THE ALLIED COUNTER-OFFENSIVE
In spite of the disasters she had suffered in 1915 and of her winter
campaigns in Galicia and the Caucasus, Russia was the first of the
Allies to take the offensive in 1916. She was, indeed, engaged in
attacking at some point or other along her vast and various fronts
from December till April. In February she again attempted to seize the
important bridgehead across the Dniester at Usciesko and carried it on
22 March. Four days before that she had initiated another offensive on
the shores of Lake Narotch, and in April she was pressing on
Trebizond. The Lake Narotch operation was possibly designed to
frustrate a German attack on Riga, and it was only that preventive
success that was achieved. It is true that the first and second German
lines were carried after artillery preparation by the Russian
infantry. But the scanty Russian artillery behaved like a travelling
circus; having done its business, it packed up and removed to seek
another opening. The Germans discovered the move, blasted the Russian
trenches, and on 28-29 April recovered more than they had lost. The
campaign in Armenia was more successful, and on 18 April Trebizond
passed securely into Russian hands, giving her a shorter route across
the Black Sea and a better base for future operations in Asia Minor
(see Maps, pp. 146, 182).
These, however, were minor operations compared with the offensive for
which Brussilov was preparing in May as the Russian contribution to
the combined attack on the Central Empires. It was not timed to take
place until the end of June. But the Austrian pressure on Italy from
the Trentino seems to have forced an acceleration which the German
attack on Verdun failed to extort from the Western Allies; and on 3
June a bombardment began on the whole of the Russian front from the
Pripet marshes southwards to the Rumanian border. Ivanov had been
recalled to headquarters and the line was under Brussilov, with four
generals--Kaledin, Sakharoff, Scherbachev, and Lechitsky--to command
his various army-groups. Opposed to them were four Austrian generals
and the German Bothmer, who held the front from Zalocze on the upper
Sereth to the Dniester. From Kolki northwards the Pripet swamps made
progress difficult, and Bothmer offered a stubborn resistance on the
Strypa. But in the Volhynian triangle and the Bukovina the attack
achieved a surprising success. The infantry advance began on the 4th
and by noon the Austrian front was completely broken. In two days the
Russians advanced more than twenty miles, and on the 6th they entered
Lutsk, the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's headquarters, capturing
enormous booty and many thousands of prisoners. On both sides the
breach was widened; to the north Rojitche and to the south Dubno both
fell on the 8th, and the Volhynian triangle passed completely into
Russian hands. Their triumph continued for another week: their salient
was deepened by a further advance to Zaturtsky and Svidniki, within
twenty-five miles of Kovel, and broadened by the fall of Kolki to the
north and Demidovka and Kozin to the south. In less than a fortnight
Kaledin and Sakharoff had covered fifty miles and taken 70,000
prisoners.
Scherbachev was less successful against Bothmer in front of Tarnopol;
but his left wing carried Buczacz, farther south, and crossed the
Strypa, while beyond the Dniester Lechitsky outdid Kaledin's success
at Lutsk. Forcing the passage of the Dniester near Okna on that same
4th of June, he broke the Austrian front and drove one half of it west
to Horodenka and the other half south-east towards Czernowitz. The
latter portion was now an isolated and disorganized fragment of the
Austrian army which could do nothing but escape across the Pruth and
the Carpathians leaving Lechitsky to overrun the Bukovina. On the 17th
the Russians entered Czernowitz, its capital, and six days later they
reached Kimpolung, its most southerly town. Other columns swept west
to Sniatyn and Kuty, and by the 23rd the whole of the province had
been conquered. The Austrians were in no position to impose a pause
upon the frontier of Galicia, and Kolomea fell on the 29th. Tlumacz
followed on the 30th and Bothmer's right was seriously threatened.
