In the handling of the Coloured Labour Units there were naturally many new and occasionally surprising things to be learnt by the British soldiers directing them. A party of Nagas, for instance, were among the Indian Labour Units. "They were savages from a country which has only recently been brought thoroughly under British rule," writes an officer of the A.G.'s department. "Their pastime is head-hunting, and their 'uniform' when at home is that bestowed on them by Nature. They were extraordinarily cheerful, willing workers, and gave no trouble at all. The trouble of providing the special kind of food which in general the natives of India require, was entirely absent in the case of the Nagas. They have a strong liking for rats, and the only food they object to is monkeys. A company of Nagas, about May, 1917, after the advance at Arras in April, were sent up to somewhere near Boisleux to bury dead horses. The dead horses were disposed of—but not by burial. And in addition an Infantry Brigade in the neighbourhood had soon to mourn the loss of all their dogs."

The Chinese were a constant source of amusement and interest to the British. All that neatness and delicacy of finger which is shown in Chinese art and hand-work, the infinite pains, the careful finish which the Chinaman inherits from his age-long, patient past, were to be seen even in the digging of trenches. Their defence lines were a marvel of finish, in spite of the fact that in hard manual labour they were ahead of any other unit—shifting, often, 240 cubic feet of soil per day, per man. As porters, too, they were beyond rivalry; and their contempt for the German prisoners' capacity in this direction was amusing. A Chinese coolie, watching two prisoners handle a stack of cased goods, could not at last contain himself. He walked up to them, saying: "Hun no damn good," and proceeded to show them how it should be done. The stolidity of the Chinaman is generally proof against surprise, but some of those coming from the backwoods of Northern China were occasionally bewildered and overwhelmed when set down amid the amazing and to them terrifying wonders of the "back" of a European Army. One company of such men arrived at their appointed camp, and the next day there was a fight with enemy aeroplanes overhead. One of the poor coolies was so terrified that he went and hanged himself, and the rest could only be pacified with great difficulty. On the other hand, a flying officer once offered a ride to a Chinese ganger who, with his men, had been doing some work on an aerodrome for the R.A.F. "The ganger went up with glee; and the pilot's feelings may be imagined when, at a good height, he looked round and saw the ganger standing up, as happy as could be, looking over the edge and pointing down to the camp where his company lived, and other landmarks he was able to recognise."

* * * * *

Of the noble army of women, who, since 1917, have formed part of that great force behind the fighting lines I have been rapidly sketching—what shall one say but good and grateful things?

In 1917, as our car wound through the narrow streets of Montreuil, I remember noticing a yellow car in front of us, unlike the usual Army car, and was told that it contained the new head of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, and that 10,000 women were now to be drafted into France, to take the place of men wanted for the fighting line. And a little later at Abbeville I found General Asser, then Inspector-General of the Lines of Communication, deep in the problems connected with the housing and distribution of the new Women's Contingent. "Two women want the accommodation of three men; but three women can only do the work of two men." That seemed to be the root fact of the moment, and accommodation and work were being calculated accordingly. Then the women came, and took their place in the clerical staffs of the various military departments, of Army or other Headquarters, in the Army canteens, in the warehouses and depots of the ports. It is clear that, during the concluding year of the war, they rendered services of which British women may reasonably be proud; and in the retreat of last March, by universal testimony, they bore themselves with special coolness and pluck. Many of them were suddenly involved in the rush and confusion of battle, which was never meant to come near them. They took the risks and bore the strain of it with admirable composure. The men beside whom they marched or rode when depots canteens, and headquarters disappeared in the general over-running of our fighting lines, took note! It was yet another page in that history of a new Womanhood we are all collaborating in to-day. And I will add a last touch, within my personal knowledge, when in January, at Montreuil, in a room at G.H.Q., an officer of A. described to me how he had recently interviewed a gathering of women belonging to Queen Mary's Auxiliary Army Corps, and had asked them whether they wished to be immediately demobilised. Almost without exception the answer came: "Not while we can be useful to the Army." They had enlisted for the war; the war was not over, in spite of the Armistice; and, though it would be pleasant to go home, they still stuck to their job.

