LAND fe? WATER 
August 29, 1918 
The first prinnple is a perpetual study of your opponent's 
mind, and a continued effort to mould that mind to your 
own : to make it conform to your will (sooner or later) by 
process and by degree. 
There is again the very fruitful principle qI the double 
reserve ; a smaller reserve for nourishing the front, and a 
larger reserve for delivering the final blow. 
Now at a certain stage (tactical in an action, strat^ical in 
a campaign), there will arise, from the very nature of this 
■school of war, the principle which we have just quoted from 
the lectures of Foch, and which the Prussians would have 
done so well to remember, but have forgotten. There is a 
phase in which — whether because you have not sufficient 
strength, or because the enemy is not yet sufficiently ex- 
hausted, or because you have not yet reached the dispositions 
of ground on which your last action can be successfully 
engaged — there is a moment, I say, of such a sort that, 
although you are in the ascendant, although you are pos- 
sessed of the initiative (and already perhaps of superior 
forces), you are still only preparing your decisive stroke.' 
Throughout such a phase it is that you are governed by 
the great principle quoted above : " While economising your 
forces, keep the battle nourished until the moment ifhen you 
stiall pass to the principal attack." 
That, in detail as in general plan, has been the whole te.xt 
of the Allied movements since the i8th of July. 
FOUR PHASES OF THE ATTACK 
With the initiative fully possessed, with the enemy com- 
pelled to conform to the movements of this opponent, and 
to that opponent's will, that opponent has made no effort 
anywhere to reach a decision. The .-Xllied Higher Command 
has nowhere attempted a rupture of the line ; it has nowhere 
■risked those great bodies which must be risked when the final 
throw is made ; it has attacked methodically, delib:rately, 
and continuously, zeith limited objectives, with limited 
forces, upon limited fronts. It has never taken more than 
twenty miles of front for any one effort ; rarely more than 
twenty divisions. In the case of each action it has developed 
that action step by step in successive days, slowly (but 
regularlv and fatally) extending the line engaged. The 
Allied Higher Command has "nourished the battle." Witli 
what success, an examination of these five weeks will show ; 
with what fruits the future will determine. 
I print upon the opposite page the successive phases into 
■which the front of the Allied attack has been set "on fire" 
all the way from Rheims to Arras. I think that anyone 
following those successive phases will agree with me that 
they not only show one united plan, but that this plan has 
passed from suctess to success, pnd that its development is 
regularly proceeding. 
There have been four steps. In the old days when actions 
were limited, each might have been given its local name. 
As it is we will call them, for convenience, (i) The second 
Battle of the Marne (July i8th- August 5th), (2) the Third 
Battle of the Somme (August 8th-i7th) (3) Mangin's Battle 
of the Lower Aisne (August I7th-20th), and (4) the Battle 
of the Ancre (August 21st ). We are about to see how 
€ach supplemented the last, until the whole line between 
Arras and Rheims was engaged. 
1.— SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE 
The first step in the Second Battle of the Marne began 
upon July i8th, and ended in the first days of August. It 
consisted in reducing the great salient which ran from in 
front of Rheims round through Dormans and Chateau- 
Thierry to Soissons. This great action drew from the enemy ,'s 
reserve of perhaps sixty divisions (thirty of which lay imme- 
diately to his north) at least twenty. It fully occupied liis 
energies while it was in progress. He saved himself from 
disaster by the calling in of twenty of those reserve divisions. 
He was completely unable, during such a turmoil to reorganise 
his forces, and the talk one heard of another offensive of his 
being still possible elsewhere was mere folly. 
The Marne salient, I say, was reduced by the early days 
of August, and this was the end of the first step. 
The numbers engaged upon the Allied side in this operation 
had not been excessive. The total number of divisions 
— French, English, American, Italian — had been less than 
the enemies'. There had been no attempt anywhere at 
breaking a line. Limited objectives were set even in the 
first day of surprise. Though the operation yielded manj' 
hundreds of guns and rhany thousands of prisoners, the 
enemy could, if he chose, represent the whole of it as an 
orderly retr(^at upon his part, and as the saving of his army 
from a moment of great peril, due to bemg caught unawares. 
