October 17, 1918 
LAND 6? WATER . 
THE WAR: By HILAIRE BELLOC 
The Attack on Strength 
The Occupation of Nish 
UPON Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, 
October 8th and 9th, there was won by the 
British Army a great general action which has 
wholly decided the present form of the war. 
This great action it is which has determined 
the general retreat of the enemy, and to it, if to any par- 
ticular cause, must be ascribed the origin of that phase 
which we are now undoubtedly starting, a phase of complete 
victory. 
I will first proceed to explain how and why this particular 
action has this great characteristic here attributed to it. 
After all the preliminaries of the counter-offensive had 
been accomplished, after the two great salients of the Marne 
and of Amiens had been reduced, after the salient at St. 
Mihiel had been reduced, and after the enemy had been 
thrown back everywhere on to their main organised defen- 
sive positions, from the water-line in front of Douai to 
the Meuse, the Germans were standing upon a comparatively 
simple large bend stretching from in front of Douai to the 
north, passing in front of Cambrai and St. Ouentin, turning 
round the pivot of St. Gobain Hill a'nd Forest, hence on past 
Rheims to the Argonne, and so to the Meuse near Verdun. 
Upon September 26th there opened the great general 
action which was to compel a wholesale retirement, and in 
the course of it to bleed the enemy in men and material. 
This great action opened upon a forty-mile front east 
and west of Argonne from the Meuse to a point twenty miles 
east of the Forest. Between Argonne and the Meuse it 
was an American attack which was held by enemy con- 
centration after an advance of from three to seven miles. 
East of the Argonne it was a French attack which gradually 
pushed its way day after day northwards. It was clear, 
from the shape of the line and from the nature of the opera- 
tion undertaken, that this attack upon the southern limb 
of the great bend, this attack upon the German left, would 
need for complete success a corresponding attack upon the 
northern limb. We have often spoken in these columns of 
the water defences in front of Douai. of the gap in front of 
Cambrai, where there is no water defence, and of the critical 
character of all the country south of Cambrai to the main- 
taining of the German line. While this strong but slow 
pressure was being exercised from east of Rheims to the 
Argonne, and maintained, though without advance, by the 
Americans from the Argonne to the Meuse, the failure or 
success of the general plan would clearly depend upon the 
failure or success of the co-relative attack south of Cambrai. 
The southern battle had been in progress between ten and 
twelve days when the northern attack was ordered. The 
Germans, seeing-, as well as we did, the necessity of meeting 
that northern attack if they were to hold at all, massed 
upon the threatened front no less than twenty-four divisions. 
VVe must note this point carefully because, as we shall see 
later, one of the chief characteristics of the battle was that 
the assault was delivered upon the strongest part of the 
enemy's Kne. Against those twenty-four divisions the 
British force came, aided only by a few Allied contingents, 
with certain French divisions upon their extreme right. It 
was a battle and a victory achieved by the British Army, 
and that in a moment of the war when the exhaustion of the 
original belligerents lends particular meaning and value 
to such a success. 
If the attack had resulted in no more than a slow and 
steady pressure, gradually pressing back the enemy line, 
but permitting the organisation of further defences, the 
great German salient would still stand. To put it more 
accurately, the general retreat upon which the enemy had 
probably already determined would in such a case 
have come at his time and have been conducted in his way. 
As it is, it has come at our time and is being conducted in 
our way, with political results upon which I do not for the 
moment touch, but which are in all our minds. 
The British attack upon the sector of Cambrai and to 
the south of it, effected a full rupture of the German defensive 
system. It was not a break-through after the type of the 
great German blows of last autumn And early in this year, 
for it was a blow delivered against an enemy still possessing 
considerable room for manoeuvre, and prepared, if necessary, 
to retreat. But it was a full rupture, arid the enemy had no 
choice but to fall back with the utmost rapidity. It was not 
until he reached the line of the Sclle river that he could rally, 
and the advance thus covered in three days to Le Cateau 
made it certain that he would not longer hold his centre 
at St. Gobain. 
COMPULSORY RETIREMENT. 
With the prophecies of disaster to that centre it was dif- 
ficult to sympathise for there never seemed to be any good 
ground for them. Its flank was completely protected by the 
marshy valley of the river Oise. Its front, a series 01 hill 
positions, was immensely strong. There was every oppor- 
tunity of organising a retirement, and, as we see, the retire- 
ment has been successfully conducted. Nevertheless, that 
retirement has been imposed upon the enemy at our time 
and not at his, being the direct result of our offensive success 
south of Cambrai, and of his failure to defend, it has in the 
total been exceedingly expensive. 
Since the main battle opened upon the 26th September^ 
between 60,000 and 70,000 new prisoners, and an as yet 
uncounted number of guns, certainly over 700, have weakened 
the forces opposed to us.' There has been no breakdown as 
yet, nor disintegration of any of the enemy commands, nor 
any dislocation in his line. We have no reason to prophecy 
any such good fortune in the immediate future. But what 
has been clearly present is the decreasing of already rapidly 
waning strength, and a strategical situation which will not hold. 
There is some danger of a confusion in the public apprecia- 
tion of such a military situation, just as there was a danger 
of a misunderstanding of the Bulgarian situation the other 
day. There was no very large Bulgariaii surrender ; the 
capture of guns, indeed, was very insignificant, and of prisoners 
nothing like what a breakdown would have led one to expect. 
The Bulgarian army and its command had come to the con- 
clusion that it would not win ; it saw defeat to be inevitable, 
and since victory and defeat are moral, not material terms, 
such a conviction is in itself the end of an offensive effort.' 
It was said in these columns some weeks ago when one of 
the German authorities — the Emperor, I think — made the 
ridiculously unmilitary remark that the war would hence- 
forth be "wholely defensive," that such a thing as a purely 
"defensive war" had no military meaning. It was a phrase 
which no soldier could use ; it was a politician's phrase. 
So true is this that within that short time since the phrase 
was used we find what is called a "defensive war" becoming 
an, admission of defeat. 
The times are past in which a calculation of ground and 
time and space were of particular value. We are dealing 
now with moral elements, mainly the result (as we shall 
see in a moment) of previous exhaustion upon the enemy 
side. But there is still some interest yi' appreciating how 
ground and time work against the enemy in his retirement. 
Every one is familiar now with the diagram first printed in 
these pages, and since copied in various forms throughout 
the Press (a reproduction is here given), whereby one sees 
how the German armies depend upon two sheaves of com- 
munications, the one passing through Belgium and the 
other through Lorraine, and the two Jirked by the lateral 
line of railways which unites Metz and Lille by way of Sedan, 
Mezieres, and Valenciennes. Every one is equally familiar 
with the way in which the block of the Ardennes has thus 
compelled communications to go round to north or to the 
south, and is itself unsuitable for the passage of supplies 
towards any great force. Every one is familiar with the 
situation which will be created in the enemy's centre when 
forced back to the Ardennes, and when his armies are virtually 
separated into two blocks which will no longer have the power 
of supporting one another because the lateral communications 
which formally ran behind their fronts will be cut. 
What we have to appreciate at this moment, when the 
enemy is crying for peace, is the rate at which we have 