* * * * *

Thus hastily I have run through the labour of various kinds which was the base and condition of the fighting force. I have left myself room for only a few last words as to that Directing Intelligence which was its brain and soul—i.e., the Staff work of the Army—from the brilliant and distinguished men at General Headquarters immediately surrounding the Commander-in-Chief, down to the Brigade and Battalion Staffs, the members of which actually conduct the daily and nightly operations of war from the close neighbourhood of the fighting line. In a preceding chapter I have given a general outline of the duties falling to the Staff of the First Army in the attack on the Hindenburg line. The range and variety of them was immense. But their success, no less than the success of the campaign as a whole, depended on the faithful execution of all the minor Staff work of the Army, from the battalion upward. The skill, precision and personal bravery required from the officers concerned are not as much realised, I think, as they ought to be by the public at home. An officer engaged as a Brigade-Major in the fight on the Ancre, September, 1917, has written me a detailed account of four days' experience in that battle, involving the relief of one brigade by another, and a successful but difficult attack, which gives a vivid idea of Staff work as carried on in the actual fighting line itself. We see, first, the night journey of the four infantry battalions and their machine-gun company and trench-mortar battery, from Albert to Pozieres by motor-bus, then the four-mile march of the troops in darkness and rain along a duck-board track, to the trenches they were to relieve. The Brigade-Major describes the elaborate preparation needed for every movement of the relief and the attack, and the anxiety in the Brigade Headquarters, a dug-out twenty feet below the ground, when the telephone—which is constantly cut by shell fire—fails to announce the arrival of each company at its appointed place. Presently, the left company of the battalion on the left is missing. In the darkness, and the congestion of men moving up to and back from the trenches on the narrow track, clearly something has gone wrong. The Brigade-Major sets out to discover the why and wherefore. The attack is to start at 6 A.M., and from 9 P.M. till nearly 5 A.M.—that is, for close on eight hours, the Brigade-Major is up and down the track, inquiring into the causes of delay—(a trench, for instance, has been blown in at one point, and the men forced into the mud beside it)—watching and helping the assembly of the troops, and "hunting" for the company which has not arrived, and is "apparently lost." About five he returns to his brigade, hoping for the best.

Then, half an hour before the moment appointed for the advance, "we heard a bombardment starting. The enemy had either discovered the hour of our attack, or were about to attack us." The Brigadier and his Brigade-Major anxiously go up to the top of their dug-out to survey the field. It is clear that the British line is being heavily attacked. Messages begin to arrive from the battalion commander on the left to say that all communication with his companies has now been cut. The commander on the right also rings up to report heavy casualties. Then the telephone wires on both sides are broken, and the Staff signal officer goes out to repair them under fire. At last, precisely at the moment appointed, five minutes past six, in the rainy autumn dawn, our own guns—an enormous concentration of them—open a tremendous fire, and the earth-shaking noise "helps men to forget themselves, and go blind for the enemy." Then steadily the artillery barrage goes forward, one hundred yards every four minutes, and the infantry advance behind it, past the German front trench, to a ravine about three hundred yards further, which is known to be strongly held. The final objective is a strong German position protecting a village in the valley of the Ancre.

Meanwhile, in the headquarters' dug-out, messages come pouring in "by telephone, by lamp-signal, by wireless, by pigeon, by runners, and reports dropped from aeroplanes." The progress of the battle is marked on the maps spread out on a table in the dug-out, and the Brigadier has to decide when his reserve battalion must be sent forward to assist. Information is scanty and contradictory, but "at half-hourly intervals the situation, as we believed it to be, was telephoned to our Divisional Headquarters and to the brigades on either flank." Reports come in of success at certain places and a check at others; also of a German counter-attack. All reports agree that casualties have been heavy. The ravine, indeed, has been taken with seven hundred prisoners, but the situation is still so obscure that "the Brigadier sent me out to find out the real situation."

"So I started out with an orderly." The direct route to be taken was under fire and had to be circumvented. "I was making for an old dug-out in a small ravine, where some men of our left attacking battalion had suffered heavily whilst assembling prior to the attack. The area was still being shelled, and we made a bolt for the dug-out, which we reached safely." In the dug-out is the commander of the support battalion, who reports that the commanders of the attacking battalions have gone forward to the big ravine. "I found out all I could from him, and then went forward with him to the ravine." On the way the Staff officer notices that the wire entanglements in front of the German trenches are still formidable and have not been properly cut by our artillery. "When we reached the big ravine we crawled down the steep bank to the bottom of it, and the first sight that we saw was the entrance to a German dug-out, with its previous occupants lying at the mouth of it.... I then found the commander of the left attacking battalion, who had established his headquarters in an old German dug-out." From him the Brigade-Major hears a ghastly tale of casualties. Not a single officer left, with any of his four attacking companies! Yet in spite of the loss of all their company officers, and of the fact that the left company of the battalion had been practically wiped out before the attack started, the greater portion of the battalion, led by their regimental sergeant-major, had reached their final objective.... "It was certainly," says the Brigade-Major quietly, "a very magnificent performance."

