December 19, 1918 
/ 
LAND ^' WATER 
The Stages of Victory : By Hilaire Belloc 
WHAT is the story of the war .' What is the 
picture of the war in its largest oatlines ? 
It is exceedingly important for each of ns to 
answer that question to himself as soon as 
jxKsiWe rightly ; for upon a right answer to 
it will depend our whole judgment 
of the innumerable details with 
which the picture will later be 
filled in as information is gradually 
released and co-ordinated. 
It is often said that a gif: ' 
historical event cannot be tc- - 
by its contemporaries. If this is 
usually true if we speak of the 
spirit and even of the causes of 
that event, it is obviously true 
if we 6peak of its consequences, 
for only the future can develop 
consequence. But it is not true 
of mere record. Record can be 
established, and is established in 
all civilised times by contempor- 
aries for posterity. 
Again it is said that a true 
historical picture of anything, 
especially of a great thing, cannot 
be drawn until the mass of detail 
which necessarily takes a Icr.i 
time to arrive, is availaWe. Ttuii 
is not a partially true judgment, 
but a completely false one. It i= 
just the other way. Unless or. 
has a sound general outline th 
detail is worthless. The o :- 
rection and therefore the tru.:. 
of one's jMCture entirely depend > 
up)on a just estimate of values. 
Unless we have things in their 
right order, first the largest main 
divisions, then their true sub-di\'isions. and thai these sub- 
divided again into their true compartments, we can never see 
the thing as a whole ; and it is not any new details which will 
change our judgment in this respect, nor any massof newdetails. 
We. the contemporaries, are then in a positi<Hi — in sjHte 
of the mass of material still 
hidden from us, to smnmaiise 
the great war, and that b the 
task which I jHopose to approach 
this week and next ; so that, to the 
four 3'eaFS and more of analysis 
which this paper has presented to 
its readers, there may be added, by 
way of conclusion to such a series 
a catching-up of the wiiole st' r: 
into one simple frame. 
The great European War of 
1914-1S lasted for four years 
and three and a half months, if w - 
regard the armistice as its cc: 
elusion. The first srfemn act ol 
war was undertaken in the last 
f?a\-5 of July. 1914, when an 
Ui lima turn, designed for rejec- 
tion, was sent by the German 
Govenunent to the Government 
of what was then the Russian 
Empire and what is still the French 
Republic. The first shots were 
fired a few da\-s later upon the 
frontiers of the territor\Jof Belfort 
in France, where the first man in 
French uniform was killed by 
German raiders who had crossed 
the frontier upon a raid. The 
last shot was fired, it appears, 
by an African soldier in the 
French service immediately upon 
the stroke of 11 o'clock in the morning of November nth 
last. 
This great space of time, covered by a struggle which has 
destroyed more human lives and more accumulated human 
wealth than any conflict of similar or of much Ir/oger duration 
in the past, is di^^dcd into three dear periods, but before 
MARSHAL FOCH 
nELD-KABSHAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG 
enomeratinf these, I mnstjpostiilate a pnodple in military 
history which it is easy to forget and which is yet vital to 
its apprehension. 
The divisions into which a campaign logically falls, the 
parte which make up the whole, do not vary in importajkce at 
all according to their length nor 
evok acoHdiqg to the severity ci . 
the 6^stiog ondataken diuing 
each, nm^ according to the losses 
each invidves. Whetho- one is 
writing the histoiy of a sing^ 
action, or ctf a tdiole campa^n. 
or of many comlnned campaigns, 
such as this great var has been. 
the logical divisioo. the coiy 
division which enahles as to 
understand the afibir. is one vAiicii 
separates each snrrcssrwe stage 
in the event. This is partimhrly 
true of Siege Warfare m which the 
various stages nataraDy jvesent 
an exU kt mdin aiy contrast m their 
duration, and as this war was 
essentially a &eat Siege we shall 
discover a similar contrast in the 
dmation of its vaiioBs stages. 
In other words, one cannot 
write the story of the war as one 
writes the story of most hnman 
events, by dividing it into mote 
or less eqoal or, at any rate, 
comparable units of time. It is 
not the first, the second, or the 
third year, or a month, or a week, 
or an hour of military operatimis 
which forms a separate chapter 
therein. The chattels are divided 
by turning-points in the nmimre 
of He stfujggit. 
I have said that thb war was essentiany a Great Siege. 
Now the steps of a siege are these : — 
First, there is the operation whereby the besieged ioixx is 
thrown b\- the besiegers behind its defences and cnnpdled to 
sustain the conditions of a siege. This ptefimmaiy stage is 
commonly a short one compared 
with -mbaX follows. 
The second phase in any si^e. 
small or great, is the coaunoidy 
protracted {4iase of reducing the 
entrenched enemy. Daring this 
e£k>rt infinite variations may ap- 
pear, expanding in number and 
complexity with the size of the 
force and with the length fA 
time the siege may last. There 
aTe defalcations, desertions, some- 
times from within the besi^ed 
body. New allies may a|^iear 
upon eitho' side. The be^eged 
will attempt to raise the siege by 
great sorties — that is po^hings 
outward with the object of txeak- 
ing the siege wall aiHl raising the 
siege. If none of these chances 
upon either side, in the way of 
new allies or in the way of the 
bieakdown of original sappoits. 
is safiBdent to desboy the funda- 
mental character of siege work, 
that is if no such accident b 
sufficient to raise the siege, then 
there will come at last a tiiird 
phase, which b oommonlv rapid, 
almost as rapid as the pre&nonaiy 
phase. And that third phase b 
the oollipse of the besieged. 
I think it b true to say that 6i 
all the great sieges in hi^rr thb 
Take Metx, for example, in 1S70. 
Army going forward amfident of 
triple division is true. 
You have the French 
victory. It b thrown back through no matter what binndeis 
into the fortress of Metz. Thoe b a long period of contain- 
ment. There b the sudden conclusion -^nd capitulation. 
Take Paris in the saute year. There b tere a deariy 
