LAND &? WATER 
October 24, 1918 
of tlie Allies Iuti- beyond the Selle were within S,ouo yards 
of the line. Counter-attack apparently recovered some very 
narrow belt here, but the range is still approximately 8,000 
yards or very little more. Let him lose at all seriously 
here, say another 3,000 or 4,000 yards, and the .line is out 
of action. He has between it and the present positions no 
line of defence at all save the little stream of the Ecaillon, 
with good rising ground behind it, it is true, but far too 
near the line to serve as covering. Were he forced back 
to this stream of the Ecaillon, his lateral railway would be 
in the position that the Amiens railway was after the fight- 
ing of April 4th, when the enemy got well over the Avre ; 
as we know, that advance put the Amiens railway out of 
action for four months and more — right up to the British 
advance of August 8th in front of Amiens. On the other 
menaced sector, on what may be called the Buzancy front, 
the danger is less pressing. There has been no very appreci- 
able American advance, and the range from the first outposts 
of the Allies to the nearest point of the lateral railway is 
more than double that of the danger point to the north at 
Solesmcs. ■• . 
It is none the less vital. Any considerable advance 
achieved here, by bringing the railway under close range, 
would have an even greater effect than cutting it farther 
north, for it would at a blow destroy all the supply of what 
lay north and west of tlie point attacked. The enemy has 
therefore massed first and last twenty.divisions on this narrow 
sector of 12,000 yards between the great wood and the river, 
and the ordeal to which the American army has been sub- 
jected has been correspondingly severe. 
THE MOVEMENT SOUTH OF LE CATEAU 
But it remains true that this concentration for the defence 
of the only two points menaced for the moment has compelled 
the enemy with his insufficient resources of men to weakness 
elsewhere, and the great series of actions which have been 
fought this week by the French and English south of Le 
■Cateau are evidence of this truth. The advance here made 
has been remarkable, especially upon the British side. There 
is a canal running from the river Sambre to the high waters 
of the river Oise, and this canal is the water line upon which 
the enemy here depends for resistance. It has not yet been 
passed. The British have reached it at Catillon and farther 
south, and the thrust thus made into the enemy line is at 
once deep, peculiar in shape, and an evidence of his ina- 
bility to resist in any sector less vital than those which he is 
defending at all costs. None the less his water line here still 
holds. Farther sduth the French have made a corre- 
sponding advance, reaching the canal at its point of junction 
with the Oise, but not crossing it. But they have crossed, 
and permanently maintained bridge-heads beyond, the water 
line of the Oise, which defended upon the north the big 
salient held by the enemy south of that river. This forcing 
of the upper Oise valley is important. It compels the centre 
to fall back. The French have crossed the Oise at Mont 
d'Origny and at Ribemont. The enemy had dammed the 
upper river and flooded the valley, and recent rain has 
rendered the bridge-heads at one moment (apparently last 
Friday) rather difficult to hold ; but at the last news, that 
of Saturday, they were maintained. 
Now the effect of this advance especially by the British 
well east of Le Cateau, and of this crossing of the Oise by the 
French, is exactly parallel to what Plumer and the French 
and Belgians did in Flanders. It proceeds from exactly the 
same cause, the inability of the enemy to mass in sufficient 
strength everywhere, the power of the Allies to strike where 
they will, the insufficient protection even of a w-ater defence 
against our new tactics and numbers, and it has had exactly 
the same effect. 
The advance beyond Le Cateau and across the canal is 
beginning to outflank the positions north of Solesmes, exactly 
as Plumer's advance past Courtrai began to outflank the 
positions up to the cftast. The French crossing of the Oise 
corresponds to Plumer's crossing of the Lys, and must inevit- 
ably reduce the German salient to the south of that river 
precisely as the crossing of the Lys compelled the evacuation 
of the salient of Lille. Any great further advance of the 
British beyond the canal will turn the German positions 
beyond the Selle to the north and bring the lateral railway 
under close fire. 
Meantime the evacuation of the German salient south of 
the Oise and the straightening of the line there brings the 
sector some miles nearer to the same lateral railway at 
Avesnes. The belt held here irv the centre is still consider- 
able; even when the French are in Guise, which cannot be 
long delayed, thev will notbe within 30,000 yards of the lateral 
railway, but with every such advance the sector to be 
guarded gets longer, and \<hen tlie central sector is hack 
near to the railway, the general Allied advance will, I may 
venture to guess, have rendered that railway untcrKible. 
