Roumania's fate, following the tragedy of Serbia and the Allies' withdrawal

from Gallipoli, strengthened the Greek military party round King

Constantine, which was now openly pro-German. Against these influences M.

Venizelos proved powerless, though Greek volunteers were at the same time

joining the Venizelos party, and ready to fight with the Allies. This

division of opinion in Greece was illustrated in the middle of August

(1916), when two divisions of the 4th Greek Army Corps surrendered to the

Bulgarians, who had advanced to the Greek port of Kavalla, while the 3rd

Division of the same corps joined the Allies at Salonika. The pro-Germans

had carried all before them at the last Greek elections (Dec., 1915), when

the Venizelists declined to poll; and the danger of finding themselves

suddenly attacked in the rear discouraged an Allied offensive against the

Bulgarians until the autumn of 1916, when the newly equipped Serbian army

arrived from Corfu, ready and eager to fight its way home, joining the

force under General Sarrail, which already included Russian, Italian, and

Portuguese contingents, besides French and British. Following pro-German

riots against the Allied embassies in Athens, too, a 'pacific blockade' of

the Greek coast had been enforced, and a firm Note presented to the Greek

Government demanding the demobilization of the Greek army and a new general

election, to be freely conducted. When these demands had been accepted and

a new Government formed--though the king's pro-German sympathies remained

as marked as ever--General Sarrail resumed, in September, the offensive

against the Bulgarians. The main advance was undertaken by the French and

Serbian divisions, with a Russian contingent, in the direction of Monastir,

General Milne's British column meantime pushing the Bulgarians back from

the Struma line. Two months' fighting saw the Serbians, who had borne the

brunt of the attack at this point, marching back into Monastir in triumph,

having turned the Bulgar-German forces out of it on 18th-19th Nov. The

British, at the same time, kept the enemy busy at the other end of the

line, occupying a number of villages, and pushing the Bulgarians back

beyond the railway between Seres and Demir-Hissar. With their heavy

commitments elsewhere the Allies were for the time being unwilling to

extend their military operations beyond Monastir.

_Italian Campaign, 1916_

Italy, who for political as well as military reasons had declined further

assistance in the Balkans, had her share of hard fighting within her own

frontiers in 1916. Before she could resume her advance on Gorizia and

Trieste (held up in the early winter of 1915) the Austrians attacked in

turn from the Trentino under General Conrad von Hoetzendorff, who, planning

a drive on the Mackensen scale, aimed a blow at the tempting Venetian

plains. The grand attack, supported by upwards of 2000 heavy guns on a

30-mile front between Val Sugana and Val Lagarina, and delivered on 14th

May by some 350,000 first-class troops, smashed a way through in the

centre. Though the flanks held firmly, and the Italians, roused to fury by

the invasion, fought magnificently among the mountain heights, General

Cadorna ordered the line to be withdrawn from its untenable positions until

it was south of Asiago. Pressing their advantage with every means at their

disposal, the Austrians announced in an Army Order on 1st June that only

one mountain intervened between their troops and the Venetian plains.

Cadorna, however, had now been reinforced, and two days later was able to

reply that the Austrian offensive had been checked. For the rest of the

month he was content, in this sector, to sustain the continued but

unavailing assaults of the enemy, while he prepared his own great

counter-attack on the Isonzo front, with Gorizia, the gateway to the

plateau of the Carso which led to Trieste, as his immediate objective. This

dramatic move, heralded by an intense bombardment on 6th Aug., was

entrusted to the Duke of Aosta, whose Third Army, after three days'

fighting of the fiercest description, carried the last heights defending

the town and entered Gorizia in triumph. Following the retreating enemy

across the Carso, the Italians, whose enthusiasm for the war had been

greatly stimulated by this fine feat of arms--Italy's belated declaration

of war on Germany followed upon the Gorizia victory--continued their

advance across the northern end of that formidable plateau, winning a

number of considerable battles, and capturing before the end of the year

between 30,000 and 40,000 prisoners, but never succeeding in mastering the

Carso as a whole.

_Naval War in 1916--Battle of Jutland_

The battle of Jutland, which took place on 31st May, 1916, overshadows all

other naval operations in that year; nevertheless, there were several other

events of importance which preceded it, or were in some way related to its

occurrence afterwards. For example, in the earlier months of the year the

German raider _Moewe_ was at large, and inflicted considerable damage on

British shipping before returning safely to a German port; the mercantile

submarine _Deutschland_ left Germany for the United States and returned in

safety; and another German submarine, U 53, also crossed the Atlantic with

more belligerent intent, and sank several merchant vessels off Rhode Island

on 8th Oct. The new development of the submarine war, in which Germany

declared her intention of sinking merchant ships at sight, began on 1st

March, and one of its most important consequences was the dispatch of a

United States Note by President Wilson to Germany (18th April) in respect

of the sinking without warning of the _Sussex_ and other unarmed vessels.

Another outcome of the German submarine warfare was the sinking of British

hospital ships in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, following the battle of

Jutland, and related in some respects to its only partially decisive

character, the _Hampshire_, with Lord Kitchener and his Staff on board, was

sunk off the north of Scotland (5th June) by striking a mine that is said

by the Germans to have been laid by one of their submarines; and on 19th

Aug. the German High Seas Fleet was able to come out again, though it

sought no action, but avoided one. Two British light cruisers, the

_Nottingham_ and _Falmouth_, were sunk in the search for its whereabouts.

The 'partially decisive', or 'indecisive', character of the battle of

Jutland are relative terms, and their exact implication has been, and must

continue to be for a long time, a matter of controversy. On the one hand,

the aim of Admiral von Scheer, the Commander-in-Chief of the German High

Seas Fleet--to catch a portion of the British Grand Fleet and attack it

while isolated and unsupported--was frustrated, and in that respect the

German admiral failed. On the other hand, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's

purpose of destroying the German Fleet, if and when he succeeded in

engaging it, also failed, as may be understood from its subsequent

emergence from its harbour in August, and the later development of the

German submarine campaign, which could not have taken place had not the

Germans possessed the framework of a fleet to support the under-water

vessels. Sir John Jellicoe justifiably claimed that his action preserved

intact the main forces of the British Grand Fleet, and left them as before

in command of the outer seas, while demonstrating to the Germans that they

could not again engage in a naval battle on a large scale with any hope of

success. Admiral von Scheer was entitled to claim that he had engaged a

superior British force, had inflicted on it more material damage than he

had sustained, and had withdrawn the bulk of his forces to remain, as

before, a menace, not to British safety, but to British unfettered control

of the seas. The details, in outline, of the battle of Jutland are as

follows.

On 30th May the Grand Fleet under Sir John Jellicoe left its three Scottish

bases for a sweep of the North Sea, Sir David Beatty, with the

battle-cruiser squadron, _Lion_, _Queen Mary_, _Princess Royal_, _Tiger_,

_Indefatigable_, and _New Zealand_, and Sir Evan Thomas, with the four

battleships of the _Queen Elizabeth_ class, _Barham_, _Malaya_, _Warspite_,

and _Valiant_, setting out from the most southerly of these bases, Rosyth.

At 2 p.m. on 31st May Sir John Jellicoe, with the Battle Fleet in 6

divisions, was steaming line-ahead between Aberdeen and the north end of

Jutland, in order to meet Sir David Beatty at an appointed rendezvous in

the North Sea. Sir John Jellicoe's 6 divisions were, lined east to west,

1st Division (Jerram), _King George V_, _Ajax_, _Centurion_, _Erin_; 2nd

Division (Leveson), _Orion_, _Monarch_, _Conqueror_, _Thunderer_; 3rd

Division (Jellicoe), _Iron Duke_, _Royal Oak_, _Superb_, _Canada_; 4th

Division (Sturdee), _Benbow_, _Bellerophon_, _Temeraire_, _Vanguard_; 5th

Division (Gaunt) _Colossus_, _Collingwood_, _Neptune_, _St. Vincent_; 6th

Division (Burney), _Marlborough_, _Revenge_, _Hercules_, _Agincourt_.

Both Jellicoe's and Beatty's forces had their attendant suites of

destroyers, light cruisers, and other cruisers. The British Grand Fleet in

all was constituted of 41 'capital ships', made up of 28 battleships, 9

battle-cruisers, and 4 armoured cruisers. It had also 103 'ancillary

craft', made up of 25 light cruisers and 78 destroyers. The German fleet

consisted of 20 battleships and 5 battle-cruisers, or 28 'capital ships';

there were also 11 light cruisers and 88 destroyers. In gun power and

weight of projectile the Grand Fleet had a striking superiority over the

German fleet, and Admiral Jellicoe had apparently a valuable superiority in

speed. In his own account of the battle he observes that the speed of some

of the German ships had been underestimated.

There was no clear expectation on the British side of meeting the Germans

when the Grand Fleet set out for its sweep on a line drawn from Wick to the

opposite coast of Norway, with Beatty's 6 battle-cruisers and Evan Thomas's

4 battleships as advance-guard; and when von Scheer set out for the north

from Heligoland Bight at daybreak, with an advance-guard of 5 cruisers,

supported, 50 miles behind, by 16 Dreadnoughts and 6 slow pre-Dreadnoughts,

he had no intention of seeking a general action.

[Illustration: The Battle of JUTLAND BANK May 31-June 1, 1916

Map showing the approximate positions of the British and German Fleets at

various stages of the battle.]

The meeting of the advance squadrons began when both were on a level with

the northern end of Jutland. Admiral Hipper, who commanded the German

cruisers, turned round from north to south to rejoin his main fleet; he was

then east of Admiral Beatty. Beatty followed him, at some disadvantage from

smoke and haze. Evan Thomas's battleships were too far behind at this stage

to join in the engagement. Hipper fended off Beatty with destroyers as best

he could in the hour before the German main fleet could come up, and in

that hour _Queen Mary_ and _Indefatigable_ blew up, shells from the German

ships, on which the system of fire control appeared to be more accurate

than the British, reaching their magazines.

When the German main fleet was seen to be approaching in support, Beatty

turned with his 4 remaining cruisers, and Evan Thomas's 4 battleships fell

in behind. These 8 were stronger than the German advance 5, and swifter, so

that Beatty did not execute a mere retreat but pressed on Hipper, making

him turn east, and thereafter placing the British ships on the German line

of retreat to Heligoland--'crossing the T', as the manoeuvre is called.

Meanwhile Jellicoe's 6 battle divisions were coming on in an oblong of 6

lines of 4 ships each--the long sides of the oblong north and south, the

short, east and west. Thus steaming, Jellicoe came into contact with Beatty

and Evan Thomas engaged on the east side of the German line, whose head

they had faced round and were themselves going south. Beatty and Thomas

were thus between Jellicoe and the Germans, and it behoved the British

Commander-in-Chief to see that his ships did not hurt one another with

their fire. Jellicoe effected the necessary deployment, not in the manner

that he had premeditated, but in that which circumstances forced him to

employ. It was the less simple way, and the Grand Fleet was not in line

till half-past six.

The Germans had no prudent course but to retreat, which they did in the

haze and chemically-created smoke--both fleets going to the south-west,

curving to west. The fleets were hammering each other as hard as they

could; but when darkness came down the German fleet, badly damaged but not

seriously diminished in numbers, was still fighting in retreat. Admiral

Jellicoe, in his own account of the battle, remarks: "At 9 p.m. the enemy

was entirely out of sight, and the threat of torpedo-boat destroyer attacks

during the rapidly approaching darkness made it necessary for me to dispose

the fleet for the night with a view to its safety from such attacks, whilst

providing for a renewal of action at daylight".

The opportunity for renewal at daybreak did not come; nor was it likely to

have come, since von Scheer's first preoccupation was naturally not to

fight a superior force under conditions least favourable to himself. It is

therefore proper to state that the British Commander-in-Chief thought it

wiser to break off action with his main fleet lest it should suffer too

greatly in the turmoil and confusion of a night attack. The arguments in

favour of this decision are several; the chief of them being that Admiral

Jellicoe kept the British fleet and naval power intact, and another being

those which the British admiral himself advanced, namely that he was not

completely aware of how his own fleet and that of the enemy lay to one

another, and that "the result of night actions between heavy ships must

always be a matter of chance". Admiral Jellicoe did not feel justified in

gambling on such a chance. He did what he told the Admiralty he should do

in such circumstances, as recorded in a dispatch written on 30th Oct.,

1914, and published at the end of the official _Battle of Jutland_ in

justification of his action: "If the enemy battle fleet were to turn away

from an advancing fleet", he wrote on that occasion "I should assume that

the intention was to lead us over mines and submarines, _and should decline

to be so drawn_". The italics are Lord Jellicoe's own.

