LAND' 6? WATER 
October 10, 1918 
from Rheims fight up to Arras. He withdrew under enor- 
mous losses, and . in face of the heaviest and most perilous 
pressure retarding his every step. It was not a case of 
rearguards covering a retreat ; it was a case of whole armies 
compelled to face round and save themselves by exerting 
their whole strength. For instance, when, just after the 
end of August, the British broke the Drocourt-Oueant line, 
was that an action against a strong rearguard ? Nothing 
of the kind ! It' was an action against men packed for 
defence in the density of one division to i,200 yards : a density 
almost as great as that needed for a German q^cMsire in the 
old days, of only a few months ago. When, therefore, at 
long last, the enemy in the West fiad reached his prepared 
line and made his dispositions to stand, he was thus situated. 
He had lost, of his bayonet-strength, one-tenth in prisoners 
alone — certainly more than a fifth (more probably a quarter) 
in total casualties. He had lost in those two months material 
which he could not replace in six. Most serious point of 
all, he was fatigued. The contnauously increasing numbers 
of the Allies permitted them to rest their divisions with 
increasing periods of repose ; his were less and less relieved. 
The tired units had to be flung in again and again. 
The last movement in his falling back on to a straightened 
line, the retirement of the St. Mihiel salient, was caught 
in full manoeuvre. Most of his guns he saved. But of the 
men holding his line more than a third were taken prisoner 
at a blow, and only a little less than another third killed 
or wounded. 
Nevertheless, it might still be possible to hold. The 
St. Gobain pivot was immensely strong. The whole Une 
was now (September I5th-i8th) not only straight, but 
fitrong — even against tanks. It had water covering from 
in front of Douai till in front of Cambrai ; then, after a short 
open "gate" of five miles water covering again right down 
to St. Quentin. Beyond the pivot it had the Chemin des 
Dames, the Rheims heights, the strongly prepared positions 
■of Champagne up to the Argonne, and thence eastward to 
the Meuse the old lines in front of Verdun. 
It was not yet the moment to feel for peace — though 
the moment was already anxious. 
There came the Uttle lull of a fortnight (it was, of course, 
■only a lull in news ; in the field it was an interval of intense 
preparation, night and day). Then on Thursday, Septem- 
ber 26th, the storm broke : the main battle was joined. 
I wrote last week a sentence which expressed the opening 
of that battle : four blows on four successive days (Thursday, 
Friday, Saturday, Sunday) — the Argonne, Cambrai, Flanders, 
St. Quentin. I said then that we could not yet tell the issue ; 
but that the enemy could not be everywhere at once, that 
he was outrivalled and out-generalled. We know the issue 
to-day. He is beaten. 
The first blow, on either side of the Argonne, was at the 
very heart of the enemy hue. In front of Longuyon and 
the Ardennes Railway, which is the wasp-waist of the Ger- 
man armies, he parried. He drew in twelve, fourteen, 
sixteen divisions. The second blow, at Cambrai, he barely 
parried — but just. Not, however, without a further ex- 
haustion. The third blow, dehvered by Plumer and the 
Belgians far to the north, he failed at first to parry at all. 
They got right in — up to and past the Menin-Roulers road. 
Then he felt the fourth blow north of St. Quentin ; that, 
again, got right through, and he lost the town. 
At the end of these four heavy blows, however — say, by 
Monday, the 30th — he might breathe again. It was to be 
seen whether he could not hold. The Americans he seemed 
to have stopped between the Meuse and Argonne. In 
Flanders the Belgians and the British Second Army were 
halted ; the fighting for Cambrai was maintained. 
It is here that the significance of the brook Ames appears 
and the fashion in which that insignificant object clinches 
the lesson of the week. 
If you will look at the map (I have no opportunity of 
drawing one this week for the paper) you will see running 
from east to west, well north of the positions of Somm-py 
and the. Mont Cuvelet (which Gouraud took the week before), 
the little water-course with its ruined villages — such as 
St. Eiienne sur Ames, called by its name. On Thursday 
evening the French IVth Army, under Gouraud, had reached 
that line. What was its significance ? Look at the map 
again, and yon will see. 
Its line is so far north that the road and railway pass of 
Grand Pre through the Argonne is now closed to the enemy. 
He cannot use it. It will shortly be open to the Americans 
in the east, as it already is to the French on the west. 