Gathering some German reinforcements he counter-attacked on 2 July,
recovered Tlumacz, and checked Lechitsky's right, though his left
continued its advance along the Carpathian foothills and captured
Delatyn on 8 July, thus cutting the railway to Marmaros Sziget. The
Dniester and the Pruth were now flooded with July rains, and a month
elapsed before Lechitsky could resume his march.
Other causes had checked the Russians farther north. Brussilov's
offensive may have been merely a vast reconnaissance in force, but its
astonishing success had stirred the Germans to prompt action. Ewarts
was beginning an attack on the important junction of Baranovitchi
north of the Pripet marshes, and presently the line of battle spread
down the Shchara and along the Oginski canal. If he succeeded like
Brussilov, Brest-Litovsk might be caught between two fires with dire
results to the whole German front in Russia and future in the Balkans.
It was a peril to which the German prospects at Verdun and forebodings
on the Somme were secondary considerations; and both the Western
allies profited from Brussilov's campaign. One German corps was
hurried from Verdun to Kovel in six days, and others followed at a
less exhausting speed. Austrians also came from the Tyrol and the
Balkans, and Ludendorff was sent to restore confidence in the command.
Kovel was the southern key to Brest-Litovsk; the northern flank could
look after itself since Ewarts was making little progress, and Bothmer
had barred the way for the time to the other essential points at
Lemberg and Stanislau. But Kovel was in serious danger, for the
Russians had penetrated to Lokatchi due south of that fortress; and it
was for its defence that Ludendorff organized the Austrian
counter-offensive in the latter half of June.
Kovel was saved. The Russian line was pressed back from Lokatchi to
Zaturtsky, from Svidniki to Rojitche, and behind the Stokhod. But the
counter-offensive was spent by the end of the month, and early in July
the Russians resumed their advance. North of the Pripet Ewarts was no
more successful than he had been in June; German divisions were made
of sterner stuff than the Austrian, and Hindenburg knew well enough
what was at stake. After heavy losses the Russian attack died away
without appreciable gain of ground, and north of the Pripet at least
the enemy line was secure. Nor, even south of it, was Brussilov able
to do much more than straighten his own, bringing it forward to the
point reached by his salient in front of Lutsk. This, however,
involved some danger to Lemberg and effected the fall of Stanislau
farther south. The chief obstacle was Bothmer in the centre, on whose
stubborn resistance the Germans prided themselves although most of his
troops were Austrian; and he occupied most of the Russian attention
for the rest of the campaign. But the most striking advance was made
in the north of Brussilov's command, where summer had dried the
low-lying ground south of the Pripet marshes. Here General Lesch,
whose Third Russian Army had been brought down from north of the
Pripet, broke the Austrian line on the Styr between Kolki and
Rafalovka on 4-5 July, and in four days reached the Stokhod. He even
crossed it at points, but failed to carry it in its entirety so as to
threaten the northern defences of Kovel.
The main offensive was launched in Galicia, doubtless with a view to
its reaction upon the attitude of Rumania; and here Bothmer was
menaced by Sakharoff in the north and Lechitsky in the south. To
disconcert the northern attack the Germans had planned a
counter-offensive on the 18th, but Sakharoff got his blow in first
three days before. Forcing the Austrians across the Styr in front of
Dubno, he advanced along its tributary the Lipa, captured Mikhailovka
and Bludov, and then swinging south occupied Berestechko and
threatened Brody on the 20th. It was entered after a week's fighting
on the 28th. Thence he struck south towards the railway from Krasne to
Tarnopol which supplied Bothmer's left, while Bothmer's right was
being simultaneously threatened by Lechitsky now that the floods on
the Dniester had subsided. On 7 August he recaptured Tlumacz and
reached the Dniester near Nijniow; on the 10th he forced his way into
Stanislau, while Scherbachev attacked on the north bank of the
Dniester. Almost outflanked on the north by Sakharoff and on the south
by Scherbachev and Lechitsky, Bothmer had at length to retreat to the
Zlota Lipa with his right in front of Halicz, his centre at Brzezany,
and his left at Zborov. He was vigorously attacked by Scherbachev, and
his right was pushed back on both banks of the Dniester as far as
Halicz until it stood upon the Narajovka. But the centre stood firm
against Scherbachev's great effort of the 29th, though Potutory was
taken and Brzezany reduced to a salient; and the fighting of September
and October failed to modify the position anywhere except far south in
the Carpathians, where Lechitsky secured Mount Kapul and the
Jablonitza and Kirlibaba passes, and advanced as far west as Huta.