_1917 on the European Fronts_

_The Russian Campaign._--On the Eastern front fighting on the grand scale

had died down by the beginning of 1917, the Germans having exhausted the

momentum of their advance under Mackensen, and accomplished their main

purpose of putting Roumania out of account as a serious adversary. Along

the line of the Sereth, and in the Bukovina, deadlock was reached in the

spring of 1917. By that time the creeping paralysis which was seizing the

Russian armies was making itself felt in this, their most distant tendon.

Throughout April, May, and June the daily record of occurrences on the

Eastern front is blank except for one attack by the Germans on the Stokhod

(3rd April).

For the explanation of their quiescence the record of political events has

to be scanned. It was well known on the Continent, though it was kept

hidden from the British public during the winter of 1916-7, that the

integrity of the Russian armies was crumbling, that soldiers were

fraternizing with the enemy, and that a general revolution was being

prepared by those forces of socialism and anarchy which had been thrust

under, but had never lacked exponents, since the abortive revolution of

1905. The mismanagement, the corruption, and the bitter hardships of the

war had given them their opportunity, and these were the 'Dark Forces',

more than the rogue Rasputin, the parasite of the Russian Court, which

undermined the influence of the monarchy, and extinguished Tsar and Court,

bureaucracy, aristocracy, and army in a common ruin. It was said in Europe

during the winter of 1916-7 that the Allies would have to choose between

the Russian monarchy and the Russian people; but neither the inertia of the

Russian army nor the postponement of the re-opening of the Russian Duma

acquainted the British public with the depth of the mischief that was

working. The first inkling came on 12th March, 1917, when, following food

riots in Petrograd, the Tsar ordered the suspension of the Duma. The

Russian Revolution was the reply. Three Guard Regiments joined the

people--the army had failed the monarchy. A Provisional Government was

formed. Petrograd, Moscow, Kharkov, and Odessa joined it; and on 15th March

the Tsar abdicated under compulsion. Several figures emerged from the

crisis. M. Miliukoff, of the Constitutional Party, and Kerensky, a link

with the Socialists, but the real forces at work did not at first show

themselves.

On 24th March the army declared its loyalty to the Provisional Government,

which two days before had been recognized by the Allies. For a time hopes

were entertained that under this Provisional Government Russia would carry

out her obligations to the Allies, and that her armies would fight; and

every sort of device, including interchange of visits with representatives

of British Labour and French Socialism, was employed to foster cordiality.

The first sign of the essential futility of such hopes appeared on 4th May,

when it was evident that the Russian Provisional Government was failing. A

new coalition was formed, with Kerensky at its head, and loyalty to the

Allies was urged and asserted. French and American missions visited

Petrograd and Moscow, but no real consolidation was effected, though in the

latter end of May and the beginning of June there was a remarkably

deceptive appearance of it.

Under the spur of great efforts by M. Kerensky the army was stimulated into

action once more, and a new offensive prepared. On such an offensive the

Allies had placed high hopes, for the Russian armies in the spring of 1917

were better equipped and better provided with guns and ammunition than ever

before. At first some of these hopes seemed destined to be realized.

General Brussiloff, who had succeeded General Alexieff as

Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies, consented rather reluctantly,

under the insistence of Kerensky--at that time engaged in a life-and-death

struggle with the forces of the Bolshevik party led by Lenin and

Trotsky--to organize an attack on the Austro-Hungarian front south of the

Pripet. It was believed that the soldiers of these southern armies were

less tainted by Bolshevism than those in the northern armies, and that a

success here might rally the country to its older standards of patriotism.

Brussiloff entrusted the offensive to General Gutor, who had in his favour

the facts that the Austro-Hungarian armies were as war-weary as the

Russian, and that the German Head-quarters Staff, who were well acquainted

with the extent of Russian disaffection, and had indeed been instrumental

in inspiring and organizing it, were sceptical about the possibility of

such an attack. Furthermore, in the sectors from Brody to the Dniester and

beyond, where Lechitsky had halted in 1916, the Russians had a considerable

numerical superiority--54 divisions to 30 composite Austro-Hungarian,

Turkish, and German divisions, and were well equipped, well posted, and

well supplied.

General Gutor directed three armies. The Eleventh, under General Erdelli,

was to act along an 11-mile front from a point north-west of Tarnopol, and

to get astride the railway which leads from Tarnopol through Zloczow to

Lemberg. The Seventh Army, under General Belkovitch, facing Brzezany, was

to cross the Zlota Lipa River, where von Bothmer had made his stand, and

was then to wheel north-eastward in the same direction as Erdelli's army,

with which it was to get in touch. If this movement succeeded, the combined

armies were to advance towards Bobrka and the railway from Halicz to

Lemberg. The whole of this task was through difficult country. Far to the

south General Korniloff, with the Eighth Army, was entrusted with the

turning movement. He was to overrun the Halicz region and to obtain control

of the railway thence to Lemberg. If this wide turning movement succeeded,

and if Belkovitch also did well, the Austro-Hungarian armies would be

outflanked and in danger of being rolled up, while pinned down in the north

by Erdelli.

The venture was audacious, and the Russian commanders scarce dare trust

their men. The Seventh Army's task in assaulting the Zlota Lipa line was

such as would have tried the bravest and most loyal troops. The attack

began on 1st July, and Belkovitch's men advanced bravely enough, protected

by good artillery. In the first assault they took the river line and 2000

prisoners. But between the Zlota Lipa and its tributary Tseniow was a

death-trap, and the Russians were caught in a murderous cross-fire. The day

was not lost; but at this critical moment occurred an incident which was

symptomatic of Russia's disorders, and was the death sentence of Russia's

continuance as a combatant. A division which might have turned the scale

refused to advance.

[Illustration: Russia's Last Effort in 1917: map showing approximately the

farthest line reached by the attacking armies, and the Russian positions

after the retreat]

The ground won was with difficulty held, and in the days that followed, the

Germans, awakened to an unexpected danger, steadily reinforced the weak

point, while Russian battalions were refusing to stay in the front line.

The situation reacted on Erdelli's troops farther north, where the Eleventh

Army had done well at very little cost, and had captured 6000 prisoners by

3rd July. It became less difficult each day for the German directing staff

to hold this attack in check, and it was stopped by 6th July. On the

Dniester, Korniloff's army began to advance on this day--on which,

according to plan, the enemy should have had all their attention

concentrated on Erdelli and Belkovitch. Korniloff did very well. On 6th to

7th July he felt his way forward from Stanislau to Dolina, and on 8th July,

joining battle with von Bothmer, broke down resistance at Jezupol with

ease, and sent forward his best arm, his cavalry, to the River Lukwa, 8

miles behind von Bothmer's first-line defences. Realizing his danger, von

Bothmer counter-attacked, but was again borne down, and Korniloff's van

reached the Lukwa. In two days' fighting Korniloff had broken through on a

30-mile front, and his main body, in the wake of General Chermiroff's

fighting division, poured into the plains of the Dniester. Theoretically a

decisive victory had been won. It was in fact indecisive, because the

leader's shock troops had been used up, and the situation was crumbling

from within. His troops got intoxicated, mutinied, and he could use them no

further.

But the rot now became dangerous to the point of mortality in the Eleventh

Army of Erdelli. On 20th July, following a strong German counter-attack

between Pienaki and Batkow, which was nearly the most northerly point of

the advance, the 607th Mlynoff Regiment left the trenches voluntarily. They

ran away, leaving the other regiments to bear the brunt of the attack. The

breach widened as the Russians opened the gate. The German-Austrian attack,

spreading to Zborow, found a Russian division ready to throw down its arms,

and in a day the German-Austrian wedge was thrust in between the Eleventh

and Seventh Russian Armies. The disaster was complete and irreparable. The

command of the army group was hastily transferred from Gutor to Korniloff,

but neither Korniloff's ruthless discipline nor Brussiloff's genius could

alter the essentials of the situation, which were that the Russian armies

would not fight, and were fleeing in panic.

All attempts to stop the flight were useless. On the night of 20th July the

breach was 20 miles wide; on 21st July German guns were shelling

Brussiloff's head-quarters at Tarnopol; on 23rd July the remnants of the

Russian armies were retreating to the Sereth amid scenes of drunken

brutality as disgraceful as any that the war has recorded, and only to be

compared with those that were to become common in Russia and Siberia in the

struggle to establish Bolshevism. Farther north the Russian front imitated

the cowardice and treachery at Tarnopol. On 25th July whole Russian army

corps deserted the Dvinsk front, on which depended the safety of Riga. On

the same day Korniloff was compelled to begin the relinquishment of the

ground he had won with the Eighth Army. Stanislau was abandoned; Kolomea

followed on 27th July; Czernowitz went on 31st July; and the loss of the

Bukovina followed that of Galicia.

For a time Korniloff seemed to have a chance of restoring coherence to some

part of the Russian armies. He succeeded in wringing permission from

Kerensky to enforce discipline. But the military-political understanding

between these two, though it appeared to fail because of Kerensky's

suspicions of Korniloff, whose arrest he ordered (on the 11th Sept.), was

never a possibility. Russia was sick unto death. Her soldiers demanded

peace; her peasants and townspeople asked for bread, and turned to Lenin

and Trotsky, who promised both. During the summer there were many attacks

by the Germans on the Riga front, which they used as a training-ground for

their troops; and fighting of a similar character took place on the

Russo-Roumanian front. But on 16th Oct. the Germans, capturing Oesel Island

in the Dvina, took the first step to the subjugation of the northern

armies, and continued to take numbers of willing prisoners on the Riga

front during the rest of that month. The bulletins of the fighting are

contradictory and obscure, but by 3rd Nov. Russians and Germans were

fraternizing on the Riga front, and on 20th Nov. hostilities ceased. Lenin

demanded (1st Dec.) the surrender of General Dukhonin, the then

Commander-in-Chief, who was murdered two days later--the day after the

negotiations between the Bolsheviks and the German peace delegation began

at Brest-Litovsk.

_British Front in the West, 1917_

On the Western front it had been expected that the heavy hammering to which

the Germans had been subjected during the battle of the Somme would be

carried on in concert under the direction of Sir Douglas Haig and General

Foch. But a change was made in the French High Command, General Joffre

retiring, and his place being taken by General Nivelle, who had done so

well at Verdun, while Foch was relegated to the task of preparing against a

possible thrust of the Germans through Switzerland. Unity of command was

not achieved, except in appearance. Nivelle's plan was to strike at the

German centre; Haig was to aid him by simultaneous attack, though Haig's

own prepossessions were in favour of freeing the Channel ports by a burst

from the Ypres salient. In the result, neither plan succeeded. Nivelle

failed because neither the French Government nor a section of the French

soldiery would bear a repetition of the losses incurred in his thrust at

the Chemin-des-Dames; Haig failed because he had neither the time nor the

weather in which to drive his last blows home in the autumn of the year.

A contributory cause of the comparative failure of the Franco-British plan

of campaign in 1917 was the want of perception of the intention of the

Germans to withdraw from the positions in the Somme area which they had

defended so stubbornly in 1916, and which the Allies were preparing to

render untenable or to batter down. The want of perception was not

complete, but both British and French plans were upset by the suddenness

and extent of the withdrawal, which the Germans effected with much less

loss than they should have been forced to sustain. The first symptom of the

general withdrawal was discovered in March, when portions of St. Pierre

Vaast Wood, near the junction of the French and British lines, were found

to be evacuated. By 17th March the German voluntary retirement was in full

swing, and their forces ruined everything as they retreated. By 17th March,

also, the British front from Roye to Arras was moving forward, and on 2nd

April the Fifth Army was within two miles of St. Quentin, while the Fourth

Army on 5th and 6th April was at Ronssoy and Lempire. While the British

armies were pushing towards the Cambrai-St. Quentin line the French were

pushing on a 30-mile front from the north of the Upper Somme, towards the

new German line from St. Quentin, behind Soissons, in front of the St.

Gobain plateau, the Forest of Coucy, and the Chemin-des-Dames. Behind the

new line Nivelle matured reconstructed plans for the great French attack

towards Laon.