Meanwhile he finds the commander of the right battalion further up the ravine. The greater portion of the support battalion is also in the ravine. Here there were elements of three battalions, considerably disorganised, suffering from want of sleep and a terribly hard time. The commanders, dead beat, want reinforcements, and take a pessimist view. The Brigade-Major, coming fresh, thinks, on the contrary, that there are already too many men on the ground, who only want reorganising. To satisfy himself he goes forward, with the adjutant of the right battalion, to find out "exactly where our leading troops were and in what condition."

"I satisfied myself of the exact situation, and having visited the troops of the brigades on both flanks, went back to the ravine, and from one of the battalion headquarters telephoned to my Brigadier and told him what I had found out. I mentioned that both the battalion commanders said they needed more troops to reinforce them, but added that in my opinion there were already sufficient troops on the spot, and that all that was necessary was that they should be placed under the command of one officer, and reorganised by battalions, to hold their present positions. I told him everything I knew, and tried to give him a good idea of the condition of the troops on the spot. He then sent orders to me that the senior battalion commander was to assume command of all troops on the brigade front, and that under his orders they were to be reorganised into battalions and companies, in order that the defence should be as strong and efficient as possible. I then returned to Brigade Headquarters to tell my Brigadier more fully what I had seen."

The following night the brigade was relieved, after what was on the whole a very successful action. All the officers responsible for its Staff work seem to have been on duty, without rest or sleep, for some thirty-six hours, and after the attack was over there were still German prisoners to be examined.

Such is Staff work in the actual battle-line. What it needs of will, courage, and endurance will be clear, I think, to anyone reading this account, and the experience may be taken as typical of thousands like it at every stage of the war, so long as it was a war of trenches and positions. And what is also typical is that while the personal risks of the writer are scarcely hinted at, his mind, amid all his cares of superintendence and organisation, is still passionately alive to the individual risks and sufferings of his comrades. He ends on what he calls "another small point which deserves mention":

"When the officers and men of those two attacking battalions lay in the mud on that pitch-black night, soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, as they lay there waiting for the awful hour when it seems as if horror itself has been let loose, and as they wondered in their own minds what lay before them, gradually the German bombardment started, and then by degrees increased in intensity, until for fully thirty minutes before zero hour it became perfect hell. Every one of those officers and men, without a doubt, realised that the enemy had discovered that he was going to be attacked, and that he would be on the alert and waiting for them. Yet did any one of them falter, did any one of them for a single moment dream of not starting with the rest of his comrades and doing what he knew it was his duty to do?"

"I only know two things: Firstly, that a very great number of them, if not all, realised only too well that the enemy had discovered our plans; and, secondly, that the only ones who did not start were those who could not, because they had been either killed or wounded."

And now turn with me to the top of all—the General Staff of the Army in France—the brain of the whole mighty movement. It was with no light emotion that I found myself last January, on a bitter winter day, among a labyrinth of small rooms running round the quadrangle of the old Ecole Militaire at Montreuil, while they were still full of Staff officers gathering up the records of the war. Here, or in the Staff train moving with the Commander-in-Chief along the front, the vast organisation of battle culminated in a few guiding brains from which energising and unifying direction flowed out to all parts of the field of war. Here were the heads of Q., of A., of G.—in other words, of Supply, Reinforcement, and Operations. In a bare room, with a few chairs and tables and an iron stove, the Director of Operations was at work; close by was the office of the Quartermaster-General, while up another staircase and along another narrow passage were the quarters of the Adjutant-General; and somewhere, I suppose, in the now historic building, was or had been the office of the Commander-in-Chief himself. The Intelligence Department was not far off, I knew, in the old town; I had been its grateful guest in 1917. The directing Intelligence of the Army flowed out from here to the front, while from the front, at the same time, there came back a constant stream of practical knowledge and experience, keeping the life of G.H.Q. perpetually fresh, correcting theory by experience and kindling experience by theory. The complexities and responsibilities of the work done were vast indeed.