This movement was in sympathy with the Rumanian declaration of war on
27 August, and spoilt the Russian chances of a successful
concentration against Bothmer. Russia was not sufficiently furnished
with munitions or trained men to provide for two great efforts on that
front, and her summer campaign had failed of complete success largely
because of the services it rendered to her allies. No fewer than
sixteen divisions were withdrawn, between June and September, by the
Germans from the Western front and one from the Balkans to meet
Brussilov's offensive, and they included some of the best of the
Prussian Guards. Austria diverted seven divisions from Italy, and even
the Turks sent two. The offensive had cost the Central Empires
something like a million casualties, many of them Czecho-Slovak and
Jugo-Slav prisoners, who deserted willingly enough and in time did
valiant service in strange lands to the cause of the Entente and of
their own national independence. But the value of Russia's last great
effort in the war was not limited to the front on which it was made.
It was an excellent, though almost solitary, example of the advantages
of co-ordinated strategy between the Allies, and what progress was
made on the Somme, in Italy, and in Macedonia in 1916 was partly due
to Russian valour on other fronts.
The British Empire, however, had eyes in the summer of that year for
little except its own offensive in the West. It was mainly a British
affair, for the German attack on Verdun had succeeded to the extent of
making impossible both an independent French offensive and an
equivalent French contribution to the joint campaign on the Somme.
Like other realities of the war, this fact was hidden from the public,
and hopes ran high. The failures of the autumn were recognized as due
to their being premature and made on narrow fronts. We had learnt our
lesson; there was a new general in command; in guns and munitions we
had outstripped the Germans; our men were no longer raw recruits, and
we had millions of them; and, unlike Germany, we had no alternative
front to exact its toll like the Russian. The one doubt that was
harboured rather than expressed related to leadership. Lord Kitchener
had lost his life in the Hampshire, sunk by a mine off the west coast
of the Orkneys, on 6 June. But Sir William Robertson, his chief of
Staff, had acquired a great repute as an organizer, and the question
was whether the officers in the field would exhibit qualities of
intellect comparable with his administrative capacity or with the
valour of their men.
Apart from the urgent need of relieving the pressure on Verdun, a
British offensive was due as a contribution to the common task; and
the front on which it would be made did not offer a great variety of
choice. Whatever attractions other localities may have held out
yielded to the Somme, where the French and British lines met by
Maricourt, and an advance side by side was the nearest approach the
Allies had yet made to unity of command or even of design. The
combined effort was to be concentrated on a single front of
twenty-five miles from Gommecourt, half-way between Albert and Arras,
to Fay, five miles above Chaulnes. If it achieved the success that was
hoped, it would roll up the German line north towards the Belgian
coast and render untenable in the south and east the great salient of
the German front. The retreat which the Germans effected to the
Hindenburg lines in the spring of 1917 was the least that was expected
from the summer offensive of the year before. But Germans are seldom
idle, and for months they had been silently and unobserved preparing
to counter the vast storm of explosives about to break on their
trenches. That wire-entanglements however extensive, and trenches
however intricate, could be obliterated had been proved, and the
Germans were ready with their prophylactic on the ground that was
chosen for attack. The rolling downs of the Bapaume ridge offered
natural attractions to an army sick of the water-logged flats of
Flanders, but they also afforded the Germans depth and scope for their
vast underground chambers which no artillery could destroy; and these
defences more than any other single cause defeated the British thrust
at Gommecourt and Serre.