Of the new fortress line (the Hindenburg and Drocourt-Queant line) which

the Germans had constructed and continued to improve, the La Fere-Laon

position and the Chemin-des-Dames were the southern bastion, and the Vimy

Ridge the north-western pillar. Sir Douglas Haig's preconcerted plan had

been to attack the Arras front, not in order to assault this line, but as

preliminary to the Ypres salient thrust farther north. Nevertheless, the

plan could be adapted and it was prosecuted. Preparations on a large scale,

equivalent to building a counter-fortress front, had been made for the

Arras operations, and the greatest precautions were taken to lend the

attack all the support which mines and artillery could give. Two armies,

the First (General Horne) and Third (General Allenby), were prepared for

this action. Horne's army made its attack on the Vimy Ridge, with the

Canadian Corps as shock troops, on 9th April, and the attack was extended

on a 12-mile front from Henin-sur-Cojeul, south-east of Arras, to

Givenchy-en-Gohelle, north of Arras. The Canadians took the whole of Vimy

Ridge, except its northern end, the conquest of which was completed next

day. Five villages fell into British hands and 6000 prisoners. Subsequent

days saw the extension of the victory, but though Vimy village,

Givenchy-en-Gohelle, and other important points were taken, the fortified

villages of Heninel and Wancourt held out by dint of machine-guns, and

prevented the possibility of the Third Army's joining hands with the Fifth

Army beyond the third line of the German defences until it was too late.

The whole of the expected gains were therefore not realized, but the

possession of the Vimy Ridge was invaluable, and became a most important

factor in stemming Ludendorff's rush in 1918, when he attacked the Third

Army after destroying the Fifth.

The British attacks did not end on 11th April, as they should have done,

but were continued here, as well as at other portions of the British line

to its junction with the French armies, in order to lend assistance to

Nivelle while his attack in Champagne was in progress. It was a very costly

procedure, and its scope may be inferred from the statement that on 23rd

April a "second phase of the battle of Arras" began; another 12-mile front

east of Arras was launched on 3rd May; and there were bloody encounters

about Bullecourt or Fontaine-les-Croiselles on 7th and 12th, 15th and 16th,

and 21st May. Some 20,000 German prisoners were captured in these

preliminary spring operations, but the drainage in casualties to the

British armies was heavy, and more damaging still was the loss of time by

the postponement of Field-Marshal Haig's major plan farther north.

This, however, was at last begun on 7th June by the assault on the

Messines-Wytschaete Ridge, which, under the name of the 'Battle of

Messines' denotes one of the most completely successful actions fought in

that year. It was undertaken by the Second Army (General Plumer), and the

preparation for it, including the mining of the ridge, had been as near

perfection as possible. The attack was launched; the mines which blew the

German front line to pieces were exploded on the morning of 7th June at ten

minutes past three. Nine miles of front were stormed and 6400 prisoners

taken. In the next week the number of prisoners was considerably augmented;

German counter-attacks were beaten off; and the captured position enlarged

and firmly consolidated.

From this time forward the operations of the British armies may be

envisaged as an attempt to enlarge the great bulge of the Ypres salient by

fighting their way up to and along the ridges which enclosed it, so as to

force the Germans to relinquish their hold on the coast near Nieuport,

Zeebrugge, and Ostend. One very awkward spoke was put in the British wheel

by an attack (10th July) on the extreme coastal sector of Lombaertzyde and

the mouth of the Yser, by which any combined sea and land attack that might

have been projected by the British was discounted. Most of the positions

were recovered, but the amphibious plan had perforce to be postponed.

The putting into effect of Sir Douglas Haig's major plan, after the

preliminary step of the capture of the Messines Ridge had been taken, did

not operate till 31st July, when the 'Third Battle of Ypres' began, with a

combined British and French attack on a 15-mile front beyond Boesinghe, on

the Yser-Ypres Canal, to Zillebeke. The attack was conducted by the First

French Army (General Anthoine); the bulk of the fighting fell on the Fifth

British Army (General Gough). Twelve villages were taken and 5000

prisoners. There was, and could be, no break-through. The Germans rallied

to a counter-attack, and were able to do so because their defences, their

concrete pill-boxes, and their machine-gun effectiveness could, and did,

hold up attacks before they progressed too far.

The rest of the British campaign in 1917 till it was arrested by the

torrential rains of a wet October, and by the mud of the impossible

declivities, may be summed up as a series of desperate forward thrusts

which exacted each its toll of prisoners, ground, and positions, but none

of which succeeded in its object of inflicting a lethal injury on the

German resistance. In the end these attacks had to cease while the last

fragment of coveted ridge, the Passchendaele spur, was still not won,

because on that ridge, as elsewhere, though blood had been poured out like

water, and losses endured with unflinching fortitude, flesh and blood could

do no more. The chief actions were as follows:

15th Aug.--British attack on wide front from north-west of Lens to Bois

Hugo, north-east of Loos. Enemy's position penetrated to 1 mile depth.

16th Aug.--Franco-British attack on 9-mile front north of Ypres-Menin

road. British carry Langemarck.

15th to 21st Sept.--Second phase of third battle of Ypres. 3000 Germans

captured.

4th Oct.--British advance on 8-mile front, anticipating German attack

east of Ypres. 3000 German prisoners.

9th Oct.--Third phase of third battle of Ypres. One mile advance on

Passchendaele Ridge. 2000 prisoners.

6th Nov.--British attack on Ypres Ridges. Canadians capture

Passchendaele.

These attacks were interspersed with costly minor encounters, and by the

repulse or endurance of counter-attacks. The battle may be said to have

closed by stress of weather in mid-November.

It was followed on 20th Nov. by a British attack of an altogether different

kind, in an unexpected quarter--at Cambrai. Here the Third Army, under

General Byng, made an attack on a 10-mile front between St. Quentin and the

River Scarpe--tanks being employed for the first time in large numbers to

lead the advance without a preliminary bombardment. It was a complete

surprise, and all but a complete success. The 'Hindenburg Line' was broken,

numerous villages and 8000 prisoners were taken. If the cavalry had been

up, as they ought to have been, a first-class disaster might have been

inflicted on the Germans, and their railway communications at this point

broken. But the cavalry were late; the next few days were spent in

consolidation by peculiarly hard fighting; and on 30th Nov. the Germans

counter-attacked and subjected the British defences of the newly-created

salient at Bourlon Wood and Moeuvres to almost as severe a surprise as they

had sustained ten days before. The British lost a number of prisoners, and

had eventually to evacuate most of their hard-won positions.

_French Front in the West, 1917_

The history of the French armies in 1917 is largely the history of

Nivelle's frustrated attempt to pierce the German centre between Soissons

and Rheims in April; the pause necessitated by the fact that it was felt

impossible to press the French armies too hard or too soon after the

disappointment of the attenuated success at the Chemin-des-Dames, where the

chief sacrifices of the attack took place; and the efforts on a more

moderate scale by General Petain, who succeeded Nivelle, to win tactical

victories at a moderate cost on the terrain acquired in the April

adventure. The second battle of the Aisne, as Nivelle's offensive was

called, was planned over a length of 50 miles from La Fere, on the Oise,

round the edges of the Forest of Gobain and Coucy, to Laffaux, thence below

the line of the Chemin-des-Dames ridge and behind the Aisne to the crossing

of the river at Berry-au-Bac, and Brimont, near Nogent-l'Abbesse, to the

Moronvilliers heights on the other side of Rheims.

The attack on the larger part of this line began on 16th April; that on the

Moronvilliers sector on 17th April. The attack on the 16th was extremely

costly; it succeeded in only part of its objectives, but it captured 11,000

prisoners. The next day, one of pouring rain, improved on the positions

won, especially at the western end of the Chemin-des-Dames, and on the 18th

and 19th Nivelle so far enlarged his successes as almost to give them the

appearance of a great victory. But the French bolt had been shot, and, to

put it plainly, Nivelle was not encouraged to go on. By the 28th he had

taken 28,000 prisoners, 175 guns, and some of the strongest points on the

heights of the Aisne; but everywhere the positions had been only half-won,

and the temper of the French army as a whole had suffered too severe a

test. Nivelle was succeeded by Petain and his plan was abandoned. The rest

of the year was occupied by General Petain in very skilled attempts, named

limited offensives, to repel the Germans from disputing some of the

positions won and to enlarge the French gains at other points. The chief

engagements were as follows:

5th May.--The French, co-operating with the British on a 20-mile front

north of the Aisne, take Craonne and 6000 prisoners.

20th Aug.--French carry enemy defences north of Verdun on 11-mile

front; 6000 prisoners. By 28th Aug. the French were back at their

original Verdun positions.

23rd Oct.--French advance on the Aisne north-east of Soissons on e-mile

front; 8000 prisoners. By 25th Oct. further 3000 prisoners and 160 guns

were taken.

_The Balkans, 1917_

In the Balkans the military situation during 1917 remained much as the end

of 1916 had left it, the Germans, as already mentioned, completing their

conquest of Roumania, and the Allies remaining comparatively inactive in

the field while they cleared up the extremely unsatisfactory situation in

Greece. The chief operations consisted of a Franco-Serbian attack north of

Monastir, and attacks by General Milne on the British front in the Struma

valley; but though the situation remained in the field virtually unchanged,

the political situation was vitally affected in 1917 by the deposition of

King Constantine in favour of his second son, Alexander--the king being

induced to abdicate on 12th June--and the formation of a new Government

under M. Venizelos. From 30th June, Greece, having formally severed

diplomatic relations with Germany, was at length added to the list of

countries fighting on the Allies' side.

_Italian Campaign, 1917_

Italy, who, meantime, had proclaimed Albania an independent state under

Italian protection, and occupied Yanina in June, 1917, had committed

herself wholly to the Allies' cause in 1916 by declaring war on Germany on

28th Aug. It was in Aug., 1917 that Ludendorff began his preparations for

the terrific blow which was to lead to the Italian disaster at Caporetto in

October. During the earlier months of the year the initiative had remained

with the Italians, and Cadorna had used it in a series of offensives which,

while carrying him farther across the Carso towards Trieste, and winning

seemingly impregnable positions in the Trentino, together with upwards of

30,000 prisoners and 140 guns, were indecisive, and left his exhausted

troops--reduced by some 150,000 casualties--ripe for the blow which

Ludendorff had prepared for them. The Russian Revolution and the collapse

of Roumania freed Austria-Hungary at the same time from any anxieties on

her Galicia front, so that she could concentrate all her energies and the

bulk of her armies against the Italians. When the enemy's great

counter-stroke was delivered on 24th Oct., the control of the campaign was

taken over by the German High Command. Ludendorff had been training picked

troops in special tactics--to be developed at their full strength on the

Western front in the following year--and von Below was transferred from the

French front to take command. Following an intense bombardment, the

Austro-German troops were launched against the Second Italian Army between

Zaga and Auzza, in deep formations so closely packed that the way could not

be lost amid the prevailing snow and rain. Taken by surprise, and seriously

demoralized in parts by Bolshevist propaganda and enemy intrigue, the

Second Italian Army, which had hitherto distinguished itself by its

splendid courage, found the whole of its left wing giving way before the

impact, thus opening a gap for the enemy 20 miles wide over the Julian and

Carnic Passes. Having shattered both the first and second Italian lines at

Caporetto and Vodil Vrh, the Germans and Austrians surged forward from the

Tolmino bridge-head until the retreating Italians, becoming entangled with

their own reserves, broke in disorder. Although the right wing of the

Second Army held, and many heroic efforts were made by isolated units,

General Cadorna decided that it was impossible to save the situation from

irretrievable disaster except by a general retreat to the Piave line. This

was ordered on 26th Oct., when the broken fragments of the Second Army, as

well as the Italian Third Army, began the great retreat which will be

remembered as one of the finest achievements in Italian military history.

The territorial gains of over two years' fighting had already been lost,

and the conquering invaders reached within 15 miles of Venice, but they

never succeeded in making the disaster irremediable. General Cadorna's

scathing Order of the Day denouncing the units of the Second Army which had

let the enemy through, and the new sense of national unity inspired by the

military crisis, did their work. By 8th Nov. the bulk of the Italian

armies, now in orderly retreat, were across the Piave, and two days later

were ready to turn on their pursuers. The danger was not yet over; the

enemy succeeded in carrying several further heights dominating the Venetian

plain between the Piave and the Brenta; but by 21st Nov., when a last

German attack was made on the Monfenara Ridge, and defeated, the invaders

were for the time being held. They claimed some 250,000 prisoners and 1800

guns of every calibre, besides immense quantities of munitions. They had

also succeeded in diverting French and British divisions from the Western

front, the Allies sending what assistance they could to stave off the

defeat of Italy. The French and British troops arrived in time for the

winter struggle, which began on 4th Dec., by which time General von Below

had returned to France--being succeeded in command of the Austro-German

operations by General Krobatin--and General Cadorna had been transferred to

the Allied War Council, his place as Italian Commander-in-Chief being taken

by General Diaz. Two British divisions, under Cavan, took up their

positions in the Italian line at Montella; the French divisions at Monte

Tomba; and they served to relieve the pressure while the enemy was making

his last efforts to break through before the long-delayed snows put an end

to the struggle for the year.

