. LAND ^ WATER 
September 19, 1918 
Heudicourt. 1 tiiink most of them were taken over the 
hill by the cross road (which is only marked on large scale 
maps) to Vigneulles direct, going up the ravine of the 
Creue Brook and sharply down the escarpment of the hills 
to the east. There are many forest roads on, the Meuse 
heights which, though they arq not marked for wheeled traffic, 
are perfectly good going for a column of infantry, and by these 
all the line lying north of St. Mihiel could get away quite 
quickly. It had only a distance of from seven to four miles 
to go during the night. The remarkable thing about the 
whole affair is the number of prisoners which nevertheless 
fell to the Allied armies. Most of these must have been 
overrun by the rapid main American advance from the 
south. A certain number — about one-fifth of the whole- 
were taken in the lesser advance south of Fresnes, but it is 
clear that a considerable proportion were caught in the 
bend of St. Mihiel through the unexpected rapidity of the 
operation. The Americans were in Thiaucourt within five 
hours of their first movement. They there crossed and cut 
the railway supplying the salient and helping its evacuation ; 
while the forces from the north joined hands with those 
from the south at St. Benoit early in the morning of the 
second day, Friday, the 13th. 
This leads one to comment upon the astonishing precision 
of the staff work. 
The enemy postulated three things with regard to the 
American recruitment. • First, that it could not come (or 
be supplied) in great numbers on account of his submarines. 
Secondly, that it would not have a good tactical value because 
it would have little more fighting value than a militia, so far 
as its action in the field was concerned. Thirdly, that its 
staff work would necessarily be bad because it was amateur 
and hurriedly put together, and that therefore any con- 
siderable movement undertaken by the Americans would 
either be very slow or very confused ; probably both. 
On the first of these errors he has been thoroughly dis- 
illusioned for some months past : since about April. On 
the second he began to be disillusioned with the fighting 
at Vaux, near Chateau Thierry, in early Jul}-, and he woke 
up thoroughly in the fighting just across the Marne during 
his great offensive on the afternoon of Tuesday, July i6th. 
But on the third error he could still linger until the opening 
of this last operation, the reduction of the salient of St. 
Mihiel. There is no piece of work during the whole of the 
war which has been conducted with such economy, exactitude, 
and dispatcli, has been so exactly fitted to its objective, 
or so brief in its execution ; and there are very few, if any 
(excepting, perhaps, Malmaison last year), which have pro- 
duced such a total of prisoners and guns at so small a cost. 
As a mere piece of staff work it was magnificent. 
Meanwhile, the extreme pressure which the Allied Higher 
Command is putting upon the apex ol the great German 
salient in France in the Laon district continues. We must 
not misunderstand it. 
The object here is not advance. Advance may be obtained 
by accident : by the unexpected collapse of the enemy, by , 
weather, by blunder, or bad luck on his part. But advance 
is not the object. The object — and most successfully has 
it hitherto been attained — is to compel the enemy to bring 
into this furthest point of his great and dangerous bulge 
a maximum number of men. The object is to keep the place 
"boiling" with a succession of fresh divisions drawn in, 
and broken divisions sent back. He has elected to stand 
on this very strong knot of hills — the St. Gobain Forest, 
the Ailette and Chemin des Dames ridges. He knows, of 
course, perfectly well that this choice condemns him to 
leave a vulnerable flank to the south, but he gambles on the 
advantage of maintaining so strong a pivot in spite of the 
disadvantage of leaving his southern line ill-garnished. The 
alternative would be to attempt an immense retirement of 
the whole of his forces back towards the Meuse ; and he 
dares not, or will not, undertake that yet. 
Since he has chosen to continue in the dangerous forward 
position with its vulnerable southern flank, the Allied Higher 
Command takes full advantage of that pohcy of his, and 
compels him to feed his most advanced point with quantities 
of nien, thereby weakening the remainder of his line. That 
is the whole meaning of the fighting round the St. Gobain 
Forest and on the flank of the Chemin des Dames. If by 
any accicjent that pivot gives way, so much the better ; his 
whole line is then ruined. But even if, as is far more pro- . 
bable, , it is maintained, its very maintenance forbids his 
properly securing Lorraine. 