The Battle Of The Somme
This was officially described as a subsidiary operation, yet upon the
assistance it rendered to the main attack farther south depended the
whole nature and course of the campaign. Had that thrust eastward
towards Bapaume been successful, the Germans facing the Somme would
have been taken in the rear, and the painful and costly climb up the
slopes to Bapaume, which lasted throughout the summer and autumn,
would have been achieved in a couple of days. Places like Pozières,
well towards the goal, were indeed given as our objectives for the
first day of the battle of the Somme. It began on 1 July. Since the
middle of June there had been an intermittent bombardment of the
German lines which grew in intensity and extent from the 24th. The
attack had been entrusted to the British Fourth Army, under Sir Henry
Rawlinson and the French Sixth under Fayolle. It was expected by the
Germans between Albert and Arras, though not along the Somme, and
their artillery preparation took off some of the edge of our attack.
The troops advanced with the utmost dash and determination, and
detachments got far ahead of the line into Pendant copse, Thiepval,
the Schwaben redoubt, and even the outskirts of Grandcourt. But few of
them got back when they found that the line as a whole had held, and
the losses of these troops in the fire to the left and the right and
in front of them made up the bulk of the British casualties on that
day.
Farther south they fared better. The outskirts of La Boisselle and
Fricourt were reached; Mametz was taken, and also Montauban by the
most striking advance of the day. On our right the French, whose
attack had been planned by Foch, had the advantage of a surprise.
North of the Somme they reached the edge of Hardecourt and Curlu;
south of it they captured Dompierre, Becquincourt, Bussu, and Fay, and
with these villages 6000 prisoners. The advance was greatest the
farthest it was removed from where the Germans had prepared their
resistance; complete success south of the Somme dwindled away to
complete failure at Serre. That northern attack was not renewed, but
from Ovillers south and eastwards the advantage was stubbornly pressed
on the 2nd. Fricourt fell and its surrounding defences, while the
French took Frise, Curlu, and Herbecourt. It was clear, however, that
the German line had not, and could not be broken in the sense which
the public at least attached to the word. A first or even a second and
third line of trenches might be taken, but there was an indefinite
series behind, and the progress was so slow that anything like a
thrust right through the German defences and rout of the German forces
was out of the question. It was not until the 5th that La Boiselle in
the first German line was mastered, and farther east the initial
success of the British was checked by a line of woods which required
weeks to clear. On the 7th we took Contalmaison, but were driven out
of most of it by a counter-attack. It finally fell on the 10th, but
Ovillers held out till the 16th. The woods to the right offered a no
less stubborn resistance. Bernafay wood was, indeed, gained on the
4th, but the German flanks in Mametz wood to the west and Trônes wood
to the east were only driven in at the cost of five days' ferocious
fighting from the 8th to the 13th. The French encountered similar
opposition north of the Somme, but south of it they were more
fortunate. On the 4th and 5th they extended their gains on their right
by the capture of most of Estrées and Belloy, and after disposing of
German counter-attacks leapt forward on the 9th past Flaucourt to
Biaches, a mile from Péronne.
On 14 July the second stage of the battle of the Somme began with an
attack before dawn. It was the national fête-day of France, but the
attack was made on the British front from Contalmaison to Trônes wood.
The objectives were the wood and two villages of Bazentin, High wood
(the Bois des Foureaux), Longueval, and Delville wood, while Trônes
wood still remained to be completely cleared. The day was one of the
most successful in the four and a half months' battle, and the dash of
the British troops carried them as far as all their objectives.