_Naval War in 1917_

At sea, where the British Grand Fleet was now commanded by Sir David Beatty

in place of Sir John Jellicoe, who had succeeded Sir Henry Jackson as First

Sea Lord in the previous November, the year 1917 passed without a single

outstanding engagement. Since Jutland, the German High Seas Fleet had run

no risk above water of again seriously challenging Britain's sovereignty of

the sea, though her submarine campaign was pursued with ever-increasing

vindictiveness. Risking rupture with the United States and other neutrals

whose shipping and subjects were thus exposed to wanton attack, she

inaugurated 'unrestricted' U-boat war on 1st Feb. "Give us two months of

this", said the German Foreign Secretary to the American Ambassador in

Berlin, "and we shall end the war and make peace." The argument was that

the Allies' losses in tonnage, already more than they could bear, would

increase to such an extent that they would be starved into submission. The

United States, with President Wilson as spokesman, replied by severing

diplomatic relations with Germany, but it was not until 5th April that she

formally declared war against her. Cuba followed suit on 5th April; Panama

three days later; Brazil on 2nd June. Germany could afford the risk of

offending the smaller American republics, but her defiance of the United

States was a fatal blunder. She relied on her submarines to prevent the

transport of American troops across the Atlantic--at least until they were

too late to affect the issue. The first American contingents crossed

unharmed and arrived in France on 26th June. It was not until the following

year, however, that the new American army was ready to throw its weight

into the scales on the Western front. The naval resources of the United

States were at once placed at the Allies' disposal, the American destroyer

squadron in particular being of great service in helping in the protection

of trade off the Irish coast. Proof of the closeness of co-operation

between the British and United States navies was afforded in June, 1917,

when Vice-Admiral Sims, commanding the United States Naval Forces in

European Waters, was given the command of the Irish station during the

absence of Vice-Admiral Bayley on sick leave. No foreign naval officer had

ever previously held the command of British ships, as well as his own, off

the British coast.

Apart from the relentless submarine campaign, which every week exacted

heavy toll yet never brought the Allies within measurable distance of the

starvation-point to which the Germans had been so sure of reducing them,

the enemy's operations at sea were restricted to destroyer and torpedo-boat

raids in the Channel from Zeebrugge. Some of these did a certain amount of

damage to patrol boats, and bombarded Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and Margate

(27th Feb. and 26th April) with little effect save the death of women and

children. One memorable incident in these minor operations in 1917 was the

raid on Dover on the night of 20th-21st April, when 6 German destroyers,

after firing a number of rounds inland, were caught on their way back by

the British destroyers _Broke_ (Commander R. G. E. Evans) and _Swift_

(Commander A. M. Peck)--the advance ships of the British destroyer guard in

the Straits of Dover. The _Swift_, which was leading, dashed between two of

the retreating destroyers and, turning, sent one of them to the bottom with

a torpedo. The _Broke_ rammed the third vessel, and while the two ships

were locked, an old-fashioned hand-to-hand fight took place on the

_Broke's_ forecastle, in which the German crew were beaten back. Two

minutes later the _Broke_ wrenched herself free and the German destroyer

sank. Ten German officers and 108 men were rescued at the close of this

dashing affair.

_1918 on the European Fronts_

_First Phase of Ludendorff's Offensive._--The Bolshevist betrayal of the

Allies at Brest-Litovsk, the treaty of which took Russia irrevocably out of

the conflict, and released Germany's Eastern forces for a concentrated

assault in the West, gave the Central Powers their greatest opportunity of

winning the war since their first hopes were shattered on the Marne in

1914. The crushing defeat of Italy at Caporetto afforded them further

grounds for confidence. America, it was true, had thrown in her lot on the

side of the Allies, but Germany counted on striking her decisive blow

before the American troops could arrive in sufficient numbers to matter;

and she had not yet lost faith in her submarines. All through the winter of

1917-8 Ludendorff, the German Commander-in-Chief, was secretly training his

troops in the new tactics which were to bring open warfare into full play

again, equipping them with Teutonic completeness, and massing guns and

ammunition proportionate to the task in view.

The Allies on the Western front were meantime forced to remain on the

defensive until such time as the American reinforcements should arrive in

sufficient numbers to enable them to regain the initiative. Since April,

1917, the British army had borne the chief burden of the war in the West,

and "the bloody struggles to conquer the Flanders ridges"--the words are

those of Sir Douglas Haig himself--as well as the prolonged fight at

Cambrai, "had left the army at low ebb in regard both to training and

numbers". In view of the expected German offensive, it became imperative to

fill up the ranks as rapidly as possible, and place the line in a sound

state of defence. Late in Jan., 1918, Sir Douglas Haig took over a new

stretch of French line, extending the front of the Fifth Army to cover the

village of Barisis, 7 miles south of the Oise. The additional line, taken

over somewhat against Haig's judgment, and giving the Fifth Army, which

stretched on the left as far as Gouzeaucourt, no less than 42 miles to

guard, extended the British front, all told, to 125 miles. The whole of

this had to be greatly strengthened and supported by prepared positions to

which the troops could retreat when the expected German drive took place,

for it was regarded as inevitable that some dent must result in the Allies'

line where the colossal blow was dealt. This constructional work called for

every man who could be spared for the task, and seriously interfered with

the necessary training of the troops in new tactics of defence.

The months preceding the 'hammer blow' were marked by intense raiding

activity on both sides, chiefly undertaken to procure information, but

sometimes to secure useful positions for subsequent events. The most

important of these included the sanguinary struggles for Bullecourt in the

early days of January, in which the Australians greatly distinguished

themselves, and Germans attacks at Dixmude (6th March), and in the region

of Houthulst Forest and the Menin road (8th March), for positions destined

to play their part in the new attempt to reach the Channel ports. By the

middle of February, when 28 additional German divisions had arrived from

the Russian front, and 6 from Italy, and great supply dumps were springing

up in all directions behind the German lines--but particularly opposite the

British Third Army at Cambrai and the British Fifth Army to the south of

it--Sir Douglas Haig had no doubt as to what was to come. The only

questions were "Where?" and "When?"

All strategical considerations pointed to an attack on the Fifth Army south

of Arras, with the object of separating the British and French armies and

seizing the centre of communications at Amiens. Neither the British nor the

French Head-quarters Staff, therefore, was taken unawares when the great

offensive began on 21st March. Both had worked out plans to meet it. More

than half Sir Douglas Haig's infantry and the whole of his cavalry were

allocated to this sector's defence, and General Petain had arranged to send

a French army corps to their assistance in case of need. The final

dispositions of the Germans were carried out with the utmost secrecy:

sunken roads, bivouacs, and every device of camouflage being employed to

conceal their last stages of concentration. Even so, Sir Douglas Haig

learnt from his Intelligence Department on 19th March that the enemy was

putting the finishing touches to his impending attack, and that it would be

launched by the 21st, if not before.

It was heralded, in fact, at 5 a.m. on the 21st by an intense bombardment

in a thick mist which made it impossible for the British batteries to

render effective aid to the battered first-line trenches. The onslaught was

organized in two parts, the northern advance being directed against Byng's

Third Army from the Sensee River to the Cambrai road, and the southern

attack from the Flesquieres salient opposite Cambrai to St. Quentin. No

fewer than 40 German divisions--nearly half a million men--specially

trained for the new offensive, were launched against this southern half,

and of these more than half were directed against the 16,500 yards of front

held by Gough's Fifth Army nearest St. Quentin. All told, the German drive

consisted of 64 divisions on the opening day of the offensive. To meet it

the British had but 19 infantry divisions in line and 10 in reserve, with

cavalry. From first to last the Germans employed in this attack some 78

divisions--exceeding in numbers the total fighting strength of the whole of

the British armies in France. By the 9th of April, when the Germans, foiled

in the opening move of their supreme offensive, had shifted the spear-head

of their assault to Flanders, the total number of British divisions

employed both in cavalry and infantry did not exceed 46.

Some part of the line was bound to give before the terrific impact of the

infantry attack which followed the bombardment on 21st March. The plans

made for repairing the breach in co-operation with the French broke down

for a time because the British Fifth Army, attacked by a far greater force

than had been anticipated--23 German divisions having been massed as

secretly as possible in order to bring them into position at the critical

hour--had been forced back sooner than was expected. There was no time

either for the British reserves or the French reinforcements to repair the

breach before the assaulting divisions under von Hutier, who had

established his reputation for this form of operation on the Eastern front,

were through it and extending it in all directions.

There were, in point of fact, two serious breaches along the 42-mile front

held by the Fifth Army. One, the less dangerous of the two, was south of

the Oise, where the line was held more lightly than elsewhere, owing to the

marshes, which had been relied on to make any considerable attack at this

point unlikely. As ill luck would have it, a long spell of dry weather had

made the ground easily passable, and the Germans, well aware of the

position, swept across it in overwhelming force, like a tidal wave. Heroic

stands were made for the forward redoubts and battle positions, but the

whole of the ground south of the St. Crozat Canal was so submerged in the

flood that by nightfall there was nothing for it but to withdraw the

divisions of the 3rd Corps, which had been defending it, to the line of the

Somme Canal. Nevertheless, though the Germans made their greatest progress

on the 21st at this point, it was not their most dangerous thrust, being

nearest to French reinforcements.

The chief danger-point was farther north, on the Fifth Army's left, below

the Flesquieres salient. By noon, with the fog still so thick that it was

impossible to see 50 yards ahead, the Germans had advanced as far as

Ronssoy, inside the second zone of the British defensive positions,

together with Hargicourt and Villeret to the south. This opened a gate to

the third line 3 miles wide, and before the day was over the enemy had

pushed towards this as far as Templeux-le-Gerard. But for the stubborn

defence of Epehy, to the north, and Le Verguier, to the south, the breach

would have been perilously widened on the following day, but at both these

points the German advance was temporarily checked. It could not be stayed

long. Supplied with an overpowering weight of men to crush through

anywhere, von Hutier was ready to pay the price exacted for every success

by British artillery-fire at short range, and British machine-gun posts

held to the last: and when St. Emilie and Hervilly finally fell on the

21st, Epehy and Le Verguier could only hold out long enough for the general

line of defence to be withdrawn from them. The retreat thence, hard-pressed

as it was, left the Fifth Army's centre with a sagging flank to the south,

of which the on-coming Germans did not fail to take full advantage.

Thenceforward the tide swept on for days in ever-increasing volume, all the

reinforcements that Sir Douglas Haig or Petain could send serving only to

stop gaps here and there. Ham, Bapaume, and Peronne had fallen by the 24th,

and about two-thirds of the territory wrested from the Germans in 1916

regained by them. Germany was announcing to all the world that the

'Kaiser's Battle', as the emperor himself had caused it to be named, had

already been won. To drive the news home, the enemy, on 23rd March, began

bombarding Paris with long-range guns capable of firing 70 miles. Nesle and

Noyon were the next to go, and by 26th March--save at Albert, which held

out until the following day--the Allies were back beyond the line from

which they started in 1916.

Elsewhere the enemy's progress along the 60-mile battle front had been slow

and costly. He had least success in the north against the British Third

Army, partly because the positions held were stronger, partly because his

heaviest and most persistent blows had been reserved for the Fifth Army.

Some isolated gaps were made on this front, but nothing beyond repair, and

the ground lost was not vital. It is impossible in the space at our command

to follow all the complications of attack and counter-attack in the fateful

days which followed, until, by 26th March, the Germans were within a dozen

miles or so of Amiens, with the British Fifth Army still retiring before

them in a state of disintegration. At this critical juncture, when the

reserves had all been thrown in, General Gough adopted a suggestion made by

General Grant, Chief Engineer of the Fifth Army, that a last line of

defence--a forlorn hope to save Amiens--should be formed from stragglers,

army school personnel, tunnelling companies, Canadian and American

engineers, anyone, in short, who could be roped in. The command of this

heterogeneous force, after being organized by General Grant and posted

according to General Gough's instructions, was handed over to General

Sandeman Carey. 'Carey's force', as it came to be called, aided by the 1st

Cavalry Division, which was rushed across the Somme from the north at the

same time, earned a special tribute from Mr. Lloyd George in the House of

Commons for the magnificent fight which it put up in this last line of

defence.