"At any time," says an officer of the General Staff, "during the operations of the past year, work was commenced here in the office, or on the train, when G.H.Q. was advanced nearer the battle-line, at any hour before nine o'clock. The work to be done consists, in general terms, of co-ordinating all the arrangements for the operations undertaken and carried out by the several armies; the issuing of general orders and instructions for operations, the details of which were worked out by the armies concerned; the issuing of orders for the movement of divisions, of artillery units, cavalry, and Tanks—in fact, all the different services which go to make up the Army. These orders must be so arranged as to fit in with the roads and railway facilities, or the mechanical transport available, and must be so couched as not to interfere or clash with arrangements made by the armies in the Army areas. This necessitates very intimate liaison with the armies and with the departments concerned. Maps have to be kept up to date, showing the dispositions of troops at all times, both on the battle-front and in back areas.

"In addition, there are the arrangements with our Allies, the fixing of areas between ourselves and our Allies, and between our own armies and the lines of communication. During operations messages have to be sent out giving information of the situation to the troops, to the public, and to the War Office at home. Schemes are worked out beforehand to deal with any possible eventuality, so that in the event of a hostile attack the movement of troops may be carried out with the least possible delay. Similar schemes are worked out for operations to be undertaken by ourselves, and methods of attack are thrashed out in consultation with the Army Commanders and Staff. The various details of this work fill in the day very thoroughly. This office (of Operations) rarely closes before midnight, and the principal officers are frequently at work until the small hours of the morning. There is, of course, an officer on duty all night.

"During the German attack in March the officer responsible here for the movement of troops by rail did not leave the office even for meals for a number of days on end."

So the long ascent climbs, from the humblest platoon in the field, through company, battalion, division, corps, and Army to the General Staff, and the British Commander-in-Chief, moving and directing the whole; with beyond these, again, as the apex of the great construction, the figure of the illustrious Frenchman, who for the last six months of the war, by the common consent of the Allies, and especially by the free will of England and her soldiers, held the general scheme of battle in his hands. In the British Army what we have been watching is an active hierarchy of duty, discipline, loyalty, intelligence—the creation of a whole people, bent on victory for a great cause. Must it, indeed, vanish with the war, like a dream at cock-crow, or shall we yet see its marvellous training, its developments of mind and character, gradually take other shapes and enter into other combinations—for the saving and not the slaying of men?



EPILOGUE

June 1st.

I have thus brought these rapid notes—partly of things seen, partly of things read—to an end. They might, of course, go on for ever, and as I write I seem to see rising before me those libraries of the future, into which will come crowding the vast throng of books dealing in ever greater and greater detail with the events of the war and the causes of victory. But this slight summary sketch of the military events, and especially of the final "effort" of England and the Empire, in the campaign of last year, which I set myself to do, is accomplished, however inadequately. Except, indeed, for one huge omission which every reader of these few pages will at once suggest. I have made only a few references here and there to the British Navy. Yet on the British Navy, as we all know, everything hung. If the Navy could not have protected our shores, and broken the submarine peril; if the British Admiralty had not been able to hold the Channel against the enemy and ward him off from the coasts and ports of France; if the British ships and British destroyers had not been there to bring over 70 per cent of the American Armies, and food both for ourselves and the Allies; if the sea-routes between us and our Colonies, between us and the East, could not have been maintained, Germany at this moment would have been ruling triumphant over a prostrate world. The existence and power of the Navy have been as vital to us as the air we breathed and the sun which kept us alive, and the pressure of the British blockade was, perhaps, the dominating element in the victory of the Allies. But these things are so great and so evident that it seemed in this little book best to take them for granted. They have been the presuppositions of all the rest. What has not yet been so clear—or so I venture to think—to our own people or our Allies, has been the full glory of the part played by the Armies of the British Empire in the concluding phases of the war. The temporary success of the German sortie of last spring—a mere episode in the great whole—made so deep an impression on the mind of this nation, that the real facts of an annus mirabilis, in their true order and proportion, are only now, perhaps, becoming plain to us. It was in order to help ever so little in this process that I have tried to tell, as it appears to me, the end of that marvellous story of which I sketched the beginnings in England's Effort.