Bazentin-le-Grand and le Petit and the wood were taken; aided by an
unwonted cavalry charge which raised delusive hopes of breaking
through, a great advance was made to High wood; and the Germans were
driven out of most of Longueval and the Delville wood. But it was more
difficult to retain these conquests; the advanced positions were
exposed to enfilading German fire, and counter-attacks drove us back
at various points and made the retention of others a matter of
desperate conflict for weeks. High wood had to be completely
evacuated; for Delville wood the South Africans, and the troops which
relieved them on the 20th, had to struggle for thirteen days, and it
was not wholly cleared for another month. Much of what was credited to
the 14th of July had to be retaken in detailed fighting spread over
many days.
On the 16th, however, the fall of Ovillers prepared the way for an
attack on Pozières, which was finally captured with the help of the
Australians on the 26th, and the taking of Waterlot farm on our right
opened up an advance on Guillemont. Much of High wood was recovered on
the 20th. On that day the French pushed east of Hardecourt and seized
a section of the Combles-Clery railway, while farther south they
secured the German defences from Barleux to Vermandovillers. On the
27th the last German outpost in Longueval was taken, and on 4 August
the Australians began their advance from Pozières to Mouquet farm and
the windmill which commanded the summit of the Bapaume ridge. The
ground was contested inch by inch, and it took many weary days to win.
Villages and woods all along the front were only captured by
fragments, and most of the fragments were lost again more than once
before they finally passed into our hands. Well into September there
were bits of Delville wood and High wood still in German possession,
and a concerted attack of 18 August was a failure except for the
seizure of Leipzig redoubt. On the 12th, however, and again on the
16th, the French improved their position north of the Somme and got
close to Maurepas, of which they completed the capture on the 24th.
September was a better month for both the Allies. There was a general
attack on the 3rd, when Guillemont, which had been disputed for six
weeks, was carried at length, and the French rushed Le Forest, Cléry,
and the German lines up to the outskirts of Combles. Two days later
the British got into Leuze wood between Guillemont and Combles, and
captured Falfemont farm to the south, while a new French army extended
the line of battle below Chaulnes and took Chilly and Soyécourt; on
the 6th they pushed their advance both north and south of the Somme,
taking above the river L'Hôpital farm and Anderlu and Marrières woods,
and below it parts of Vermandovillers and Berny. The German
counter-attacks were unusually unsuccessful, and on 9 September Ginchy
was carried by the Irish regiments which had helped to take
Guillemont. It looked as though the Allies were at least getting into
their stride, or the wasting struggle was beginning to tell on the
German reserves and resistance. Over two months had been spent in
securing objectives marked down for the first day or two of the
battle; but with the fall of Guillemont the last fragment of the
German second position had fallen into our hands, their third was more
or less improvised, we had a new weapon in reserve, and were half-way
from our original lines to Bapaume. Farther afield Rumania had
declared war, and Brussilov was still drawing German troops from West
to East.
The third stage of the battle therefore opened with hopes which even
the experience of the second had not been able to quench. Gough's
Fifth Army had since early in July been formed as an independent
command to the left of Rawlinson's Fourth, and its right comprised the
1st Canadian Corps which was to attack Courcelette. The other points
of the German third line of defence were Martinpuich, Flers,
Lesboeufs, and Morval. Martinpuich was the objective of a Scottish
division of the New Army, Flers that of the New Zealanders, Lesboeufs
and Morval those of the Guards and another division of the old
Regulars. Behind the British lines were collected twenty-four "Tanks,"
which were to precede them in the attack and prove by this first
experiment their value as a weapon of war. On the 14th a brigade of
Gough's army stormed the Hohenzollern trench and a redoubt called by
the Germans a wunderwerk; apart from this success, the attack diverted
German attention from the real offensive, which began on the 15th with
an intense bombardment. The Tanks spread terror and devastation among
the German lines and the results of the day for once exceeded all
expectations. Courcelette fell to the Canadians, Martinpuich to the
Scots, Flers to the New Zealanders. High wood was at last enveloped in
this advance, and Delville wood passed by the division of the New Army
which pushed from Ginchy towards Lesboeufs. That effort on our right
was, however, hampered by the Germans in the Quadrilateral and
Bouleaux wood to the east of Ginchy, and the Guards were unable to
carry out the most important tactical part of the day's work by
carrying Lesboeufs and Morval.
