September 5, 1918 
LAND ^ WATER 
ment, let alone to effect it. And this adverse condition is 
increased bj- the 'second factor, of which I have spoken — 
the new tactical instruments. 
The new type of tank which the Allies now have at their 
disposal is a reply — and an effective reply — to the machine- 
gun. It reduces very greatly the power the machine-gun 
had hitherto of maintaining a defensive with a weak screen 
of men, and that new tactical instrument the enemy cannot 
copy for a long time. It is essentially a surprise. The 
Germans themselves talk of nothing else, and draw what 
mournful consolation they can from the consideration that 
the Allied superiority here is one not of manhood, but of 
machinery. Seeing that throughout all the earlier part of 
the war that was our own situation, especially in the matter 
of heavy artillery, we can understand their frame of mind, 
and we may be allowed to rejoice over it. The effect of the 
new tanks is essentially to compel the enemy to use more 
men than he would otherwise have used to cover a retirement, 
and this necessity of using more men further checks retire- 
ment. 
I have called the second factor, the American contingents 
(or such as have been called up to this northern part), a new 
tactical instrument also for reasons with which my readers 
are familiar. Their vigour, their selected age, their fresh- 
ness, all give them that character. And here again it 
is something which the enemy cannot copy. Not only 
can he not copy it in useful time : he cannot copy it at 
all. He has no such fresh human material upon which to 
draw. 
We may sum the whole thing up, therefore, and say that 
the essential of the^AIHes' strategy at this moment is the 
maintenance of enemy congestion between Arras and Rheims, 
with a corresponding depletion of his strength between Rheims 
and especially beyond Argonne to the Swiss frontier. In 
the light of that conclusion, we arrive at a judgment Very 
different from that which the mere watching of the map 
might lead to. So far from measuring oXir success by the 
advance of each day by the villages occupied and by the 
eastward movement of the line as a whole, we must measure 
it the other way about. The longer the enemy stands, the 
more he is constrained to defend himself, the more he is 
checked from achieving his plans of retirement, the better 
is the Allied cause served. For the test will not be here, 
between Arras and Rheims. We are not pushing the enemy 
back : we are holding him. It is he that desires to go back, 
and the Allies that upset such a plan. 
In the accompanying Sketch II., where I have attempted 
by an over simple scheme to suggest to the eye this conges- 
tion of the enemy's forces upon one fraction of the hue, I must 
perforce leave blank everything upon the Allied side of that 
line ; but the situation explains itself. 
The great knee, or bend, of which Verdun is the corner, 
and upon which nothing has come into play from Rheims 
on the extreme left to Belfort on the extreme right, that 
;'s the menace wliich the enemy knows just as well as we do, 
and which it is well that public and civilian opinion among 
the Allies should know, too ; witliin that great bend we 
may strike at wilf northward or eastward as we choose, 
feinting to the north to strike on the east, or feinting to the 
east to strike on the north. All the enemy Press has already 
seized the point which the enemy Higher Command has been 
considering with the greatest anxiety for now a full four 
weeks. If, by some misfortune, we heard one morning of 
a general enemy retirement, of our triumphant entry with 
very few prisoners into Douai, Cambrai, and the rest, it would 
be not matter for elation.- It would mean that the enemy 
was eliminating that great saUent to the south and had 
achieved a retirement to a shorter line. The matter for 
congratulation is the pinning of him to the heaviest actions 
and the retarding of his withdrawal. 
In connection with this there are one or two particular 
points worth noting, and the most important is the possession 
of the St. Gobain obstacle. The big confused lump of hills 
which includes the St. Gobain Forest and the Chemin des 
Dames and the Aillette ridge beyond, the whole district of 
which Laon, on its isolated height, is the capital, is, and has 
been for four years, the great pivot of the enemy's defensive 
position in the West. He is to-day in a dilemma with regard 
to it. For he wants to hold it, quite obviously. It is of 
enormous strength. There is no open country through which 
a double army can strike against him between the St. Gobain 
Fo'rest and the Oise Valley. There is, at the narrowest 
sector, one road squeezed between the hills and the woods 
and the valley. On the other side, the avenue leading between 
the St. Gobain Forest and the AiUette and Chemin des Dames 
ridges to Laon there is almost an equally narrow gate. 
Both these gates can be closed indefinitely against any Allied 
pressure. But, on the other hand.rif the enemy decides to 
continue this hold upon the St. Gobain obstacle, as I have 
called it, that prevents his retirement to the north from 
being carried very far. So long as he holds that obstacle 
and makes it an essential of his plan, so long he must leave a 
great flank open in Champagne, and so long must he submit 
to the menace of attack in the south, which may come from 
either of two directions which it may be he cannot possibly 
guess beforehand. 
It is true that on this southern half of the line there is one 
great obstacle — the Vosges mountains and forests. But the 
strength of this district, though considerable, is not what 
some critics in this country have suggested. The com- 
munications are numerous. The front a long one. The 
formation, so far from being confused, extremely simple, 
a rise to the ridge and a descent iipon the further side. 
Further, it is an obstacle with a considerable open flank 
upon the south and a very large one upon the north. It 
could hardly conceivably be the main theatre of action ; but 
it is a front upon which any operations in strength would at 
once necessarily concentrate a great body of men for the 
defence, and it is one leaving an opportunity for alternative 
threats to the north and to the south, which would keep that 
defence in perpetual anxiety. 
The Water Line of Defence 
THl'l week lias been full of violent action- upon every 
point of the Hi^e, from the extreme right imder Mangin, 
which is exercising the fullest pressure towards Laon 
and to the extreme left under Home, where the British 
First .\nny is exercising the fullest pressure towards Douai. 
M both these points the enemy has been compelled to mass 
more" and more men lest the whole line should be compro- 
mised by the turning of the wings. Even in the centre -no 
rapid retirement has been possible. The enemy ^has had to 
hold the line of high ground from the Tortille to the Oise, and 
has found his resistance heavily shaken. He lost the hill of 
St. Quentin, north and a little behind the position of Pcronne. 
He has lost bridgeheads to the French across the canal to 
the south ; he has maintained himself upon the hills just 
east of Xoyon. 
Perhaps the most interesting of the points of resistance 
here has been that upon the extreme north covering Douai. 
The ground here merits particular attention as an example 
of the way in which the enemy meets the novel tactical effect 
of the tanks. - 
If the reader will turn to Sketch III he will see that north 
of the Scarpe there is no natural obstacle. Here the enemy 
has had to meet the pressure against him with a sheer weight 
of men, and he has brought men to hold the main railway, 
and the main road to Douai, and bars the approach to that 
town all the way from Plouvain to a point west of Oppy. 
To the south of the Scarpe he has natural advantages. 
There is here a whole line which is of particular value 
against the new instruments. For he can here use water as a 
defence. 