These main facts, it seems to me, can hardly be challenged by any future pressure from that vast critical process which the next generation, and generations after, will bring to bear upon the war. The mistakes made, the blunders here, or shortcomings there, of England's mighty effort, will be all canvassed and exposed soon enough. The process indeed has already begun. And when the first mood of thankful relief from the constant pre-occupation of the war is over, we may expect to see it in full blast. It would have been easy here to repeat some of the current discontents of the day, all of which will have their legitimate hearing in future discussion. But this is not the moment, nor is mine the pen. We are but just emerging from the shadow of that peril from which the British and Imperial Armies—bone of our bone and flesh or our flesh—have saved us. Let us now, if ever, praise the "famous men" of the war, and gather into our hearts the daily efforts, the countless sacrifices of countless thousands, in virtue of which we now live our quiet lives.

Nor have I dwelt much upon the terrible background of the whole scene, the physical horror, the anguish and suffering of war. Our noblest dead, to judge from the most impassioned and inspired utterances of the men who have suffered for us, would bid us indeed remember these things,—remember them with all the intensity of which we are capable—but with few words. They never counted the cost, though they knew it well; and what they set out to do, they have done.

Let us then, at this particular moment, dwell, above all, on the thing achieved. To that end, a few colossal figures must still be added to those already given. Since the beginning of the war, the total forces employed by the British Empire in the various theatres of war, have amounted to a total of eight million, six hundred and fifty-four thousand (24 per cent of the total white male population), of which the United Kingdom supplied 5,704,416 (25.36 per cent), and the Dominions, and Colonies, 1,425,864. The Indian and Coloured troops amounted to 1,524,000. If the Navy, the Merchant Service, and the men and women employed in various auxiliary military services at home are added, the total recruiting effort of the Empire reaches to much more than ten millions.

As to the financial part of this country in the war, by March 22nd, 1919, the war expenditure of Great Britain had reached a total of L9,482,442,482, of which rather more than two thousand five hundred millions have been raised by taxation. Included in this total are sums amounting to L1,683,500,000, lent to our Allies and Dominions. For the total casualties of the war, in an earlier chapter I have given the approximate figures so far as they can as yet be ascertained, amounting to at least some twenty millions. At such appalling cost then, in death, suffering and that wealth which represents the accumulated labour of men, have the liberties of Europe been rescued from the German attack. We are victors indeed; we have won to the shore; but the wreck of the tempest lies all round us; and what is the future to be?

It is four months now, since, in the splendid rooms of the Villa Murat, I listened to President Wilson describing the sitting of the Conference at which the Resolution was passed constituting the League of Nations—four months big with human fate. The terms of peace are published, and at the present moment no one knows whether Germany will sign them or no. The League of Nations is in existence. It has a home, a Constitution, a Secretariat. But the outlook over Europe is still dark and troubled, and the inner League of Three is still the surest ground in the chaos, the starting-point of the future. The Peace Terms are no final solution—how could they be? On their practical execution, on their adaptation year by year to the new world coming into being, all will depend. German militarism has met its doom. The triumph of the Allies is more absolute than any of them could have dreamed four years ago. Nor can the German crime ever be forgotten in this generation, or the German peril ignored. The whole civilised world must be—will be—the shield of France should any fresh outrage threaten her. But after justice comes mercy. Because Germany has shown herself a criminal nation, not all Germans are criminal. That same British Army which as it fought its victorious way through the German defences in the last four months of the war, and, while it fought the enemy, fed and succoured at the same time 800,000 French civilians—men and officers dividing their rations with starving women and children, and in every pause of fighting, spending all their energies in comforting the weak, the hungry, and the sick:—that very Army is sorry now for the German women and children, as it sees them in the German towns. It is our own soldiers who have been demanding food and pity.

The Allies, indeed, have been for some time sending food to their starving enemies. Mr. Hoover—all honour to the great man!—is ceaselessly at work. If only no hitch in the Peace interrupts the food-trains and the incoming ships, so that no more children die!

