October 24, 1918 
LAND &> WATER 
THE WAR: By HILAIRE BELLOC 
A War of Movement 
The Enemy's Alternative Lines 
THE military situation is to-day, as it has been 
ever since the counter-offensive of July i8th, 
dependent upon numbers more than ground. 
The enemy's retirement is voluntary in the 
sense tliat he intends a retirement, but com- 
pulsorj- in the sense that it is perpetually taking a form 
which he does not choose ; and it is this factor in the situa- 
tion which is pf greatest promise to the Allies. 
Granted this, after an analysis of the movements of the 
present week there is another matter of interest in an 
examination of the line or lines the enemy might choose 
to rally upon, and of what his chances would be upon these, 
granted (which is improbable) that his numbers will, by the 
time he reaches such lines, suffice for their maintenance. 
Three things have marked the movement of the past 
week. The first has been the big stroke in Flanders effected 
by the British Second Army, under General Plumer, the 
French ivpon their left, and the Belgians up to the sea, with 
its immediate consequence, the evacuation of the Lille salient, 
and the retirement of the enemy away from the whole of 
the sea coast and back to a line nmning due north and south 
(last Saturday) from just west of Tournai to the road between 
linigcs and Ghent. At the moment in which 1 write that 
line is presumablj- no longer due north and south, but bending 
far eastward in its northern part. Perhaps the news will 
come before these pages are published that it has even 
uncovered Ghent. 
. The second matter of the week, has been the continued 
resistance of the enemy at the two points where his great 
lateral railway is chiefly menaced : the first, in the (for the 
moment) absolutely vital sector just north of Solcsmes, on 
the right bank of the River Selle, at the point marked by 
the villages of Hasprcs and Haussy ; the second, between 
the Argonne and the Meuse, in front of Buzancy, where the 
enemy is holding against the Americans in order to prevent 
that same lateral railway coming under fire at its southern 
end between Montedy and Sedafi. 
The third matter of the week is again a matter of move- 
ment, and consists in the combined French and British 
advance south of Le Cateau — that is, in the centre of the 
belt which the enemy stijl holds, covering and served by 
this lateral railway. 
I will take these three matters in their order, the first 
being, for the moment, the most important. 
THE ADVANCE IN FLANDERS 
When the advance of the British Second Army, flanked 
by the Belgians and the French, had, at its first blow, cut 
the railway and road Ijetwecn Roulers and Menin, though 
the number of prisoners and guns taken was not very large, 
the considerable advance effected menaced the salient of 
Lille to the south and the strip along the sea coast to the 
north. 
It menaced but did not yet compel the evacuation of either 
of these bulges. Courtrai was approached, but not occupied. 
Tliis junction was indeed out of use, but the geographical 
point was not passed. On the north of the great bulge of 
Lille this menace did not destroy the very excellent water 
protection in which the enemy had the shape of the course 
of the River Lys. On the south of the bulge, against the 
Belgian sea coast, there was no water protection, but this 
bulge was less pronounced, and apparently could hold. 
•Were it true that the enemy had intended a retirement, 
was withdrawing his material at his leisure with that object, 
and proposed to fall back both from Lille and from the sea 
coast at his own moment, he could have done so in the interval 
following the first attack in Flanders many days ago. In a 
sense, of course, it is true that he intended that retirement : 
in the sense that sooner or later he knew he would have to 
make it. But the proof that it came at our moment, and 
not at his, is to be discovered in the fact that it immediately 
succeeded the second blow, and that, but for the second 
blow, it might have been indefinitely delayed.. 
All opinion wtint'^ocver of -^tiKli-nts in tliis camjiaign or 
of actors in it was agreed, and none more than the enemy 
higher command, that the immediate line of resistance lay 
from Lille to Metz, covering and supported by the great 
lateral communication by rail which unites these two terminal 
strong points. 
The organisation of defence round Lille was extraordinarily 
strong. When the time comes for the pubhcation of recon- 
naissances by air, and when the photographic maps are 
before my readers, they will agree with me that the enemy 
intended to hold Lille to the last ; that is, up till the moment 
when further retention of it would be gambling with disaster. 
Lille and Metz were the two bastions between which the 
curtain of the German defence was unrolled. Once Lille 
went, a large retirement •at the north end of' their hue was 
inevitable. Now, this retirement meant the abandonment 
of the Belgian coast. The abandonment of the Belgian 
coast meant the abandonment of exceedingly important 
bases for submarine work upon the sea and of the emj)lace- 
ments from which spasmodic but powerful air attack had 
been directed against London. The neutrality of Holland 
caused the abandonment of this strip of coast to mean the 
denial of access to the sea at one blow over a distance of 
more than 250 miles, from Westende to Borkum. German 
action by sea was at a blow thrown back upon the Bight of 
Heligoland. 
There was no prepared line behind the liric thus abandoned, 
and the political effect of the retirement had also to be con- 
sidered by the enemy. 'No wonder he delayed it ! 
What compelled that retirement was the forcing of the 
Lys water line, coupled with the advance secured by the 
second blow, delivered this week. When the British had 
passed Courtrai, when the French and the Belgians had 
approached Thourout and Thielt, still more, when the water 
line, of the Lys had proved >'ulnerable below Lille, both the 
salients necessarily disappeared. All the Lille salient was 
evacuated, and all the sea coast as well. 
It is important to grasp the elements of this affair, because 
it is the model upon which we shall see the remainder of the 
retirement proceeding. At its best (for the enemj'), this 
retirement will be a succession of such "pinching out" move- 
ments ; at its worst, the successive blows may cause him a 
far greater expense than that to which he has hitherto been 
put and by such actions as this last in Flanders, until his 
armies break. 
THE ARGONNE AND THE MEUSE, AND THE LOWER SELLE 
This week, as in the week before, and indeed ever since 
the Franco-American attack on September 26th on the right, 
and especially since the great and (as I believe it to be) 
decisive battle of Cambrai — deHvered by the British on. 
Tuesday and Wednesday, October 8th and 9th — the enemy 
has been under positive compulsion to save the two points 
of the lateral railway Metz-Sedan-MeziSres-Valenciennes 
which are most gravely menaced : -that is, the two points 
where the Allies come nearest to that railway. Until he has 
found the time to abandon the belt which covers that railway, 
this lateral communication is absolutely vital to him. Fur- 
ther, when he shall make up his mind to abandon it, even 
if he does so voluntarily, he will find himself necessarily 
in a country devoid of similar opportunities, the country 
of the Ardennes, not difficult of defence, indeed, but very 
difficult of supply. Therefore does he till the last mcment 
defend that line. 
Now, as I have pointed out several times in these colvmns, 
to defend a couple of menaced points is still well within 
his powers. Severe as is the strain tipon his man-power, 
rapid and inevitable as is its decrease, he can continue (so 
long as only these two sectors are ifienaced) to mass specially 
in their defence. L'pon the north especially, upon the front 
just below Solesmes, the sector marked by the two villages 
of Hasprcs and Haussy, is it essential for him to hold, and 
there 1 think if we were to look at the maps of the staffs 
we should find his densest disposition of troops. There 
seems to have been a moment when the farthest outposts 