[Illustration]

The German effort was becoming spent, though by broadening out the salient

the enemy continued to press back the French as well as the British. The

French Third Army, sent to the assistance of the British Fifth Army, played

a lion's part in preventing him from extending his gains too dangerously in

the south. On the 28th he concentrated his main energy against the stubborn

British Third Army, which, conforming to the retreating line of the Fifth

Army on its right, had fallen back to new battle positions, but in good

order. Fresh shock-divisions were brought up to break this northern pivot

of the British defence, and, after the usual full-dress bombardment, were

launched as before in continual waves of assault. This time, however, there

was no fog to handicap the British gunners, who were given the opportunity

of a lifetime when they opened fire from hidden positions on serried ranks

of German infantrymen, marching shoulder to shoulder at point-blank range.

Six times the advance was renewed, and as many times mowed down, and when a

final attempt was made, after a second bombardment in the afternoon, it met

with similar failure. The Germans had shot their bolt. Their appalling

losses on the 28th told on all their subsequent efforts in this first and

greatest of Ludendorff's offensives in 1918.

It was on the 28th that General Gough relinquished the command of the

British Fifth Army, General Rawlinson (Fourth Army) succeeding to the task

of extricating its shattered divisions. Two days earlier the long-needed

decision had been made by which the command of the Allied armies passed

into the hands of General Foch as Generalissimo, who thenceforward, until

the end of the war, held supreme control. Though several anxious days were

to pass before the Allies could breathe freely again in the Amiens area,

the position hourly improved as reinforcements, French and British, arrived

on the scene. Counter-attacks recovered some of the ground on 30th March,

and when the Germans resumed their advance towards Amiens on a more limited

scale on 4th and 5th April, their losses were out of all proportion to

their gains.

_Second Phase of Ludendorff's Offensive_

It is probable that the operations of 4th and 5th April were designed

chiefly to pin the British armies to the southern area, while Ludendorff,

finding his road barred to Amiens, prepared to strike a fresh blow in the

north in a decisive bid for the Channel ports. Though well aware of a

possible thrust in this direction, Sir Douglas Haig had been compelled to

draw heavily on his Flanders front for reinforcements during the exhausting

battle for Amiens, in which as many as 46 out of his total 58 divisions had

been engaged. By the end of the first week in April the bulk of the British

troops holding the Flanders line had passed through the furnace of the

southern battlefield and were sadly in need of rest and reinforcement. Had

the ground been in its usual condition of slush and mire at this season of

the year they could have been relied upon to hold up any advance, but a dry

spring had prepared the path for a German advance, and as soon as this was

seen to be imminent it was reluctantly decided voluntarily to evacuate the

Passchendaele salient, won at such frightful cost in the closing months of

the previous year. Steps were also taken to relieve the Portuguese

troops[3] who, though not seriously engaged, had been too long in the

trenches south of the salient. Before either of these plans could mature

the Germans upset both by launching their great attack at 4 a.m. on 9th

April.

As in the opening move against the Fifth Army on 21st March, the

assault--launched by the army of General von Quast in the direction of

Festubert-Armentieres against the northern portion of the front held by the

British First Army (General Horne)--was favoured by an impenetrable

early-morning fog. Through it came five columns of troops like the prongs

of a fork, with an army corps as the central point to thrust into the weak

spot where the Portuguese were sandwiched in between the British 40th and

55th Divisions. Bursting through the Portuguese sector, the attack spread

swiftly to north and south--especially to the north, where the 40th

Division, feeling the thrust which pierced the Portuguese line, was forced

back on its right flank to the line of the Lys, 3-1/2 miles in its rear.

The rest of the 40th, with reinforcements from the 34th Division, formed a

new line between Fort Rompre and Bois Grenier, covering Erquinghem and

Armentieres from the south, and held it the rest of the day. Had the

southern pivot also given way when the Portuguese sector was broken the

consequences would have been fatal to any hope of checking the German

onrush. But the 55th Division never budged after its left flank, borne back

by the first assault, succeeded in forming a defensive flank between

Festubert and Le Touret, and the importance of its stout defence through

the battle, as Sir Douglas Haig bore witness in his dispatches, could not

be overestimated. This line was strengthened later in the day by the 21st

Division, which, together with the 50th Division--both just relieved from

the Somme fighting--had been hurried up as soon as the attack developed.

Next day the battle spread to the north, blazing up along the right of the

British Second Army (General Plumer), the army of General Sixt von Armin

attacking in another early-morning mist between Armentieres and Hollebeke.

The two German armies now acted in concert, and together pushed their

advantage until the Lys was crossed in the south and the Messines Ridge

carried in the north, with Laventie, Ploegsteert, and a dozen other

historic landmarks in between. Outflanked on both sides, Armentieres had

perforce to be evacuated. Messines was recaptured by the South Africans,

but had to be abandoned when the enemy's advance in the south pushed almost

as far as Neuve Eglise. On the 11th, when the enemy continued to extend his

gains with seemingly endless reinforcements, and had crossed the Lawe, a

tributary of the Lys, Sir Douglas Haig issued his famous Order of the Day

to his troops, which, while it reflected the gravity of the situation,

inspired them to fight it out:

"Every position must be held to the last man.... With our backs to the

wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must

fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind

depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical

moment."

The appeal, with its promise also of speedy reinforcements from the French

army--"moving rapidly and in great force to our support"--heartened the

battle-worn divisions when they sorely needed its encouragement. The

pressure was still too great to prevent the Germans from taking Neuve

Eglise on the 14th--after a struggle lasting two and a half days, from

house to house--or Merris a day earlier, which brought them within 4 miles

of Hazebrouck, where the 1st Australian Division, just detrained, kept them

at bay; or Bailleul on the 15th. At midnight on the 15th the British line

fell back to the defences between Meteren and Dranoutre, a move involving

the simultaneous withdrawal from the Passchendaele Ridge.

These were the darkest hours of the last great battle for Ypres. There were

already signs that the German advance, having again failed to break a way

through by sheer weight and numbers, was slowing down, and the promised

French reinforcements were close at hand. These took over the sector from

Meteren to Wytschaete, where, on the 25th, before they had consolidated

their positions, they were made to bear the brunt of a fresh German blow,

delivered with 9 fresh divisions, from Bailleul to the Ypres-Comines Canal.

The French fought desperately to save Kemmel Hill, commanding Ypres some

six miles away; but in five hours the Germans had captured both the village

and the crest of the hill. With the Ypres salient now dominated both from

Kemmel and Messines it became necessary still further to shorten the line

round Ypres. This was accordingly redrawn on the night of 26th-27th April

through Pilkem, Wieltje, Zillebeke Lake, and Voormezeele.

One more effort was made by the Germans to push right through before the

end of the month--on the 29th, when, in a fresh attack in force on the

Franco-British front, they succeeded in reaching as far as Locre, behind

Kemmel. But the French, who were in no mood to repeat their experience at

Kemmel, flung the enemy back with sanguinary losses. The heaviest

casualties of the Germans that day, however, were against the British 21st,

49th, and 25th Divisions, whose artillery--like the gunners of the Third

Army on 28th March--had the range of them as they advanced in mass

formation, and blew them to pieces. Only one of the waves of German

infantry succeeded in reaching the British positions, where bomb and

bayonet completed its destruction. This marked the last serious attempt on

Germany's part to seize the Channel ports.

Though Ludendorff had failed to reach his objectives either on the Amiens

or Flanders front he still had a sufficient superiority of force to retain

the initiative. With every incentive to compel a decision before the new

American army, which was now arriving at the rate of something like 150,000

a month, could enter the field in full strength, Ludendorff had either to

throw up the sponge or strike again at the earliest moment in one final

effort to beat the Allies to their knees. Meantime the obvious policy on

the Franco-British part was to maintain an active defence until their own

and American reinforcements made a counter-offensive possible. In the minor

operations which marked this period of waiting, the Australians added

Villers-Bretonneux to their battle honours. Villers-Bretonneux, which lies

on the edge of the ridge facing Amiens--only 8 miles away--had been rushed

and captured by the Germans in a surprise attack in thick fog on 23rd

April. Before daybreak the next morning the Australians had surrounded the

German garrison, and the end of a fierce house-to-house conflict left the

place in British hands again, together with nearly 1000 prisoners.

[Illustration: Germany's Last Bid for the Channel Ports: approximate

positions of the Allies' line before and after Ludendorff's offensive in

April, 1918]

_Third Phase of Ludendorff's Offensive_

Though every day added to the danger of delay, it was not until the end of

May that the German army, its plans disorganized by its unexpectedly heavy

commitments in the Amiens and Flanders battles, was launched on the third

and final phase of Ludendorff's great offensive with a sudden attack on the

Aisne front in the direction of Paris. It was along this front that the 9th

British Corps (General Sir A. Hamilton-Gordon), consisting of the 8th,

21st, 25th, and 50th Divisions, and subsequently reinforced by the 19th

Division, had been sent to the French armies under General Petain for

much-needed rest after sharing to the full the honours and sacrifices of

the earlier battles. By their side were crack French divisions which had

also earned the rest which it was felt they could count upon along the main

stretch of the Chemin-des-Dames. holding as it did some of the strongest

natural defences along the whole battle front. The French had taken months

in the previous year, and spent countless lives, to recapture these

positions.

The very unlikelihood of choosing such a formidable sector decided

Ludendorff to select it for his dramatic attack on 27th May, moving up his

specially trained divisions of shock troops at the last moment--with all

possible secrecy, accompanied by other surprises in the vast number of guns

and aeroplanes brought into action, as well as the largest fleet of German

tanks which the enemy had ever employed. Only on the very eve of the new

advance did the French learn of the impending blow--too late to avert

disaster. Outnumbered by 6 to 1 the Allies, British and French alike, were

borne back by the onrush of picked troops as soon as the preliminary

bombardment ceased. Helped as usual by a thick early-morning mist the

armies of von Boehn, von Hutier, and von Below--all nominally under the

German Crown Prince--had carried the whole of the Chemin-des-Dames ridge by

nightfall, and were fighting on the Aisne. Within two days they were not

only across the Aisne on an 18-mile front, but had swept on to the Vesle,

and were even across that river west of Fismes--a depth of 12 miles from

their starting-point.

Reserving his stoutest resistance for the flanks, Foch strove hard to save

Soissons, but it fell again into the enemy's hands on the 29th, by which

date Rheims, on the Allies' right, was also pressed so hard that its

outlying positions were carried on the 30th, and only the devoted bravery

of Berthelot's Fifth Army--with Gouraud guarding the Champagne front on its

right--saved the battered city. The British and French divisions which had

meantime been driven back from the Chemin-des-Dames to the Aisne, and from

the Aisne to the Vesle--the Allies often fighting side by side in hopeless

rear-guard actions against immensely superior numbers--were now holding a

line between the Vesle and the Ardre while the Germans continued to plunge

deeper and deeper into the big salient which they had formed towards the

Marne. The shattered divisions of the British 9th Corps now formed part of

Berthelot's Fifth French Army guarding Rheims, and subsequently played a

large part in repelling the enemy's attack on the north-east side of that

city. In the words of General Berthelot himself: "They have enabled us to

establish a barrier against which the hostile waves have beaten themselves

in vain. This none of the French who witnessed it will ever forget."

By 31st May the German advance in the centre had spread as far as the Marne

at Chateau-Thierry, extending thence along a 10-mile front to Dormans. It

was at Chateau-Thierry on this day that the Americans began to play their

part in the battle, linking up with a French colonial division on the south

bank of the river and preventing the enemy from crossing. New French units

were also coming into line, blocking the Germans' path south of Soissons on

the road to Villers-Cotterets, as well as at Chateau-Thierry. Foiled in

both these directions, Ludendorff turned to the Ailette front in order to

get more elbow-room, and flattened out the French front between Soissons

and Noyon. Again unable to make much further headway against the fierce

French counter-attacks, he carried the battle still farther to his right,

attacking between Noyon and Montdidier on 9th June in the hope of linking

up the new Marne salient with the one already formed at Amiens, and so

advancing on one immense front. The new 'drive' was again entrusted to von

Hutier, whose 25 divisions, employing the same shock tactics as before,

swept forward at first to a depth of some 5 miles in the centre; but, held

on the wings, were fiercely counter-attacked on the 11th on their exposed

right flank and robbed of most of their gains.

