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October 17, 1918 
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approached such a state of affairs. That lateral railway is 
at the present moment only twenty ' miles away from our 
advance upon the right or south, and less than six miles 
away from our advance upon the left or north. That is 
ample covering, it is true. It is greater covering than we 
had in our lateral communications in the worst days of 
April. But there was this difference between the two situa- 
tions : that the enemy, though still covering the vital line, 
is in retreat, whereas we, in that critical moment of April, 
had brought our opponents to a -stand. If we only consider 
the two points where the enemy is holding the Allied advance 
— that is, the line between the Meuse and the Argonne, 
where their lateral communications ar« threatened in the 
south, and the line of the little River Selle, from Le Cateau 
t» beyond Solesmes, where the lateral communications is 
closer still — it looks as though their retirement did not 
imperil that vital railway line. But this is a superficial 
way in which to view the problem. The enemy is resisting 
stronjljr and is able to resist upon these two critical points 
because he has there heavily massed men and material. 
Further right, by Douai, he is falling back, and in the centre 
he is falling back rapidly. In other words, outside these 
two points, where he has for the moment stabilised the line, 
his line is in flux. Now, when his retirement is halted at 
some point in the centre — say, in front of the lateral line 
communication — then will be the test of whether he can every- 
where protect that line. He will have in front of him a 
closely pursuing enemy, stronger in numbers and material, 
therefore fresher because of more frequent reliefs, and capable 
of striking at will upon any point, and it remains to be seen 
whether in such a situation he will be able to continue covering 
the lateral line from Metz to Lille. It is very rarely that a 
guess has been permitted to enter these articles, but I will 
venture to say here that I think he will find the task an 
impossible one. 
There is another way of putting it. An object which you 
have to defend at all costs, a line (in this case a railway line) 
has so far only been approached at two points. You can, 
whatever your inferiority in men, material, or moral, stand 
to defend those two points ; but when your whole line is 
threatened it will be another matter. So far as one can 
judge, the problem the enemy now has to solve is how to fall 
back yet further, and yet maintain intact the mass of his 
armies. It may be an exaggeration to say that that problem 
is insoluble, or that a statement of its solution is a contra- 
diction in terms. But it is not an exaggeration to say that 
the solution has not occurred to any student of the war, 
and that the enemy, at any rate, is in despair of its solution 
as to be making suddenly, with emphasis, and with a very 
considerable measure of humiliation, a demand for peace. 
If it were merely a question of space in the abstract, there is 
no reason why the two main fragments of a divided force 
should not retire, the one by the north and the other by the 
south of the Ardennes ; why a weak centre should not be 
drawn back through the Ardennes itself (such as the weak 
centre-offensive through the Ardennes in the triumphant 
German march at the beginning of the war), and there is 
no reason why the German armies should not find them- 
selves re-united upon a shorter and stronger front behind 
the obstacle, covering Liege, passing through the Ardennes, 
and covering Lorraine and Alsace. But ground cannot be 
treated in this abstract way at the end of the war, when de- 
feat is in the air, andthe political consideration of saving one's 
own soil from invasion has an overwhelming importance. 
There is another strategical consideration attached to the 
problem. If the enemy will not fall back on his southern 
half because he regards the invasion of Lorraine as a pre- 
liminary to political disaster ; if he intends his remaining 
retirement to be on the northern half, pivoting upon Metz, 
then he has all the communications of that northern half 
passing through the bottle neck of LiSge. The .situation is 
not in itself an impossible one. Space is not the only element ; 
there is also time. With time to organise and time to defile 
a force of any -given magnitude can evacuate a front of 
any deployment through any neck, however narrow. But 
this element of leisure the enemy most certainly does not 
possess. He does not know how long, in how many weeks, 
or even da\'s, such a retirement could be effectively covered, 
or at what rate it will be pressed. 
Look at it how you will, the effect of the battle of Cambrai, 
the second and enormously successful step in the general 
plan of the main battle which opened upon September 
26th, is to put the enemy in a strategical situation from 
which he cannot escape without loss so serious and disloca- 