Some modifications in the Peace Terms would, clearly, be accepted by the public opinion of the Allied countries. No one, I believe, who has seen the Lens district, and the deliberate and cruel destruction of the French industrial north, will feel many qualms about the Saar valley. We may hold a personal opinion that it might have been wiser for France in her own interests to claim the coal only. But it is for France to decide, and it will be for the League of Nations to watch over the solution she has insisted on, in the common interest. But concessions as to Upper Silesia and East Prussia would be received, I have little doubt, with general relief and assent; and the common sense of Europe will certainly see both the wisdom and expediency of setting German industry to work again as speedily as possible, and of so arranging and facilitating the payment of her huge money debt to the Allies that it should not weigh too intolerably on the life of an unborn generation—an innocent generation, who will grow up, as it is, inevitably, under one of the darkest shadows ever cast by history.

Meanwhile now that the just and stern verdict of Europe has been given on the war and its authors, the second and greater half of the Allied task remains. Vast questions are left to the League of Nations, outside the Peace; the re-settlement, politically, of large tracts of Europe; the whole problem of disarmament, involving the future of British and American sea-power; the responsibilities of America in Europe; the economic adjustment of the world. But perhaps the greatest problem of all is the ethical one. How long shall we keep our wrath? Germany has done things in this war which shame civilisation, and seem to make a mockery of all ideas of human progress. But yet!—we must still believe in them; or the sun will go out in heaven. We must still believe that in the long run hatred kills the civilised mind, and to put it at its lowest, is a mortal waste of human energies. Has Christianity, swathed as it is in half-decayed beliefs, any longer power to help us? Yet whatever else in the Christian system is breaking down, the Christian idea of a common fellowship of man holds the field as never before. And both the Christian idea and common sense tell us that till there is again some sort of international life in Europe, Europe will be unsound and her wounds unhealed. We call it impossible. But the good man, the just man, the merciful man is still among us, and—

"What he wills, he does; and does so much That proof is called impossibility."

MARY A. WARD.



APPENDIX[14]

A CHART OR DIAGRAM OF THE WAR PROM JANUARY, 1916, TO THE ARMISTICE, WITH AN EXPLANATION

[14] As I have already stated, in a footnote, I owe permission to publish this small reproduction of an interesting and unique document to the kindness of Lieut.-General the Hon. Sir Herbert Lawrence, K.C.B., etc., Chief of the General Staff.



APPENDIX

EXPLANATION OF CHART[15]

[15] [My readers will be as grateful as I am to Captain W.O. Barton, lately at work at G.H.Q., for this vivid explanation of the Chart.]

THE CHART.—This Chart is a small scale reproduction of one used and corrected from day to day at British G.H.Q. in France. It shows graphically the actual position at any given date of the British forces in FIGHTING STRENGTH, FRONT HELD, and HEAVY GUN POWER: when big operations are in progress it gives at a glance the number of CASUALTIES incurred and PRISONERS taken, perhaps the surest indication of the measure of success gained. Owing to the size of the reproduction, the horizontal scale lines of the original Chart cannot be given. To calculate a number at any particular date from the Chart as reproduced, it is only necessary to measure with a rule the height of the desired line at the given date. Reference to the appropriate numerical scale at the side will then give the number.

1916, STRENGTH AND FRONT.—Begin with the FRONT and FIGHTING STRENGTH lines. The Strength line tells the Commander his actual numbers (by reference to scale 2), but he needs more. He looks at the line representing Front and marks the proportion it bears to Fighting Strength. Measure these lines in mid-June, 1916. Since January, FRONT (scale 1) has expanded by about one-fifth—from 67 to 90 miles. The Chart shows the reason. But meanwhile Fighting Strength, then the vital factor for attack, has risen from 470,000 to 680,000, nearly one-half. The Army has been built up by new Divisions for the great Somme offensive.

CASUALTIES.—The battle opens. The red line of casualties leaps into prominence and, with its ascent, STRENGTH falls. Reinforcements are needed. They arrive to replace casualties, and STRENGTH goes up again. So through the long conflict these lines act and react. Ground is won, but hardly and at great cost: the ascent of the Front line is slow.

PRISONERS.—What are the enemy losses? How are his men fighting? The PRISONERS line (scale 5) tells best. Gradually the proportion of prisoners to (British) casualties increases: his casualties are growing, his resistance becoming less effective: the wearing-out process tells. Mark the concluding phases of the Somme battle. The PRISONERS line is nearer to that of casualties. The Tank has been introduced, and here is ocular evidence of its effectiveness. More tanks is one of the lessons of the lines.

