instructions. Rumors were spread through the German armies of probable attacks in a number of directions, so that the direction decided upon might be effectually concealed. The difficulty of concealment was increased by the formation which welded the attacking troops and the reserves into a solid mass. This moved forward as a mass; without any slowing down of the forward movement fresh divisions took the places of those which had shot their bolt. The relieving troops passed through those which were to be taken out of the line, and when their turn came for rest, they were relieved in the same way. The process was called 'leap-frogging,' and gave the enemy useful results. But in no case, excepting that of the attack on April 9, which succeeded beyond expectation for another reason, did their blow fall without warning. That which they struck on March 21 was, as I have shown, awaited by us with full knowledge that it was about to fall.

II

Next, the Fifth Army has been reproached with neglecting to make for itself sufficiently strong positions. The answer to this is twofold. First, the French, when they handed over the line from Gouzeaucourt north of Saint Quentin to Barisis south of La Fère, handed over good positions. General Gough told me soon after the taking over that he was glad to find such excellent work done. This work was to some extent improved by us, and so far as was possible, it was a strong line that we held. I say 'so far as possible,' because (1) it was not considered possible to call upon the men who had come from hard fighting in the north to do hard digging as soon as they took over; (2) it is impossible that even good positions can be very strong if there are not enough men in them to defend

themselves against attack by largely superior numbers. This is the second answer to the charge that the Fifth Army did not take necessary precautions for the repelling of the attack at the outset. It did what was possible with the men at its disposal. It had not a continuous system of trenches in the front line. It had instead a series of redoubts, or fortified posts, each intended to 'cover' so much of the front by machine-gun and rifle fire. If there had not been a thick fog on the morning of the 21st, these redoubts would have delayed the enemy, but they could not have prevented him from getting past them. The lines behind were well dug and defended. My own opinion is that the positions prepared for the troops to fall back upon, one after another, in the event of their being hard pressed, might have been more effectively wired. But that criticism applies with equal force to the Third Army front.

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There are no soldiers in the world who could have stood up against such odds and held back an enemy attacking in the proportion of more than three to one. For what did this mean? Not merely that the masses of Germans who flowed over our positions were always numerous than our men. It meant also that our men, fighting all the time, weary and dazed with the battle, found every day that they were faced by fresh troops, troops who had rested and slept, troops who came into the battle with new vigor. The Germans had so many divisions that they could take them out of the line as soon as they were tired and let them recover. Our men had no intervals. They were on their feet day and night. When they were not fighting, they were falling back or hastily improving old defensive positions. They grew so heavyheaded from want of sleep that officers had to go round shaking them to keep

them awake. Numbers of them fell by the roadside and slept from exhaustion. This largely swelled the number of prisoners taken by the enemy. Yet throughout the six days of the battle there was nothing approaching a rout or a panic, there was no disorder on the roads. I have seen other retreats with these features. In this retreat there was hardly so much as disorganization on any large scale.

What seems like disorganization to the troops who are put in to relieve badly-hammered divisions, is nothing but the inevitable result of the hammering. When there is such a bombardment as the Germans sent over on the morning of March 21, and when it is followed by masses of troops trained to assault tactics, the battalions which meet the impact have most of their officers and sergeants killed or wounded. They do in some cases find natural leaders, and when this happens they go on fighting vigorously. There were many such cases in this battle. Here is one example. A sergeant of artillery in the 6th Division had his gun knocked out by a direct hit. He offered himself to the nearest infantry command. He was asked to take a platoon and do the work of a lieutenant. He led his platoon with gallantry and success for a couple of days. At last in a tight place their ammunition ran out. He was last seen killing Germans with a pickaxe.

But often it does not happen that natural leaders present themselves. Then the men, especially if they are suffering from want of sleep, are apt to wander away to the rear in a more or less dazed and dispirited condition. The fresh troops who are relieving them see that they are in bad shape, and sometimes they talk as if they had met the survivors of a disaster. In the battle of Saint Quentin no disaster happened. If our line had been pierced and

the Germans had poured through and rolled up our divided forces, that would have been disastrous. But this did not occur, and the reason why it did not occur was that the men who withdrew fighting kept the line all the time unbroken. They were dropping with fatigue, they were dirty, footsore, heavy-eyed. From hunger few of them suffered, thanks to the devotion and steadiness of the Army Service Corps and to the regularity of the regimental arrangements for distributing rations. But what they suffered from weariness no one can imagine. Yet they kept their faces towards the enemy. They never let him get through.

Thus they spoiled his plan. He undoubtedly hoped to pierce the British line and throw our forces into catastrophic disorder. It was plain from the articles which were appearing in German and Austrian newspapers before the offensive began, and from the talk which we knew to be current among German officers in the field, that the enemy believed he could by the use of his new tactics reach, if not a decisive result, such as an Arjesh or a Caporetto, at all events such a harvest as Mackensen reaped on the Dunaetz and during the months of close pursuit which followed.

The German High Command did not underestimate the value of the Allied troops on the Western Front. They paid the British Army the highest compliment by delaying operations against it until they could bring into the field vastly superior numbers and a weight of artillery unthought of hitherto. On one part of our front they had a gun gun to every fifteen yards: we had one to every eightyfive. It was their resolve to deserve success by piling up an immense preparation which gave them such results as they achieved. Many hold still that the German military machine, so long