On the following day the German War Minister declared that "Foch's

so-called Army of Reserve exists no more"; the truth being that Foch, with

time and an ever-flowing stream of reinforcements on his side, was

gradually becoming master of the situation, and could afford to wait until

Ludendorff gave him the opportunity he wanted. Ludendorff, on the other

hand, with the pick of his troops 'pocketed' in the great Marne salient,

was forced to make another forward move or withdraw them. He made one more

attempt on Rheims, three divisions being ordered on 18th June to take it at

all costs; but the whole attack was an expensive failure. For the rest of

the month, when the weather broke, and during the first half of July,

Ludendorff left most of the fighting to the Allies while he prepared for

one last herculean effort to burst through their line. On 28th June Foch

felt his way towards his counter-stroke by a preliminary advance between

Villers-Cotterets and the Aisne, when he won back over a mile of useful

territory and took over 1000 prisoners. On 4th July further minor victories

were recorded along both the French and British fronts, the British success

being at Hamel, where American units celebrated Independence Day by helping

the Australians to recover that fiercely-contested stronghold, with 1500

prisoners.

[Illustration: The First and Last Advances on Paris: map showing

approximately (by the shaded area) the limit of the German gains in the

final phase of Ludendorff's offensive in 1918, and (by the dotted line) the

limit reached in the 1914 advance]

On 15th July Ludendorff launched his final effort on a 50-mile front on

each side of Rheims. This time the Allies were warned of its direction in

time. On the left, where immediate success was vital to the whole plan, the

attack was flung into disorder at the very beginning by a deluge of shells

from Gouraud's guns before even the German bombardment started; and when,

this over, the attacking divisions of von Einem and von Mudra advanced,

they found that Gouraud's army, save for volunteer garrisons in concrete

forts, had returned undamaged to its main battle positions, to reach which

they had to face a concentrated fire that tore their ranks to pieces. Some

50,000 German troops were admitted to have fallen that day before Gouraud's

army. With the failure of the advance in Champagne the German attack on the

right, where Italian as well as British and American troops were now

fighting side by side with the French, was unavailing, though the line

south-west of Rheims was pressed back some 3 or 4 miles, and eight

divisions under von Boehn succeeded by 17th July in crossing the Marne at a

number of points between Fossoy and Dormans.

_Foch's Counter-stroke_

They were only allowed to remain south of the Marne long enough for Foch to

convert these river crossings into a death-trap. For Foch had now decided

that the moment had come when the Germans, exhausted by their advance, were

least in a condition to resist a counter-stroke aimed at their flank. The

flank which Foch selected for attack was that on the western side of the

salient created, from its most northerly point on the Aisne near Soissons,

to its southern extremity, Chateau-Thierry on the Marne, where the symptoms

of the exhaustion of the German momentum had been furnished by the ability

of American and other contingents to resist further advance. In the earlier

half of July a ceaseless stream of men and guns had flowed up from the

French side to take cover in the forest of Villers-Cotterets on their

flank, in preparation for the blow to come; and by 18th July two French

armies were assembled along the 27-mile flank, that of General Mangin

aligned between the Aisne and the Ourcq, which bisected the salient, and

that of General Degoutte from the Ourcq to the Marne. Mangin's army

contained some of the finest French shock divisions as well as two famous

British ones, the 34th and the 15th, and a number of keen American troops.

Degoutte's army had the more awkward task, judged by the country over which

it had to travel, but Foch's plan here, as elsewhere, was to put his best

fighting material where it would pierce farthest, and hold the enemy

elsewhere. By the same token the army of General Berthelot, with two other

supporting British divisions, was entrusted with the task on the other side

of the salient, from Rheims to Epernay, not of thrusting at the Germans but

of holding them hard.

Mangin's army was ordered to strike with all its force. It was equipped

with new and speedier 'whippet' tanks, and its immediate onset was masked

by the accident of a July thunderstorm on the eve of the fighting. On the

morning of 18th July it went forward with nothing but a barrage, but with

the effect of a thunderbolt, and its average advance on that day was 5

miles, with Fontenoy and the plateau of Pernay on the Aisne firmly secured.

Degoutte's army went forward for 2 miles over difficult country. A blow of

immense significance had been struck along the whole length of the

salient's vulnerable side. Next day Mangin's movement continued; he

tightened his hold on the Aisne and swung his right wing farther along the

Ourcq so as to bring the whole line of the one good north-and-south road in

the salient under the fire of his guns, and thus to hamper the German

movements terribly. That alone would have forced the enemy to begin a

retreat from the Marne, while it might yet be possible. Meanwhile Degoutte

was advancing also, and was forcing the Germans away from the neighbourhood

of Chateau-Thierry. The German commander, von Boehn, was not slow to

recognize the implications of the situation into which Foch had forced him,

and gave orders to recross the Marne. He was in time, but his retreating

troops were roughly handled at the crossings, and despite all his attempts

to hold up the attack on his western flank by counter-attack, the pressure

of Mangin and Degoutte, added to that of de Mitry's army, which was now

following him back over the Marne, became every hour more dangerous. By

20th July not only was the Marne itself in process of being abandoned by

von Boehn but Chateau-Thierry had fallen. Degoutte's army was 3 miles north

of it. De Mitry's divisions had secured ample crossings for future movement

and Berthelot's mixed forces of French, British, and Italians had begun a

disconcerting attack on the eastern side of the salient. In three days the

Germans lost 20,000 prisoners, and, what was more significant, 450 guns.

The first _riposte_ of the French Generalissimo had been delivered. It was

to be followed in unending succession by others.

The German Commander-in-Chief had to gain time. It was no easy thing to

withdraw his 600,000 men crowded between the Aisne and the Marne, but he

was obliged to support them lest the salient should collapse too suddenly.

He aimed a counter-stroke at Gouraud's army east of Rheims, but the blow

spent itself in the air, and Foch replied by setting in motion the army of

General Debeney, where it stood opposite to that of General von Hutier,

between Montdidier and Noyon. But he had not yet gathered the full fruits

of the strength of his positional assault between the Aisne and the Marne,

and did not in the least allow pressure here to relax. Mangin seized

Oulchy-le-Chateau on the Ourcq (25th July); and on 26th July Gouraud, on

the other side of Rheims, recovered the ground he had ceded under the

German pressure. By Sunday (28th July) the Allied attack in the Aisne-Marne

salient had swept convergingly on to the line of the Ourcq, and with that

achievement the most important episode in the opening of Foch's campaign

was consummated. Soissons fell to Mangin on 1st and 2nd Aug., a signal that

the work was done, and Foch was now free to prosecute his larger plan of

delivering successive blows at points where they would disperse and use up

the German reinforcements most effectively.

_The Allies' Victorious Offensive, 1918_

[Illustration: The Freeing of Amiens: Map illustrating the recapture of the

city's outer defence line on the opening day of the Battle of Amiens, 8th

Aug., 1918.]

Marshal Foch, after consultation with the British Commander-in-Chief, had

desired the commanders of all armies, British and French, to prepare plans

of action and to be ready to put them into operation at short notice. He

now more particularly addressed inquiry to Sir Douglas Haig as to his

willingness to undertake a continuous offensive towards the German centre.

Sir Douglas Haig assented to Marshal Foch's representations as to the

superior advantages to be gained from an attack there, and, while

continuing a show of preparation in the Ypres area, where Ludendorff, on an

estimate of the psychology of the British commander, would expect the

counter-attack to come, and was already taking steps to reduce its

effectiveness by masked withdrawals, transferred forces steadily to

Rawlinson's Fourth Army on the Somme. This army, and the First French Army

under Debeney on the right, both directed by Haig, were set in motion on

8th Aug. on a 16-mile front from Morlancourt to Moreuil. The thrust was

successful beyond expectation. The British Fourth Army, on the right wing,

went through the German divisions of von Marwitz (Second Army) like paper,

regaining the old outer-line defences of Amiens; and Debeney's men crushing

the resistance of von Hutier's Eighteenth German Army, and reaching Fresnoy

and Plessier, where they linked up with General Humbert's Third French Army

on the road to Roye. The captures of the day amounted to 17,000 prisoners

and 500 guns, an unmistakeable symptom that the German power of resistance

was shaking.

On 9th Aug. Rawlinson pushed on still farther; on 10th Aug. General Humbert

prolonged Debeney's still attacking line and took Montdidier, and a number

of villages. These three armies continued to eat into the enemy's positions

and to pin a number of German divisions down till 20th Aug., while Mangin's

army at Soissons moved _en echelon_ to take up contact with Humbert's

right. Meanwhile Ludendorff, fully aware now that the initiative had passed

out of his hands, and that the best course that lay open before him was a

'strategic retirement', began to effect one stage of it in the Ypres and

Lys district under the direction of General Sixt von Armin, whose

withdrawal was followed vigilantly by the British forces; and another stage

in the German salient on the Ancre, where General von Below's Seventeenth

Army was stationed. Von Below withdrew on the Bapaume line from Serre,

Beaumont-Hamel, and Bucquoy to the shelter of the sector of the Hindenburg

line behind it (13th, 14th, and 15th Aug.).

But whereas in 1917 Ludendorff had disconcerted both British and French

Commanders-in-Chief by a sudden withdrawal on the Bapaume-Peronne line of

the Somme, he was not now allowed to withdraw without injury. Haig's battle

of Bapaume (21st Aug. and following days) was designed in two stages, the

first of which brought up Byng's Third Army to a position in which it was

aligned with Rawlinson's Fourth Army, and the second of which saw the Third

and Fourth Army attack von Below in combination. The combined pressure of

these two armies was continuously successful, though the Germans fell back

stubbornly in many places. By 30th Aug. Bapaume was once again in British

hands, and the line of attack was threatening the strongholds of the

Hindenburg line, while its extension ran through Heudecourt and Fremiecourt

to Clery. Peronne fell to the Australian Corps by a most gallant feat of

arms on 1st Sept. A more strategically significant victory was gained on

the same day when the capture of Bullecourt, followed by that of Riencourt

and Cagnicourt, opened up the first crevice in the ramifications of the

Hindenburg defences known as the Drocourt-Queant switch line. The battle of

Bapaume drove thirty-five German divisions from the old Somme battlefield,

and captured 34,000 men and 27 guns.

The crevice in the Drocourt-Queant defences was still further widened on

1st Sept., when six British divisions of Horne's First Army, including two

Canadian, attacked behind tanks a 5-mile front occupied by eleven German

divisions and captured Dury Ridge and Queant, together with 16,000 men and

200 guns. So far, therefore, from Ludendorff's strategic retreat being

conducted 'according to plan', it cost the Germans, between 21st Aug. and

9th Sept., some 53,000 men and 470 guns; the French had been able to occupy

Ham and Chauny, while the British were going forward; and General Sixt von

Armin was forced cautiously to retire from the Ypres salient.

During these operations by the British armies Foch had never relaxed

pressure with the three armies of Debeney, Humbert, and Mangin, while still

threatening an advance beyond the Vesle in the deflating Aisne salient,

west of Rheims, and preparing new blows elsewhere. At the beginning of

September the position of the French armies of the centre, won by

continuous fighting, was as follows: Debeney had crossed the Somme, taken

Ham, and was threatening St. Quentin; Humbert was close to Tergnier and was

pointing towards La Fere: Mangin was back in Coucy-le-Chateau and held the

railway thence to Soissons; Degoutte was spreading from Soissons along the

Aisne. These threats left General Ludendorff no choice but to shorten his

line where he could do so with least risk. He decided on the Vesle front,

where General de Mitry, with French and Americans, had been engaging his

Seventh and Ninth Armies, and began to retire thence on 4th and 5th Sept.

on a 19-mile front. The Americans occupied the Aisne thereupon from Conde

to Viel-Arcy, and on 7th Sept. General Mangin crowned his long campaign at

the Chemin-des-Dames by taking the ruined Fort de Conde. A week later

Allemant and Laffaux Mill fell, and once again the French troops came in

sight of Laon. Humbert and Debeney, both pushing forward, embarrassed

Ludendorff in his intention of moving divisions to meet a new British

movement known thereafter as the battle of Epehy.

