LAND 6? WATER 
October 31, 1918 
fully meet), the choice between two things : (i) the surrender 
of ground, (2) the loss of men. 
It is a choice between two evils, either of which is ulti- 
mately fatal. 
His resources are so much diminished that if he chooses 
for the policy of ground and holds to the utmost the water- 
line upon which he lies he rapidly advances the hour when 
he will not have a sufficiency of men to hold that line. He 
is subject to a pressure of numbers and material double his 
own. He has not a power of recruitment equivalent to one- 
half, or nearly one-half, of his rate of loss. 
If in such peril he decides not to hold his ground, but to 
retire, two things confront him. 
The first thing is the reduction to a politically perilous 
margin of the defensive belt of northern territory lying 
between his front and the borders of his own country — and 
this means not only the increasing anxiety and disturbance 
of opinion at home as invasion menaces, but also the power 
of attacking him from the air more thoroughly and more 
frequently. If he falls back across the Belgian plain he 
leaves to the hands of the Allies points of departure for 
aircraft which render the bombing of his western towns, 
particularly of his industrial group and of Cologne, no longer 
the very difficult, distant, and rare enterprise of the past, 
but an operation capable of daily achievement whenever 
the weather is possible for flying at all. Even as things now 
are, the distance of Cologne from the Belgian bases is slightly 
less than from the bases in Lorraine. Aix, with its Belgian 
junction of communications, is nearer to the possible points 
of departure to-day than from those of Lorraine, and every 
mile of eastern advance on the part of the Allies over the 
Belgian plain makes that situation more and more critical. 
The second thing which the yielding of ground does is, 
as we have repeatedly pointed out, to separate the German 
armies more and more into two groups through the inter- 
vention of the Ardennes. At this point I should like to 
discuss a topographical feature which has not perhaps been 
sufficiently detailed. 
The Ardennes, we may be told, form indeed more difficult 
country than the plains to the south and to the north of 
them. There are less roads, less habitations, less railways ; 
there are deep and difficult ravines, etc. But modern condi- 
tions, with the power modern armies have of rapidly laying 
light railways, with the great extensions of road traffic 
tlirough petrol (and so forth) must, it is urged, largely modify 
this disadvantage with the Ardennes present to the enemy. 
If he is thrown back against this region from the edges of 
which he is now nowhere more than thirty miles distant, 
and in places more like twelve, he loses altogether his present 
main lateral communication by which, hitherto, his front 
has lived. He has already lost it beyond Quesnoy and the 
remainder of it through Hirson. Mezieres, Sedan, and 
Montmedy would go also. But he has another line of lateral 
communications behind him and a first-class railway from 
Namur to Luxemburg. Why, then, should his retirement 
to the line of the Ardennes handicap him as much as we 
have said it does ? 
DIFFICULTIES OF COMMUNICATION 
The reason of this is that a modern great army depends 
for its supply upon a network of communications, not only 
upon its main line, but upon tlie feeders from it, both road 
and rail ; and that it is especially handicapped when its 
opponent possesses a better network than its own. Now, in 
the Belgian plain and in Lorraine, from the nature of the 
ground, and from the political development which the plains 
have permitted, there is such a network. The Belgian 
plain, especially, is a mass of railways and roads. But the 
Ardennes, from their physical conformation, have no such 
advantages. To bring up constant, regular, and large sup- 
plies from their one main railway to the front across the 
heavily broken country by roads which are few, and which 
all converge on the very few bridges of the deep ravine of 
the Semois, is a task which would not permit the mainten- 
ance of very great bodies of men upon the upper Mejise 
front. To say that the yielding of ground by the enemy 
up to the Ardennes would mean two^ completely isolated 
German armies, one north and one south of the hills, is, 
of course, an exaggeration. It is a statement so exaggerated 
as to amount to a falsehood. But to say that the German 
armies would then be divided into two* ill-connected groups 
is true. 
What one means is that if ground is yielded up to 
and on to the Ardennes the group of German armies in the 
north will not be able to reinforce with any rapidity the 
group to the south ; and vice versa. Supposing the enemy 
were to retire to the Ardennes, the forces remaining would 
inevitably appear in density like a dumb-bell, the enemy 
would have one great mass grouped to the north, another in 
the south — and a waist in between. And this means, remem- 
ber, that attacks to the north and south would alternate 
under conditions obviously favourable to the Allies. 
The enemy knows all that just as well as we do, and he 
has decided, for the moment at least, to suffer in men rather 
than in ground. So be it. Either form of sacrifice ultimately 
means a strain which will ultimately break him. 
Nor can he permanently stand anywhere. There is no 
line, if recent events are any guide, which he can regard as 
*'a wall" upon which to hold and from which to negotiate. 
In other words, he is not able to guarantee his own soil from 
ultimate invasion. 
If one desires a proof of that one cannot do better than 
look at the map in the region of Valenciennes. What has 
happened here in the course of the last week ? North of 
Valenciennes runs the water-line of the canal of the Scheldt, 
and along that water-line the enemy stands all the way 
from Valenciennes itself to the region of Tournai and so up 
'LJ.:l1-L±J: TifUe^ 
valenciennQ 
C 1 iC8 
the front by Avelghen. He holds many places in front of 
the water-line, but has nowhere allowed a permanent bridge- 
head to be formed across that water-line by the Allies, as 
yet. 
South of Valenciennes comes a gap between the Scheldt 
and the big obstacle formed by the forest of Mormal, which 
obstacle has played a continuous part in all the wars of this 
region. It was the occupation of the forest, for instance, 
by the Austrians in 1793 which made possible the investment 
of Maubeuge upon the fate of which the French Revolution 
turned. 
Now, in this gap — ^vital to the enemy — there are three 
parallel water-lines barring advance and forbidding the 
turning of the last great obstacle, the Forest of Mormal, 
and with it the turning of the Scheldt — lines like three ditches 
perpendicular to the direction of British progress along the 
edge of the great wood they must pass and turn. These 
three rivers are the Selle, the Ecaillon, and the Rhonelle. 
The enemy had very strongly organised positions dependent 
upon the water-line of the Selle, and the British had, after 
heavy fighting, secured the apparently precarious bridge- 
heads of Haussy and Haspres. They next delivered a blow 
which reached the Ecaillon. The Ecaillon obstacle is 
naturally stronger than that of the Selle. There is at least 
as much water, and the heights beyond are sharper. Yet 
the Ecaillon went, in spite of most vigorous efforts to retain 
it. When it went, the railways supplying Valenciennes 
from .the south went too. Then, with yet another blow, 
the British reached the Rhonelle ; and the last dispatches, 
from which I write, show that across this stream also bridge- 
heads have been established. Here was the vital sector for 
the enemy, very much resembling that one in front of Cambrai, 
where a month ago he had to put in all the strength he could 
to prevent a rupture between two main water-lines. We 
know that he failed to hold that first gap, and now we see 
he cannot hold the second. He would if he could. It is 
not a voluntary retirement. It is a forcing back under 
pressure which continues day by day ; it is an involuntary 
yielding which has cost, already, 9,000 men and 150 guns 