In other words, there must, as the pressure continues, be 
ultimately an abandonment of the belt in front of the rail- 
way, and a resolution, should the German line still stand 
intact, to attempt the holding of a line across the Ardennes, 
in spite of the difficulty of communication behind such a 
line, and the virtual separation of the armies of the Belgian 
plain from the Lorraine armies. We are approaching this 
crisis with every yard of the Allied forward mo\'ement l.cre 
in the centre. ' 
Meanwhile, in the face of this ceaseless pressure, it is 
clear that the enemy has determined to swing back all the 
northern end of his series of positions. His pivot is, for the 
moment, Mezieres, and he proposes to relinquish point after 
point north and west of that pivot. The consequence of 
this successive abandonment of positions is to deprive one 
sector after another of the lateral railway of its importance. 
For instance, when he gave up Lille, no cutting of the line 
west of Valenciennes would have had much effect. Again, 
if he gives up Valenciennes, the pressure at Haussy, menacing 
the lateral railway, at once loses its strategical value— and 
so forth. 
The situation here is a sort of race between the Allied 
advance by successive thrusts (creating successive salients 
which are successively pinched out) and the enemy's hurried 
removal of material back in his retirement. Much of this 
material he abandons and destroys, but it is the necessity 
(jr desire of saving the rest which delays him. 
Such a retirement implies some line of resistance. The 
enemy may not be able to reach such a line intact ; he may 
not be able to hold it if he reaches it. He may find it (like 
his second positions in the first week of October, after the 
British victory south of Cambrai) already pierced before he 
establishes himself on them. But a rallying line is still his 
necessity, and we must study what opportunities there are 
for such a line behind his present unstable positions. The 
first and most obvious line may be called that " of the Scheldt 
and Meuse." It does not follow, from its bfing the most 
obvious line that the enemy will either be able to- stand 
upon it or will even attempt to do so. I only propose to 
show its advantages and disadvantages, supposing his forces 
to be coherent and his line unbroken when he reaches it. 
The Scheldt affords a really formidable obstacle, as 
far as Termonde, at least. Nearly the whole way the 
river, like the lower Thames, is a tidal estuary. No direct 
attack upon it by infantry is possible, apparently, and in all 
this sector, which has Antwerp in its midst, he could save a 
great number of men. 
From Termonde on southward he has the water line of the 
Dendre, a small stream, but one affording up to the level of 
Brussels as good a protection — at least, from direct attack — 
as the Lys did, and a better one than the Selle, which, as a 
water line, he has already partly lost. 
Up the Dendre to a point covering Brussels he has, then, 
a water line. He would rely precisely, as he did in France, 
upon the Allies sparing the Belgian towns. He would, 
therefore, have excellent communications and billets behind 
him, for the road centres (which are also the towns) and 
notably Brussels, he could rely upon to be secure, both for 
his traffic and for his billets, and for his stores. It is a great 
advantage which he has, as an invader, over the invaded 
under modern conditions and with modern ranges of fire. 
The sector next south of the Dendre, which stream the 
line would abandon at a. point very slightly south of west 
from Brussels, would be his first anxiety. He must here 
defend* open country with no good water hne, and decide 
where, after a trajectory of anything between 50 and ()0 
miles, he would propose to strike the Meuse. His shortest 
line would lead him past Charleroi and to the Meuse just 
at the mouth of its gorge near Mezieres. If he proposed to 
strike the river lower down, covering Namur, and holding 
the right bank of the Meuse, he would, in the gorge itself, 
be in easily defended countr}^ but also on ground where 
rapid lateral movement is very difficult. He would, pre- 
sumably, prefer to strike the river higher; and near 
Mezieres. 
The one advantage he has in this, which may be called 
his "open sector" (because he has there no good water line, 
so that, on a large scale, it is like the vital sector he lately 
lost in front of Cambrai), is excellent communications behind 
him. All the northern part of it is a net of roads and rail- 
ways, and there are good lateral lines serving him all the 
way, as well as ample road and railway service back from 
and to his bases. 
The last sector, that along the Meuse itself, to, say. Dun 
and the present front before Verdun, has the advantage of 