This battle was the preliminary movement in that great attack on the

Hindenburg line which, more than any other single action, was the decisive

'blow at the heart' of the German defensive plan. The British advance,

viewed as one movement, was made towards Cambrai, which was the northern

bastion of the German defensive lines, as La Fere and Laon were the twin

southern pillars. On 2nd Sept. the Third Army began a local attack on a

5-mile front which captured Havrincourt and Trescault, while on the extreme

right of the Fourth Army the 9th Army Corps and the Australian Corps began

a movement which by 17th Sept. placed them in Maissemy, where the Fifth

Army in March had been pierced. These preliminary positions having been

secured, the Third and Fourth Armies set in motion their important combined

attack (18th Sept.) on a 17-mile front from Gouzeaucourt, through

Havrincourt to Holnon Wood, where Debeney's First Army lent assistance. The

hardest fighting was at Epehy, which gives its name to the battle, on the

left centre, but by nightfall the German defences had been pierced on a

3-mile front, 12,000 prisoners had been taken, and the British forces

brought within striking distance of the main Hindenburg lines.

During the weeks in September while the plans for the battle of Epehy were

ripening, Foch had struck hard at another point in the German line, which

had appeared invulnerable while the Germans were strong, but was now a

menace to Ludendorff's own plans for retirement because it absorbed

divisions which he badly needed elsewhere, namely the long-standing salient

of St. Mihiel. It was held by seven German and two Austro-Hungarian

divisions in September, and Ludendorff had been withdrawing its heavy

artillery; but before his plans for withdrawal could be consummated, Foch

sent in General Pershing with his young American divisions, aided by two

French divisions, at the salient's apex. The Americans attacked on the two

faces of the salient, west and south, the strongest thrust being made by

two corps of seven divisions apiece on the southern face. The attack began

on 12th Sept., and in thirty hours the salient had disappeared; while in

spite of the haste with which the Germans had left it--the firmest

resistance was offered by the two Austro-Hungarian divisions on the western

face--10,000 prisoners and 450 guns were left behind. This victory, as

symptomatic as others of German disorder, freed the Verdun-Commercy

railway, and completed the attenuation of Ludendorff's reserves. The 207

German divisions which Ludendorff had commanded at the period of the

greatest German strength had fallen to 185, and only 21 reserve divisions

remained.

The second stage of Foch's plan now had been reached. The German armies had

again been brought back to the line which they had chosen in 1914, after

their first rush had recoiled. It was less threatening by the loss of the

St. Mihiel salient, but it had been enormously strengthened by four years

of engineering. North of the defence line was the railway which, running

through Brussels, Mons, Maubeuge, Mezieres, Sedan, and Metz, was the chief

artery of German communications, and Foch's plan was to cut this artery on

either side of the great curve which the German line made when, after

coming north to south from the coast, it turned west to east at La Fere.

The right half of the thrust was to be made by Gouraud's army at Rheims and

the Americans on the Argonne, where they were being steadily accumulated.

The more deadly attack was to be made by the First, Third, and Fourth

British, and the First French Armies, which should break through Cambrai

and St. Quentin towards Maubeuge.

Complementary operations were designed for the armies of Humbert and Mangin

at the nose of the curve, and it was expected that, under this

comprehensive pressure, Ludendorff would be compelled to withdraw divisions

from the coastal sector, where an attack by the British Second Army

(Plumer) and the Belgian Army might then be successful against a weakened

front. A portion of Degoutte's army was sent northward in readiness for

such a blow, and to the Fifth British Army (now commanded by Birdwood) was

assigned a task at Lille and Lens similar to that of Humbert and Mangin at

St. Gobain.

There was a pause of nearly a week, in which the Germans awaited, and the

Allies prepared the new move; and then, on 27th Sept., Haig's armies struck

what Foch declared to be the blow from which there was no recovery. The

battle of Epehy had given the requisite positions for the attack on that

section of the Hindenburg defences which the Germans named the Siegfried

line. The plan was to send forward the First (Horne) and Third (Byng)

British Armies to clear the way on a line from Sauchy-Lestree to

Gouzeaucourt, seizing the crossings of the Canal du Nord, and so preparing

the way for an attack by the Fourth Army. The dangerous movement was

accomplished (27th Sept.): the crossings seized, the canal held, and

Cambrai threatened. On 29th Sept. the Fourth Army took up the combat, and

in a tremendous action along a front of 20 miles, supported by attacks from

the other British armies and the First French Army, got across the vital

defences of the St. Quentin Canal in the Siegfried zone. The next day the

fighting spread furiously along the front of all four armies: the breach

was widened; a portion of the Scheldt Canal taken; and by 3rd Oct. the

Fourth Army had pierced the Siegfried line vitally. By 9th Oct. the German

defences were no longer defences, and in this decisive encounter they had

lost 36,000 prisoners and 380 guns.

[Illustration: The Liberation of the Belgian Coast, 1918: map showing

approximately the Allies' line on 28th Sept.--represented by the solid

line--and on 25th Oct.--represented by the broken line]

Elsewhere victories had been won which appear minor only by comparison.

American divisions had been transferred to the left bank of the Meuse at

Verdun, and, supported by French divisions, had carried Montfaucon and

Varennes (10,000 prisoners); on the other side of the Argonne Gouraud was

advancing, and by 1st Oct. was 9 miles from his starting-point below

Moronvilliers, and had accumulated 13,000 prisoners and 300 guns.

[Illustration: Map showing approximately the Allied line on 8th Aug., 1918,

and on Armistice Day, 11th Nov., 1918]

The results of these attacks were at once apparent, as Foch had predicted,

in the north. His plan of an attack by Plumer's Second British Army, and by

the Belgian Army stiffened by French divisions, was as successful as he had

hoped. Under the weight of the Franco-Belgian-British attack on 28th Sept.

the thinly held German front melted away. By nightfall the British held all

the ridge between Wytschaete and the canal north of Hollebeke; the Belgians

were in Houthulst Forest. By the end of September the blood-drenched ridge

of Passchendaele, and all its tragic surroundings, had passed into the

Allies' hands, and the German grip on the coast had been finally unloosed.

This marked the beginning of the end. Since Foch attacked between the Aisne

and the Marne on 15th July the Allies had taken a quarter of a million

prisoners, 3669 guns, and 23,000 machine-guns. The rest of the campaign

must either be a disaster of the first magnitude to the Germans, or, at

best, a painful and ineffective retreat to the line of the Meuse.

What remained of the campaign was the work of clearing up; but this was not

an easy task, because, though Ludendorff was aware that victory remained

permanently with the Allies, he assured the German Government that delaying

actions could be fought till the following spring. Against such an

undesirable protraction of the war, Foch was preparing a final stroke in

the neighbourhood of Metz with the aid of a Second American Army, which was

being organized by General Pershing, who had relinquished the command of

the First American Army to General Leggett. But the progress of the First

American Army in the Argonne, where the fighting was conducted under

circumstances of great difficulty, and where the transport was admittedly

defective, was slow; and, lacking the place and the resources for another

outflanking blow against the retreating Germans, the Allied armies could do

no more than press their retreat.

In that retreat position after position was forced from their hands.

Cambrai fell on 9th Oct.; on 15th Oct. von Einem's army was far from the

coast; on 17th Oct. Ostend had fallen; Horne's First Army had taken Douai,

and Birdwood's Second Army had liberated Lille. King Albert re-entered

Bruges on 25th Oct. Farther south the British Third and Fourth Armies were

close to Le Cateau on 17th Oct.; and Mangin and the French had re-entered

Laon--so long the German Great Head-quarters--on 13th Oct. The story of the

rest of the campaign, though it involved much severe fighting in breaking

the resistance of German rear-guards, is the record of the steady drive of

all the British, French, and Belgian Armies which had produced the German

collapse, while the right wing of Foch's greater pincers, comprising the

only great new reinforcements he could bring to bear, namely, Gouraud with

the Americans on the extreme right, worked its way up for a last decisive

blow.

It was a slow operation; but by 4th Nov. Gouraud and Leggett had joined

hands north of the Bourgogne Forest; and by 6th Nov. Gouraud entered Rethel

and an American division reached Sedan. Thus, though behind schedule time,

Foch's right wing approached its decisive position in the first week in

November; and in the second week the left wing (British) had occupied

Maubeuge. What would have been the consequence had Foch advanced his right

wing farther and with effect is a matter for the military expert. That

Ludendorff was in no doubt of its disastrous results to the German armies

is shown by his request for an Armistice on 9th Nov.

_The Balkans, 1918_

Bulgaria, thoroughly war-weary, and dissatisfied with Germany's refusal to

give her the whole of the Dobrudja when terms were made with Roumania, had

surrendered to the Allies on 30th Sept. The last Balkan campaign had been

swift and decisive. No major operations had taken place during the earlier

months of 1918, but on 15th Sept. General Franchet d'Esperey, who had

succeeded General Sarrail in supreme command of the Allied forces, launched

an offensive which rapidly transformed the whole military situation. French

and Serbian troops, on the left or Monastir front, with the eager Serbians

as the spear-head of the attack, penetrated the Bulgarian positions with an

impetuosity which in two days carried them 12 miles behind the enemy's

lines on a 22-mile front, and drove a wedge between the First and Second

Bulgarian Armies. Meanwhile the British and Greek divisions were engaged in

a far more difficult task on the Doiran front, where they suffered heavy

losses in storming impregnable positions between the Dopropolje Ridge and

Vetrenik, but succeeded in preventing the Bulgarians opposing them from

sending reinforcements to their hard-pressed troops along the Monastir

front. This 'wing of sacrifice' pinned the Second Bulgarian Army to the

Doiran front until it was too late to join its retreating First Army.

Realizing the plight in which it stood, it hurriedly evacuated its

positions on the night of 21st Sept. and fled in confusion towards Sofia.

The pursuit of the Bulgarians was now taken up by all the Allied armies

from Doiran to Monastir, the vengeful Serbians in particular harrying the

retreating Second Army with a remorseless energy which drove it head-long

through Northern Serbia in increasing disaster towards Belgrade, while the

British and Greek forces under General Milne entered Bulgaria hard on the

heels of the demoralized First Army. By 26th Sept. the Bulgarian

politicians realized that the whole position was hopeless, and sent a

_parlementaire_ under a white flag to the Allied head-quarters. Four days

later they signed an armistice at Salonika, handing over complete control

of the Bulgarian railways and communications, demobilizing the Bulgarian

armies, and surrendering their arms and ammunition. On 4th Oct. King

Ferdinand abdicated, and his eldest son reigned in his stead as King Boris

III.

_Italian Campaign, 1918_

In less than a month--on 3rd Nov. to be exact--Austria-Hungary, after

experiences in the field similar to those which had fallen to Bulgaria's

lot, surrendered to the Italians. This turn of the tide in the Italian

campaign in 1918, which amply atoned for the disaster of Caporetto in the

preceding year, and crowned Italian arms with triumph, followed a final

attempt of the Austro-Hungarian army, now under the direction of General

von Arz, to crush the Italian front in conjunction with Ludendorff's great

offensive in the West. General von Arz's main attack was delivered on 15th

June on a 46-mile front along the Piave, and extended across the mountain

positions between the Piave and the Brenta. The two British divisions west

of Asiago played a great part in hurling the enemy back in this sector, the

French divisions similarly distinguishing themselves on their right.

Elsewhere some progress was made at certain points, and the Piave was

crossed in two places; but by the third day it was already obvious that the

attack had failed. Then the weather broke; rainstorms swept down the hills

and turned the Piave, which had been low when the enemy crossed, into full

flood, sweeping away a number of his bridges. Hurried efforts were made to

get the marooned troops back, and though General Diaz was unable to bring

up enough divisions in time to complete their discomfiture, they lost

heavily enough in the retreat, their casualties before the battle died down

on the other side the river amounting to some 200,000. Biding his time for

his own great counter-offensive until Foch could be assured about the

situation in the West, where Italian troops distinguished themselves in the

operations round Rheims, General Diaz gradually pushed the Austrians back,

until by 7th July he had cleared the whole Piave delta. It was not until

24th Oct. that his final blow was delivered. Its success was immediate and

overwhelming. Launched on the night of 23rd-24th Oct., the main attack

consisted of an advance across the Piave with the Tenth Italian

Army--placed under the command of Lord Cavan--now including three British

divisions, together with the Eighth and Twelfth Italian Armies. Cavan's

force formed the spear-head of the thrust, and ensured the success of the

battle by seizing the Island of Grave di Papadopoli in the Piave

mid-stream, held by the enemy as an advance post. This was captured in a

daring surprise attack by night, without any artillery preparation, and

paved the way for the passage of the troops across the swollen river. At

the same time the Fourth Italian Army, with a French division, advanced

across the old battle-ground of Asiago and Monte Grappa, where, however,

the Austrians counter-attacked, holding up the advance until the whole

front collapsed with the triumphant progress of the main attack across the

Piave. By 27th Oct. the breach had widened until it spread across the

entire front of the three Italian armies, which thereupon swept the plains

and mountain heights until all the enemy's positions between the Brenta and

the Piave had been regained. The Austrian retreat became a rout. By the end

of the month the Italians claimed 50,000 prisoners, had cut the railway

between the plains and the mountains at Conegliano, and occupied Feltre.