The French had no such accumulation of gains on the 15th, but they
conquered a larger area between the 13th and 18th. They began on the
13th with the bold capture of Bouchavesnes right across the great road
from Péronne to Bapaume, and supplemented it by taking Le Priez farm
on the flank of Combles. On the 17th they completed their work in
Berny and Vermandovillers south of the Somme, and on the 18th added
Deniécourt. On that day the British at last mastered the Quadrilateral
east of Ginchy, and thus prepared for the great success which attended
the next general attack on the 25th. It was the best day of the whole
campaign. Lesboeufs and Morval fell on the north of Combles, while the
French took Rancourt on the south-east, and away to the west Gough's
army made the surprising seizure of Thiepval. Further fruits were
gathered on the morrow; Gueudecourt, which had been taken but
abandoned on the 25th, was recovered; the French who had then failed
against Frégicourt now took it; and Combles was the prize of their
joint success. Then the weather broke; and the Germans, who had
already begun to prepare their Hindenburg lines far away in their
rear, were enabled to cling to the Bapaume salient until they had
taken all the precautions for an orderly and inexpensive retreat.
The rest of the Somme campaign was an affair of local details until
Gough's Fifth Army intervened on a larger scale. Eaucourt l'Abbaye was
taken on 1 October, lost on the 2nd, and retaken on the 3rd. Le Sars
was captured on the 7th, the Stuff and Regina redoubts, between it and
Thiepval, on the 21st; and progress was made north towards the Butte
de Warlencourt and north-east towards Le Transloy. The French captured
Sailly and Saillisel to the east of Morval and pushed far into the St.
Pierre Vaast wood and towards Moislains, while south of the Somme they
took Ablaincourt, Le Pressoir, Fresnes, Villers-Carbonnel, and
Barleux, and seized the west bank of the river opposite Eterpigny
above Péronne. On 9 November the weather improved, and though the
October rains had made transport almost impossible across the mangled
soil of the battlefield on the Somme, the conditions were not so bad
north of Thiepval, where our advance had been stayed on 1 July. The
situation at Beaumont-Hamel was also changed for the better by the
fact that the German stronghold was now a pronounced salient enfiladed
by our fire from the captured Hohenzollern, Schwaben, Stuff, and
Regina redoubts. But that advantage was less felt farther north at
Serre, and there the left wing of our attack on 13 November was no
more successful than it had been on 1 July. Better fortune attended
our effort between Serre and Beaumont-Hamel, but the farthest advance
of the day was that of a New Army division on the extreme right of the
attacking line. St. Pierre Divion fell almost at once, and our troops
advanced on the southern heights of the Ancre to the Hansa trench
half-way to Grandcourt.
The task of the centre was to take the fortress of Beaumont-Hamel,
including the forked ravine to the south which required a prolonged
and desperate struggle. The work was done by Highland Territorials
before the early November sunset; and meanwhile the Naval Division on
their right drove the Germans out of their first two lines on the
northern bank of the Ancre towards Beaucourt. One battalion penetrated
almost to the village, but was held up in a perilous position owing to
the resistance of a strong German redoubt on its flank and almost in
its rear. It stood its ground throughout the day, and at night the
surrender of the German redoubt to a couple of tanks opened the way
for a general attack on Beaucourt on the 14th. It was stormed by the
battalion which had been waiting outside it since the previous
morning. German counter-attacks on the 15th were repulsed, and on the
17th a further advance was made to the Bois d'Hollande north of
Grandcourt, while Canadians from the Regina trench established
themselves near its western outskirts. Another avenue towards Bapaume
had been opened up, but winter postponed any further advance, and the
Somme campaign had come to an end.