Its line is so far north that it turns the Rheims heights. 
The moment Gouraud reached (and held) the line of the 
Ames brook, those heights — the pillar of the German Cham- 
pagne defence for four years — the gun platform whence 
Rheims was destroyed and the cathedral shelled — had to go. 
The order to retire was given on Friday morning. Berlin 
knew it by noon. 
But with the Rheims heights gone, how much longer will 
Cracnme and St. Gobain and Laon itself stand ? 
The Ames marked the strong second line in' that organisa- 
tion of the defensive in depth which the enemy himself 
invented a year ago, and which Gouraud this summer so 
greatly perfected. 
The Ames line was the test. It would hold or break. 
What can be certain of standing ? 
The enemy may talk of the "line of the Meuse." But 
(i) It takes us to the .Ardennes, difficult of passage and 
without lateral communication. (2) It involves the holding 
of Lille, and Lille is half gone, thanks to Plumer. (3) The 
enemy has to reach it with a vigorous pressure pursuing him. 
(4) It does not save Lorraine — and Lorraine still awaits its 
time for action : the gap of Chateau Salins still stands open. 
All this is the reason of the demand for an armistice — and 
if the public had but a hold of these plain truths upon the 
situation, that demand would certainly — or probably- — 
be made in vain. I know not what its fate may be by the 
time these lines are in print. I know well enough what its 
fate would be if the .4 B C of the strategical situation could 
only be publicly proclaimed to all opinion in its singularity. 
The enemy is beaten. 
THE NUMERICAL POSITION 
Those who are not fatigued by simple arithmetic nor ignorant 
of the effect of battalions in war, have noted the varying 
chances' of the Central Powers in terms of numbers. 
They know that a great superiority in numbers of men, 
multiplied by numbers in material, multiplied by the inverse 
of distance and time and transport and peril in communica- 
tions, gave the enemy a preponderance up to 1916. 
They knew that, as 1916 came to a close the numerical 
odds — in spite of interior communications, safe, and by land, 
and in spite of material — lay at last with the Allies. 
They knew that the dissolution of the Russian state upset 
that state of affairs, that, through 1917, Prussia and her 
dependents gradually recovered the upper hand in numbers, 
used it for specially training men in the winter, and thereupon 
appeared in overwhelming tactical and considerable strategical 
ingenuity upon the west in the spring of 1918. 
They knew how the very clastic and very rapidly used 
American system redressed the balance : how by the great 
date of July i8th we were already in the west nearly equal ; 
how, by early September we were already superior ; how far 
superior we are to-day. 
Ver}' well. In the light of such knowledge, and adding , 
to it seme judgment of the enormous losses the enemy 
voluntary accepted in his great gamble of last March, look 
at the following facts : 
1. The Germans had, about seventeen days ago, 191 divi- 
sions between Switzerland and the North Sea. (His losses had 
reduced him to that figure from 20^ ; the remaining 191 
were by no means all of them near' full establishment of 
9,000 bayonets to 3. division.) 
2. Of these 191 divisions there were, four or five days 
ago (I am writing on Sunday, October 6th) no less than 130 
actually engaged against the superior Allies, in line, imder 
fire where the battle rages. Thirty at least (perhaps 31) 
held the so-called "great sectors," notably from the Meuse 
to the Swiss frontier. The remaining 31 or 30 include some 
20 which cannot be put into the line from their quality : 
divisions of the garrisons and of communications. There is 
no general reserve, nor has been for a long time. There is 
only a perpetual rushing of units from one threatened front 
to another — and less and less opportunity for repose. 
3. When the counter-offensive began, on July i8th, 
the enemy had some three million men- — rather less than 
two million bayonets — in line..- He had, to recruit his coming 
losses, {a) hospital returns, (6) class 1920, i.e., the boys who 
attain their eighteenth birthday during the present 
year. These were all under training, many in depot, 
some few behind the line, none (save a few volunteers) in 
the field. 
Since that date he has lost over a quarter of a million 
in -prisoners alone, and a total loss of certainly 600,000 — 
probably more. What chance has he of recruitment ? 
How can he maintain his numbers ? 
The enemy appeals to be saved because he is beaten. He is 
beaten because, when he had numbers he did not know 
how to use them. Now the numbers are on the other side, 
and without numbers his cause is hopeless. Moreover, 
the powers of domination will henceforward be very rapid 
indeed. 