With Germany in similar plight; Turkey and Bulgaria already finished; and

her own internal affairs rapidly going from bad to worse, Austria appealed

to General Diaz for an armistice. When the end came on 3rd Nov. with the

signing of the agreement which involved the demobilization of the Austrian

army; the surrender of the Austrian fleet; the occupation by the Allies of

the Trentino, the Istrian peninsula, and a portion of the Dalmatian coast

and islands, the Italians had just captured both Trent and Trieste, a

landing-force having arrived at Trieste for the occupation that very day.

The wholesale nature of the Austro-Hungarian surrenders during the closing

phase of this decisive campaign may be gauged from the fact that by 3rd

Nov. they had amounted to no fewer than 300,000 prisoners and 5000 guns.

_Germany accepts Defeat_

The complete collapse of the Great War, and with it all the Pan-Germanic

dreams of world-power, came with dramatic swiftness. Ludendorff resigned,

and though the Kaiser had entreated Hindenburg to make one last stand on

the line of the Meuse, his appeal had been in vain. Hindenburg knew the

hopelessness of the position, not only of the German army but also of the

German home front. Ominous disturbances were breaking out in all parts of

the Fatherland, including a mutiny at Kiel. Turkey (30th Oct.) as well as

Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary had surrendered, and Germany was in no

position to face the Allies alone. The Armistice terms, with all their

crushing humiliations, had perforce to be accepted, and were signed on 11th

Nov. They included, besides evacuation of territory, the surrender of the

bulk of the German navy, 5000 additional guns, 30,000 machine-guns, 3000

trench-mortars, and 2000 aeroplanes. A zone of territory on the Rhine was

to be occupied by the Allies, and the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk (signed by

the Bolshevik Government with the Central Powers on 3rd March, 1918, in

defiance of Russia's solemn engagement not to make separate peace with

them) and Bucharest (forced on Roumania in March, 1917, at the close of von

Mackensen's drive) were declared null and void.

Unable to face his subjects, William II abdicated on 9th, slipped across

the frontier into Holland on 10th Nov., and on the 28th of that month

signed the formal document of his abdication, the Crown Prince, who also

sought refuge in Holland, following suit three days later. With the Kaiser

fell all the rulers of the German states. On 10th Nov. the Imperial

Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, resigned in favour of Herr Friedrich

Ebert, ex-shoemaker, who became 'First Imperial President of the German

Republic', with a Government formed from both wings of the Socialist party.

_Last year of Naval War_

The war had been won at sea as well as on land, though the British navy had

far fewer opportunities than the army of getting to grips with the enemy.

The hazards of naval warfare never ceased by day or night; and by the end

of the war the range of the submarine had extended from the eastern end of

the Mediterranean to the American coast. All the reckless efforts of the

Germans to win the war by these means failed. With the adoption of new

methods to cope with the danger--including the employment of 'Q' boats, or

mystery ships--and the invaluable help of the American reinforcements, the

monthly shipping losses in the closing year of the war grew progressively

less, falling, indeed, from the total of 1,494,473 tons in the September

quarter of 1917, to 915,513 tons in the corresponding quarter of 1918.

Meantime the new tonnage under construction to make good these losses was

as rapidly increasing. The U-boat war, in short, had failed; and the

Germans knew it had failed.

The outstanding operation at sea in the closing year of the war was the

raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend on St. George's Day under Vice-Admiral Sir

Roger Keyes, the object being to block the outlet of the German submarines

and destroyers from their depot at Bruges. Since all the neighbouring coast

was strongly fortified, the attack was fraught with the gravest danger, and

had to take the Germans as far as possible by surprise. The chief ship of

the expeditionary force was the old cruiser _Vindictive_ (Captain

Carpenter), which, with the ferry-boats _Iris II_ and _Daffodil_, were told

off to act as shield to the three blocking-ships intended for

Zeebrugge--_Thetis_, _Intrepid_, and _Iphigenia_. Two old submarines were

also taken, charged with explosives, and ordered to ram themselves below

the viaduct connecting Zeebrugge Harbour with the Mole, and then blow

themselves up. One of them carried out her orders to the letter; the

other's rope parted while she was being towed into position, and she was

too late to help. The simultaneous attempt to land, shortly after midnight,

followed a bombardment from a squadron of monitors, and was supported by a

flotilla of destroyers and a fleet of motor-boats. The _Vindictive_ ran

alongside the Mole within five minutes of being discovered by the German

garrison, and was kept in position by the _Daffodil_ and _Iris_ while

landing-parties jumped ashore to do what damage they could and the

blocking-ships were being rammed at the entrance. This successfully

accomplished--both the _Intrepid_ and _Iphigenia_ being blown up in the

fairway--the battered _Vindictive_, taking her landing-parties aboard,

backed out and returned with her supports to Dover. The first attack on

Ostend, which took place the same day, was a comparative failure owing to

the undetected removal of a buoy, the two blocking-ships sent for the

purpose being sunk outside the harbour. Three weeks later the commander of

the _Brilliant_ (Commander Godsal), who was in charge of that operation,

tried again, this time successfully--the old _Vindictive_, patched up as a

blocking-ship, being sunk 200 yards up the channel of Ostend--but Commander

Godsal was killed by a shell just after completing his task.

The German navy made one more appearance on the high seas--when, under the

terms of the Armistice, 6 battle-cruisers, 10 battleships, 8 light

cruisers, 50 destroyers, and all her submarines were surrendered, the bulk

of them to the Grand Fleet at Rosyth under Sir David Beatty on 21st Nov. On

the following day the captive ships were sent to Scapa Flow, where, exactly

seven months later, their German crews, while the British battle-fleet was

absent on gunnery practice, scuttled practically every vessel. A week

later--on 28th June, 1919--Germany signed the Peace Treaty at Versailles,

involving unconditional acceptance of all the Allies' terms.

_Turkey and the War_

In Aug., 1914, the German war-ships _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ escaped the

British squadron stationed to intercept them near Messina, the escape

arising partly through delay in correcting orders, and partly through the

fact that the German commander had no scruple about violating neutrality in

the course he sailed through the Straits of Messina. The ships reached the

Dardanelles on 11th Aug., and were sold to Turkey. This was a symptom of

Turkish relations with Germany rather than a determining cause of Turkey's

entrance into the war as an ally of the Central Powers; but many efforts

were made to change Turkey's attitude before the British, Russian, and

French Ambassadors left Constantinople (1st and 2nd Nov.) and Great Britain

declared war on her (5th Nov.). The first act of war undertaken by Turkey

was the dispatch to the Caucasus front of three army corps, with a plan of

campaign designed by General Liman von Sanders, and commanded by Enver

Pasha. They were decisively beaten by the Russian forces at Sarikamish in

December. Had the Russians possessed abundance of transport, or had the

roads been less difficult, this victory might have been pressed. But Russia

wanted all her resources elsewhere, and it was not till 1916, two years

later, that she made any serious attempt to carry the war into Turkish

territory. Then, under the direction of the Grand Duke Nicholas, and

General Yudenitch, who was some years later to come into prominence as the

leader of an unsuccessful attempt to reach Petrograd and overthrow the

Bolsheviks (1920), a Russian expedition drove back the Turkish forces on

Erzerum and captured it (16th Feb., 1915). On 16th April, after another

pause to gather transport, the Russians found their way to Trebizond on the

Black Sea, and during the next few months spread over the Asiatic Peninsula

to Bitlis, Musk, Van, Mosul, Erzingan, and Diarbekr, fighting generally

with local success, but with no concerted plan of campaign. The effort

expired in the autumn, and was not revived.

_Gallipoli Campaign_

Before, however, the Russians undertook their own expedition, they were

urgent in pressing on France and Great Britain the desirability of opening

up the Dardanelles so as to bring the Allies into touch with each other

through the Black Sea ports. In response to this invitation, the naval

possibilities of which were insufficiently considered by the advisers of

the British Admiralty, and the prospects of which had been roundly

condemned by all who had previously considered the problem, Admiral Carden

began a bombardment of the Dardanelles forts with old battleships, British

and French, on 19th Feb., 1915. The bombardment was renewed on 25th Feb.

and 6th March. Admiral Carden resigned on 16th March owing to ill-health,

and was succeeded by Admiral de Robeck, who favoured the idea of breaking

into the Sea of Marmora by rushing the straits. Four big ships, one the

_Queen Elizabeth_, engaged the guardian forts, Chanak and Kalid Bahr, at

long range (18th March); other ships closed in, and a French squadron

penetrated as far as Kephez Point. But the hidden batteries, the mines, and

various other devices frustrated the attempt, which was a practical failure

by the afternoon. Two good ships, _Irresistible_ and _Inflexible_, were put

out of action, and two others, _Bouvet_ and _Ocean_, sunk. After this

Admiral de Robeck accepted the professional view that a fleet operation

should be combined with one on land. Lord Kitchener, who had been as little

disposed towards the Dardanelles adventure as Lord Fisher, reluctantly

consented, and General Sir Ian Hamilton was appointed to command the

British expedition, while General d'Amade was in charge of the less

numerous French Colonial Corps.

Sir Ian Hamilton's force eventually comprised the 29th Division, the

Australian and New Zealand (Anzac) Corps, the East Lancashire Territorial

Division, and part of the Royal Naval Division. There was an unfortunate

delay in getting the expedition off from its Egyptian base, and the Turks

had ample time to prepare for its landing (25th April), which they did not

believe to be a possible feat. The landing was effected, nevertheless, with

incomparable gallantry, at five beaches on the nose of the Gallipoli

Peninsula, and at Gaba Tepe (by the Anzac Corps) farther north. Some 8000

men were got ashore in twelve hours, and an advance was made on the

following day (26th April). On 28th April the French Corps, which had made

a feint attack on the other side of the Narrows, was brought across to

assist in a general advance on the dominating height of Achi Baba. The

resulting engagement, the battle of Krithia, revealed the fact that the

Turkish field fortifications, the Turkish artillery, and the Turkish

numbers had all been too well organized under von Sanders to admit of being

rushed. Evidence accumulated that Achi Baba, which was the key to the

Dardanelles forts, could only be taken at ruinous cost by a frontal attack,

though an attack in force on 6th May went nearer to success than any other,

and appeared to fail only through a culminating misfortune of misdirected

artillery. Fighting continued in May and June, both here and at Gaba Tepe,

where General Birdwood commanded the Anzac Corps. Engagements in which

local advances were made took place on 29th May (Anzac Corps), 4th and 21st

June (French Corps), 28th June (29th Division), and though the climate and

the insufficient protection inflicted appalling losses on the hard-tried

British and French troops, it was on the Gallipoli Peninsula that the

flower of the Turkish army also was lost. Of the naval forces the _Queen

Elizabeth_ was summarily ordered home just before a new Turco-German

submarine campaign set in; three more old battleships were torpedoed; but

the English submarines retaliated by torpedoing a Turkish battleship,

gunboats, and transports in the Straits.

General Gouraud relieved General d'Amade in the middle of May, but was

badly wounded by a shell (30th June), and returned to France. General Sir

Ian Hamilton, who had unceasingly asked for more guns and more men,

received some part of the aid he asked in order to put a new plan into

operation. The plan was to land a force at Sari Bair, on the neck of the

Peninsula, where it could co-operate with the Anzac Corps in forcing a way

to the commanding heights there, and ultimately might take the Turks in the

flank. One force was to land at Anzac Cove; two other of the three new

divisions sent out to Sir Ian Hamilton were to be landed 4 miles north, at

Suvla Bay. The forces at Anzac were landed on 4th-6th Aug., bringing up the

numbers of Sir W. Birdwood's command to 36,000. Sir F. Stopford was in

command of the force to land at Suvla Bay (6th and 7th Aug.), with Generals

Hammersley and Mahon as divisional generals.

[Illustration: The Suvla and Anzac Line: map showing approximately by the

shaded portion the area occupied after the linking up of the two armies in

Aug., 1915]