It had proved a sort of inverted Verdun, and the comfort we had
derived from that successful defence was now extracted by the Germans
from their defence of Bapaume. The parallel was not exact, because
while the German gains at Verdun narrowed down to a point, ours on the
Somme expanded in a circle. Yet the arguments were substantially the
same: the French at Verdun were willing to sell any number of acres
for armies, and the Germans professed an equal content on the Somme.
Each side contended in turn that the offensive was the more costly
form of warfare, and then repudiated the contention when it came to
attack itself; and there was not a great deal to choose between them
so far as logic was concerned. It is also clear that the Germans would
have been at least as successful at Verdun as we were on the Somme but
for the relief afforded by counter-offensives elsewhere, and that we
should have profited no more from the Somme than the Germans did from
Verdun had our Somme campaign been interrupted by German offensives on
other fronts. Nor was there much to choose in the way of casualties:
our estimate of the German losses as approximating 600,000 was a
reasonable guess, but our own casualties were well over 400,000. The
French losses were lighter, but the two together cannot have been less
than the German. The Germans on the Somme, like the French at Verdun,
withdrew divisions to refit before they were hopelessly broken; but
what was considered wisdom in the French was reckoned weakness in the
Germans and the Prussian Guards, whose return to Berlin, concealed in
furniture-vans to hide their pitiable plight, was graphically
described in the English press by an imaginative American journalist,
were really sent as a contribution to that immense effort in the East
by which, in spite of the Somme campaign, Germany first closed the
gaps in the crumbling Austrian front and then overran Rumania.
There was thus a good deal of justice in the German comparison between
Verdun and the Somme. The fallacy lay in the facts that our offensive
was not brought to a stand by a German counter-attack but by the
advent of winter, that the moves elsewhere in the West were the French
ripostes at Verdun in October and December and not German
counter-offensives, and that their campaign in Rumania, in spite of
its painful success, had no effect upon the vital situation in the
West. That episode was against us, but the tendencies were in our
favour; our losses might equal the German, but equal attrition would
leave us paramount in the end, barring collapse on the part of a
principal ally. It was the fundamental situation which led to the
German proposals for peace at Christmas, and the superficial
impression which provoked the simultaneous fall of the Asquith
Government.
So, too, there was something superficial and unjust in the lay
criticism of Sir Douglas Haig's generalship. "Tactics of the Stone
Age," was Mr. Lloyd George's later comment, which should not have been
made in public at the expense of a general for whose retention in the
command he was himself responsible. Even Foch controlled the group of
French armies which co-operated with us on the Somme without producing
results of a different character; and it is idle to compare the
achievements of the generalissimo of 1918 with those of the British
commander on the Somme in 1916. Haig controlled the British forces in
France and Flanders, but he had no jurisdiction beyond a mere fragment
of the thousands of miles of front on which the war was waged. Neither
he nor any other Entente general therefore enjoyed the strategical
opportunities of a Falkenhayn, Hindenburg, or Ludendorff, who could
direct their blows east or west as they pleased; and responsibility
for the strategical conduct of the war rested not with the Entente
generals but with the heterogeneous Governments which employed them.
Each commander had to work in his own compartment and could not escape
its limitations. Nor was the diversity merely one of military
commands; there was also the Navy, upon which the whole Allied
strategy hung, to be considered; and not only in the Entente, but in
each of its several Governments there was, and there could be, no such
unity of direction as was possible in the militarist Central Empires.
There was also something naive in the popular clamour for a general as
a Deus ex machina. For, in spite of apparent exceptions, the tendency
of the transition from heroic to democratic ages is to transfer both
in war and in politics the decisive influence from the individual to
the mass, from the protagonist to the private; and modern warfare,
with its complexity and its science, has become mainly a matter of
mechanics. Its hero is the mob, and its generals fight far away in the
rear of the line of battle; even the telescope has given place to the
telephone. Individual valour counts for little compared with accurate
range-tests and spotting by waves of sound. Man has mastered nature
only to become more dependent upon his servants, and the vast
machinery which the modern general controls envelops him in its toils.
