suitable to the wearisome ordeal of trench warfare. Thus, too,
Europe stumbled into that war of material, of ever stronger
material of defence and ever stronger material of attack, which
was to last until the autumn of 1918. It was under these con-
ditions that the German army, which was to have been back in
its own homes " by the fall of the leaf," found itself pinned to
French and Belgian soil, and that the war, which at the outset,
as was believed by most of the leading authorities in England,
political, military and financial, could not last more than six
months, dragged out its devastating existence for more than
four long years. One man among them alone ventured at that
early stage to lay his plans for a long war, Lord Kitchener.
Offensive or Defensive? It was a depressing situation for the professional soldier of England, France or Germany to find him- self in. No matter to which of the three armies he happened to belong, he had been trained from youth in a war of movement, of stroke and counter-stroke, and of rapid decision. The more he knew of the history of his profession, the more deeply he had studied the campaigns of the great captains, the firmer was his belief in the power of the offensive and the " will to conquer." There was much searching of heart, especially among those who had seen the German masses beaten back time after time by the attenuated lines of the British Expeditionary Force in the first battle of Ypres. If the rifle alone could do so much, how was it possible to overcome strong defences heavily protected with barbed wire and bristling with machine-guns? Had modern developments changed not only the methods of warfare but the very basic principles themselves ? Had, in fact, the defence become stronger than the attack?
There were those who thought that a decision, since there must be one somehow, must be sought elsewhere than in France or Flanders, and there arose the controversy between " East- erners " and " Westerners," which lasted as long as the war itself. But that great question carries us into the region of strategy. Clearly no commander could be content to sit still and avoid a decision on his own front, at least without direct orders from the supreme authorities. Nevertheless, the same causes which gave birth to the desire to " find a flank " else- where than in France produced even on the western front two schools of thought, which were christened by the French, with their wonderful gift for discovering appropriate labels, the " usuristes " and the " trouistes." The former, as their name implies, held that nothing could be gained by hurling infantry, however well supported, against the German lines. In support of this view they were able to point to the desperate losses which were incurred in the fruitless fighting of the early part of 1915, and to the opinion of a captured German officer who, when asked when and how he thought the war would end, was said to have replied: " In about six months' time, and about fifty metres from where we now are." A war of attrition, and victory through exhaustion, or by somebody else's efforts in some other field, were the tenets of the " usuristes." These theories found no appreciable support in the British army, nor in the British troops from overseas or in the Dominions whence they came. The war of attrition was rightly regarded by them as a danger- ous " will-o'-the-wisp " which was bound to lead to disaster, for it meant the abandonment of that " will to conquer " which has always been the greatest asset of victorious leaders, and depended for success upon the collapse of the enemy's moral rather than upon the triumph of their own. The arguments of the " usuristes " could not be disproved. They could be met by faith alone; but faith was not lacking, and the names which will always be held in the highest honour in every country are those of leaders, whether political or military, who never lost their belief in the power of the offensive and refused to be tempted into the broad and easy path of the " usuristes."
The " trouistes " had their way, and in the end they com- pelled victory. The principal article of their belief was a firm conviction that morally the defensive is the weaker role, and that the path to victory must always lie through a wisely and resolutely conducted offensive. Put shortly, and in axiomatic form, " there is no defence which cannot be broken." The
formula was simple, but the proof was only found after three more years of trial and error.
Since the very earliest days of the war the cry in every army had been for more and heavier artillery, with more and heavier shells, and the fighting of the earlier part of 1915 merely empha- sized the same need. By Sept. 1915 the French and British armies, no less than the German, had been provided upon a scale never before dreamt of, but yet far below that which was to be reached before the war was over. Side by side with this vast expansion went the increase of the signal corps, for without cooperation between the arms it was clearly useless to expect the full value from either. Before the war, both in France and England, this subject of cooperation had received great atten- tion. It formed the subject of countless essays, lectures and articles in technical magazines. All that was lacking was prac- ; tical application and testing under service conditions. Probably the Signal Service which took the field with the British Expedi- tionary Force excelled both the French and the German, but it depended largely upon despatch-riders, admirable in a war of movement but of less use on a modern battle field. In the words of a French writer: " II cut mieux valu quclques harangues de moins sur la liaison, sur 1'union des' coeurs d'artilleurs et de fantassins, et quelques kilometres de plus de fil teltphonique." But telephone wire costs money, and its absence is just one of those difficulties with which every army must expect to be faced at the beginning of a great war. By Sept. 1915, however, the Signal Service, the link between infantry and artillery, was ' well equipped; but, in the absence of practical experience, its possibilities and limitations were not yet realized. In this direction, as in many others, much was still to be learnt.
First Great French Attack. Material equipment was pro- vided lavishly and the first of the great attempts to burst through the enemy's lines was eventually fixed for Sept. 25 1915. At that date much of the British army was still new and inexpe- rienced, so the main attack was delivered entirely by the French in the Champagne country. Farther to the north subsidiary attacks were launched both by the French and the British, but with them we are not concerned. Already the old formula: " The artillery does not prepare the attack, but supports it," had been so far abandoned that three days were devoted to the destruction of enemy's defences by guns of every calibre, and these had themselves been preceded by several days of counter- battery work; thus was seen the revival of the old discredited " artillery duel," which cannot fail to interest the eventual historian of tactical evolution.
It is clear that an attack which is thus prepared has one grave weakness. The exact time, and even the day, of the infantry assault may be concealed from the enemy unless he is sufficiently fortunate to capture a prisoner who knows and can be persuaded to part with the secret, but there is nothing of the rapid march followed by the speedy onslaught and crushing blow of a Lee or a Stonewall Jackson. On the contrary, the attack is not only faced by astonishingly strong defences but is at the same time deprived of what is perhaps its principal weapon surprise. Some efforts were, of course, made to conceal the exact area selected for the main attack by carrying out similar bombardments on other parts of the front, but the vast amount of ammunition necessary for a real destruction of wire defences and dugouts rendered it impossible to carry out a thorough preparation at more than one or two points. Thus it came about that the element of surprise was lacking, and the attack was to this extent weakened. Nevertheless in the initial stages it was almost completely successful. The hostile front was broken on a front of 15 miles, and some 20,000 prisoners were taken, together with about loo guns.
Great hopes were raised momentarily, not only on the fighting front but in London and in Paris. But these hopes were sadly dashed, for it was quickly discovered that, after all, the real difficulty for the assaulting troops was not the capture of the enemy's organized first-line defences, formidable and almost impregnable though they had hitherto appeared to be, but the exploitation of success. So soon as the great attack had been
