, and retiring also north of the 
Marne from in front of the mountain of Rheims. But he 
soon checks this movement, decides to throw in a number 
of reserve divisions, and to hold on to an advanced line. 
He covers Oulchy widely, and remains determinedly on the 
heights immediately above the Marne which overlook, and 
therefore put out of xise the great main railwav line uniting 
Paris and the eastern points, such as Chalons, Nancy, Verdun, 
and the rest. 
The second phase of the action covers the last ten days 
of July, and consists in persuading the enemy that he cannot 
hope to ho'.d this advance line, but that he will have to go 
back and sacrifice the great advantage he has had of putting 
the main railway out of use. This second phase of the 
battle is full of a number oi heavily contested local actions, 
drawing on to this front more and more of the enemy's reserve 
divisions, until at last perhaps twelve have appeared over 
and above the original number holding the semicircle from 
Soissons to Rheims. .\t the end of this second phase, on 
the evening of Wednesday, July 31st, the enemy is holding 
firmly along a line of heights above the Ourcq Valley, which 
form the watershed between the basin of the Marne and the 
basin of the Aisne. The key-point on these heights is Hill 205, 
because from it you have wide observation beyond the water- 
shed over allthe \\estern roads of the enemy's suppl\'. If 
Hill 205 is taken, there must be a general retirement liy the 
enemy to the heights of the Vesle, which will give liim a 
straight line easy to hold, but at the same time confess his 
abandonment for good of all hojjc to dominate the eastern 
railway line, even at long range. 
It is on Thursday, August ist— the fifteenth day of the 
battle — that this key-point is ttiken by a French and a British " 
division, which last, not without a considerable expense in men, 
masters the height and holdsHili 205beforethe close of the day. 