He reaches his goal in a motor, and the race is won by the best
machine. Generalship was but one of a vast number of factors which
gave us control of the Bapaume Ridge but also prevented the Somme
campaign from saving Rumania or spoiling the German defence against
Russia.
The battle of the Somme did not, however, quite exhaust the Entente
offensive for 1916. As it died down amid the autumn rains, the French
struck back at Verdun on 24 October. Here Nivelle, who had taken over
the command from Pétain in April, entrusted the attack to Mangin. The
Germans were not taken by surprise, but they were unprepared for the
strength of the blow, and from Fleury to Fort Douaumont positions
which had taken the Germans months to win were recovered within a few
hours. On the right the struggle was more protracted, but on 2
November Fort Vaux and on the 3rd the villages of Vaux and Damloup
were regained. A greater success followed on 15 December. The attack
extended from Vacherauville on the Meuse to Bezonvaux on the east, and
all along the line the French won their objectives. Besides
Vacherauville they retook Poivre hill, Haudromont wood, and Louvemont
on the left, captured Chambrettes farm and Caurières wood in the
centre, and seized Hardaumont wood and Bezonvaux on their right.
Towards the north-east the Germans had almost been thrust back to the
line from which they started in February, though to the north they
still retained some ground, and the French counter-offensive did not
extend to the west of the Meuse. It was a characteristic exaggeration
of the press to represent these gains as a complete reconquest of all
that the Germans had won in the spring; but enough had been done to
give the Germans unpleasant anticipations for 1917 and to counsel them
to draw in their horns in the material sense of retreat from their
threatened position on the Somme and in the metaphorical sense of
seeking peace (see Map, p. 194).
Italy, too, had been making her contribution to the Allied offensive
during these months. Brussilov's onslaught in June had trod on the
tail on* the Austrian invasion from the Trentino, and it was patriotic
pride which led an Italian journal to describe Cadorna's recovery as
the quickest and greatest reaction of the war. Italy's allies at least
were not surprised when during the latter half of June her armies
regained the ground evacuated by the Austrians in a skilful retreat,
including Posina, Monte Cimone, Arsiero, Asiago, and the whole of the
Sette Communi. Having thus protected his flank, Cadorna reverted to
his frontal attack along the Isonzo and on the Carso. The Austrians
still held nearly the whole of the east bank of the river and Oslavia
and Podgora on the west bank in front of Gorizia. Gorizia itself was
protected by two mountain strongholds, Sabatino to the north and San
Michele to the south. Early in August Cadorna had completed his
transfer of guns and troops from the Trentino front, and on the 4th he
feinted an attack across the Isonzo at Monfalcone. On the 6th a heavy
bombardment battered the whole front from Mount Sabatino to Mount San
Michele; both the key-positions were taken by assault in a battle
which lasted two days, and on the 9th Gorizia fell. During the next
few days the advance was pushed across the Doberdo plateau, south of
Gorizia, and beyond the Vallone on to the western end of the
forbidding and formidable Carso. By the 15th the Italian line ran from
Tivoli, north-east of Gorizia, down the river Vertoibizza, across the
Vippacco and along the Carso east of Nad Logem, Opacchiasella, and
Villanova. No such victory had yet been won by unaided Italian troops
against their hereditary foes, and it did much to stimulate Italian
confidence and enthusiasm for the war. Some further progress on the
Carso was made during the autumn, and great Italian victories were
announced in September, October, and November; but the Italians were
never within measurable distance of capturing the key of the Carso at
the Hermada, and Trieste was a very distant prospect until other
causes had brought about the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire. When at
the end of August Italy at last declared war on Germany, the course of
the war remained unaffected, and greater store was set on the
simultaneous intervention of the kindred Latin people of Rumanias (see
Map, p. 298).