Peace and the U-Boat: By A. H. Pollen 
FOR a'week or so after the opening of the Allied 
counter-stroke in the Chateau Thierry salient, the 
fact that a complete change had taken place in 
the military position, though patent enough to the 
German Higher Command — I shall later on call 
attention to a curious evidence of this — was completely con- 
cealed^from the German people. It was perhaps the Aus- 
trians, sore from their reverses on the Piave, and nettled by 
the saroasm of German press comments on it, that were the 
first to bring home the realities of the situation. However 
this may be, from about mid- August it has been clear that the 
German people knew more than was good for them, so that 
whatever the enemy's concern with the ultimate issue of 
the military campaign, his immediate business was both to 
strengthen the resolution of his own people and, as far as 
possible, to deflect Allied civilian opinion from a determina- 
tion to see the war through to victory. The methods open 
to him for achieving each of these purposes were not obscure, 
though limited. My colleague, Mr. Belloc, pointed out last 
week, that the preposterous theory of a "victorious defence," 
put forward by the most militarist of governments to cajole 
the most military of peoples, lacked, at the time of writing, 
but one supreme endorsement, that of the All-Highest War 
Lord himself, and this, added my colleague, would probably 
be given in the near future. The purpose, he explained, 
of this self-destructive plirase was to induce a world belief 
that, with her back to the wall, Germany would fight suc- 
cessfully for ever. If the German people believed it, they 
would carry on for the time necessary for the Central Govern- 
ments to manoeuvre for some end to the war other than 
defeat. If the French, American, British and Italian peoples 
believed it, they would be more inclined^under pain of 
victory — to be deceived by the manoeuvres. And the 
character of the manoeuvres was again not very doubtful. 
In the same issue of this journal that contained this forecast 
of what the Kaiser would do, the present writer, speaking 
of the effect the closing of the Channel ports might have on 
the enemy's Belgian policy, suggested that this was a factor 
that we might see reflected "in the peace offer which now 
could not long be delayed." The third element, on which the 
enemy might be presumed to rely would be an incipient belief, 
if he could create it, that the essential character of the Govern- 
ments of Germany and Austria had, under the educating 
trials of war, ceased to be purely autocratic and military, 
and was veering round to an acceptable liberalism. And 
accordingly in the last fortnight we have Solf, Czernin and 
Bufian put up to say that pan-Germanism, so far from being 
the faith of all Germans, as its name might imply, is far 
from being that of anything but an insignificant niinority. 
Well, before Mr. Belloc's article had appea,red in print 
the Kaiser had discharged the part therein assigned to him. 
By the following Monday the invitation to confer on peace 
had been issued. The two things together have fallen so 
promptly and so pat as to make the task of prophecy seem 
almost too easy. The inference that the enemy is going to 
pieces may to some appear irresistible. But it is to be hoped 
that wrong inferences' will 'not be drawn. That the enemy's 
moral is in a- sad case — or we should not be having so many 
chants in a minor key — may be true enough, without there 
being the least expectation of an early disintegra?tion of his 
body politic. The Russian Empire, for example, was in a 
far worse condition a year before the Revolution broke out — 
and Xiermany is far better able to prevent disaffection ripen- 
ing to disorder than any other country in the world. We 
should be wrong then in supposing that we are anywhere 
near having the full consequences of a military victory. An 
unconditional German surrender is still months away.- We 
should be still more wrong if we interpreted German dis- 
couragement and the willingness to treat as having made 
military victor}' necessary. 
It is indeed very unlikely that the responsible statesmen 
that compose any of the Allied Governments will fall into 
either of these errors. But if we really are to have a general 
election in November, it is as well that we should all realise 
that the policy of this country, at least, will not, once the 
election is over, be decided either by Mr. George or by any 
of the recognised heads of existing British parties. That 
policy will be decided by the majority of those whom the 