So could the enemy represent it, or his admirers. But 
if we want to understand what was in the mind of the Allied 
Higher Command, let us see what followed. 
Any great risking of men, any too violent effort in this 
early stage (let alone any attempt at a rupture of the line, 
which was never attempted or thought of) would, after the 
withdrawal of the enemy to Vcsle, and the straightening out 
of the Marne salient, have left the Allied command unable 
to resume the attack unt 1 after a long pause. So it had been 
after the German exhaustion on the Lys — a pause of a month 
between that and the attack on the Chemin des Dames. So it 
had been after the German check on the Matz — a pause of 
a month between that and the great fifty-mile attack east 
and west of Rheims. 
Instead of such a pause, you get, after an interval of three 
days, the launching of the second attack or step in the Allied 
counter-attack. Its gradual process is extremely significant. 
The front of the first successful step, after the enemy had 
been driven back to the heights of the Vesle, was one of 
rather more than 25 miles. Its western extremity lay before 
Soissons. More than 50 miles away as the crow flies, between 
60 and 70 along the sinuous front, north of Montdidier, the 
village of Braches marked the left centre of the French 
1st Army. Three miles further on the British 4tl"i Anny 
took up the line, which, for the purposes of this action, we 
need not follow further than the village of Ville on the Ancre, 
south of Albert. 
2.— THIRD BATTLE OF THE SOMME 
At daybreak upon August <Sth — only three days after the 
line on the Vesle had been stabilised for the moment — this 
British Fourth Army and this portion of the French ist 
Army, both under the command of Sir Douglas Haig, opened 
the first phase of the second step. 
The British effected a complete surprise. The French, 
with less rapidity, carried on the extension of the line ; and 
by the end of that first day,. Thursday, August 8th, the 
whole front was so far advanced that Amiens was out of 
enemy range, and in places the British troops had gone 
forward nine miles. But note that the whole thing was on 
a severely defined scale ; the sector short, the numbers of 
attack limited, the objectives strictly defined to a compara- 
tively narrow belt of country. There was none of that 
extended front and simultaneous movement of very large 
bodies which would be necessary for an attempted rupture 
of the German line. 
The riext day— Friday, August qth — the second phase 
was opened by the bringing in of the whole French ist Anny, 
the surrounding of Montdidier, and the extension of the 
new front from 20 to nearer 35 miles. 
The third phase of this second step opened on Saturday, 
August loth, and continued for a full week following. It 
saw the entry of the French 3rd Army on the right of the 
ist and the attack now well alight for 40 miles — all the way 
from in front of Ribecourt to Ville upon the Ancre. 
Note how the front regularly extends ; how sector after 
sector is deliberately involved ; how each attack is successive 
to the last in a particular order ; how there is an absence of 
any movement upon that largest scale, and in that immediate 
manner which denotes final action and the attempt at a 
decision. 
At the end of this third phase in the second step — that is, 
round about August 17th — after what may be called the 
Third Battle of the Somme had lasted nine or ten days, 
you again have the appearance of stabilisation. The enemy 
once more begins to talk of our failure, as though the Allied 
Higher Command had made a great throw and fallen back 
— or, rather, stood to arms — exhausted. But it was only 
the second step which had ended " according to plan." There 
was more to come — much more. 
Between the right of the French 3rd .\rmy, thus apparently 
held upon the Lassigny Hills, and the left of the AUied front 
by Soissons opposed to the line of the Vesle which the Germans 
had taken up after their retreat from the Marne, there was 
a distance of from 16 to 20 miles. 
In this gap lay, hitherto quiescent, the loth French Army, 
under General Mangin. 
3.— MANGIN'S BATTLE OF THE AISNE 
The third step opened with Mangin's deliberately choosing 
two very short sectors for attack, and (upon August 17th 
and i8th) advancing on these no more than a mile, and 
taking no more than 2,000 prisoners and a few guns. 
The enemy had his choice whether he would reinforce 
this now openly threatened new sector or not. But the line 
he was actively defending was already grievously extended. 