1917, ARRAS.—The Somme fighting ends. Again our armies are built up, until the 760,000 point is reached. FRONT, increased to nearly 120 miles by a relief of French troops, falls again to 105, owing to the German retirement about ARRAS. Heavy guns have increased from just over 300 to 1,500. Again our armies are ready, and the Battle of ARRAS opens the ALLIED SPRING OFFENSIVE. It is immediately effective, for casualties never reach the same height as in the Somme, and prisoners are much more numerous. The lines for the two battles show the difference vividly. But mark the big curve downward of the STRENGTH line. Casualties are now not so easily replaced.

MESSINES, YPRES, PASSCHENDAELE.—Before STRENGTH is fully restored the Messines ridge is rent with mines (June 7th) and taken. July is devoted to preparation: STRENGTH reaches its zenith, guns still increase, and on July 31st the Battle of YPRES opens the great northern offensive. Fighting is bitter, and more costly than at Arras; CASUALTIES are at first high in relation to prisoners, but the PRISONERS line, as in the Somme, but more consistently, tends upward. The German is not "sticking" the terrible conditions and fierce fighting so well as the Britisher.

CAMBRAI.—Then, in December, comes our surprise attack at Cambrai: it is effective, for PRISONERS nearly approaches CASUALTIES. LINE increases, owing to the salient formed by the British advance. Then, the German counter-attack, with CASUALTIES high, PRISONERS few, and LINE decreasing. The Germans have reduced the salient made by our attack.

ITALY'S PLIGHT.—But meanwhile, the enemy has struck at Italy, and Italy, reeling under his blows, is clamant for aid. Division after Division hurries off! STRENGTH falls, never again to ascend. The handicap is permanent.

1918. With STRENGTH almost at its lowest since 1916, after a year of ceaseless fighting and heavy casualties, with five Divisions diverted to Italy, miles of FRONT have to be taken over from the French. Line held reaches its maximum, 130 miles. Fighting strength has fallen by mid-March—when Divisions have been reorganised from 12 to 9 battalions, owing to the dwindling of reinforcements—to 580,000.

THE GERMAN THRUSTS.—The Chart has shown when we might attack. Now it gives the warning to expect attack. Now, if ever, is Germany's moment, and her first great blow falls on March 21st—the thrust at Amiens. CASUALTIES soar to a height never before approached. The red line predominates—STRENGTH falls and falls. Divisions are summoned from Italy and Egypt. The second German blow falls on the Lys. CASUALTIES are again immense, though not so high as in the first attack. STRENGTH falls again. The Lys salient increases the line held, but by the end of May the Line is firm throughout. Some few thousand Americans for a time reinforce the war-weary British Divisions; but the Portuguese cease to be reckoned in our fighting strength, though still in France. Reorganisation follows. STRENGTH is built up a little, though CASUALTIES are still heavy. The IXth Corps is fighting fiercely on the French Front to stem the Paris Thrust in May, and four British Divisions help in Foch's July counter-thrust. Guns, despite our losses to the enemy, have again increased. Guns are now more easily replaced than men.

THE FINAL PHASES.—Then the final phase. With decreased FIGHTING STRENGTH but with abundant GUNS (and, be it added, Tanks), we strike our first great blow in the Battle of Amiens on August 8th. STRENGTH falls abruptly, CASUALTIES are many, but high above the casualty line soars—for the first time—the line of PRISONERS. The toll taken of the German armies increases, as Bapaume and the Scarpe swiftly follow Amiens.

THE VITAL LINE.—Now the PRISONERS line has become vital. Consider the position in December before what is, perhaps, the decisive battle of the world war, the breaking of the Hindenburg line. GUNS are ever increasing, LINE has fallen somewhat, but lower even than in the dark days of spring has fallen the line of FIGHTING STRENGTH. To the General, studying this line alone, attack upon a position vaunted as impregnable would seem sheer madness. But he sees the Chart as a whole, with the PRISONERS line dominating everything in its sustained height. The enemy's total casualties are incalculable; never have ours been so few in comparison with prisoners taken: the hammering of previous years has borne fruit: the German morale, such is the lesson of the line, has gone irretrievably.

THE GREAT DECISION.—So, despite his own weakness, despite heavy losses not made good, the Commander takes the great decision and stakes all. He strikes, lets loose the tempest of his guns, and his infantry, diminished but indomitable, sweep through the vast fortresses of the Hindenburg line, hurl the enemy from defence after defence, pass from victory to victory.

Such is the story of the Chart.

THE END