On the French Front in 1917 THE ATTEMPT TO SMASH THE GERMAN DEFENSES AND THE THE HE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF SURVEYS The enemy, facing the situation. squarely, took stock of assets and liabilities and made wise provision to anticipate the offensive and thus secure even to a limited degree-the initiative. He knew that as an ally Austria was failing, that he could rely upon Bulgaria only in the Balkans and upon Turkey merely in the east. On the other hand, he sensed the growing weakness of Russia, perceived the widening cracks in the framework of the mighty colossus whose shadow had hitherto darkened the fortunes of the Central Powers-and he determined to profit by its fall. Until Russia were out of action, Italy might safely be left, for the German Staff felt she was too much under the influence of England to make a separate peace, even if she were defeated. On the Western Front a difficult problem had to be faced. WITHD DRAWAL TO THE LINE OF DEFENSE THDRAWAL PREPARED. The fierce conflict on the Somme had left the Germans with an awkward salient in their line. It was urgently necessary for them to improve their position or run the risk of being enveloped by the Allies. An attack against the enemy at the point where he had broken through was the most obvious remedy, but the German Chief of Staff could, not venture a great offensive in the Somme region at a time when he knew attacks were imminent on other parts of the Western and Eastern fronts. There remained only the alternative of withdrawal, and Hindenburg decided to adopt this expedient and transfer his line of defense which had been pushed in at Péronne at one point and bulged out to the west of Bapaume, Roye and Noyon, at others to the chord position Arras, St. Quentin, Soissons. retreat was a great blow to the German army, to the people at home, to their allies abroad. For the time, until its soundness as a strategical manœuvre was borne in upon them by bitter experience, it seemed a great triumph for the British and French, who hastened to exploit it for propagandist purposes. The Retreat began on March 16, 1917, and left in its wake a devastated and shell-scarred wilderness where rivers had been dammed to flood wide areas, where towns and villages lay in blackened heaps, where spectral shapes stood that once were trees, and where silence replaced the peaceful murmur of a smiling countryside. The British and French followed slowly for all railways, roads and bridges had been obliterated, and there was fighting with rear-guards until the fluid line crystallized into shape once more. By the first week in April, German dispositions in the new Siegfried (or Hindenburg) Line were complete and commanders could appreciate the foresight which had engineered such a great strategic "stand to," which, although it abandoned the initiative to the enemy for the time being, gave favorable local conditions and shortened the line in a way that made it possible to build up strong reserves. WHE THERE AND WHAT WAS THIS NEW HIN- The new line hung like a cable between Vimy ridge and the Craonne plateau. In making it, the Germans, profiting from experience in earlier battles, had departed from their old pattern of defenses. "In future, writes the veteran Marshal von Hindenburg, so closely associated with its conception, "our defensive positions were no longer to consist of single lines and strong points but of a network of lines and groups of strong points. In the deep zones thus formed we did not intend to dispose our troops on a rigid and continuous front but in a complex system of nuclei and distributed in breadth and depth. The defender had to keep his forces mobile to avoid the destructive effects of the enemy fire during the period of artillery preparation, as well as voluntarily to abandon any parts of the line which could no longer be held, and then to recover by a counter-attack all the points which were essential to the maintenance of the whole position. These principles applied in detail as in general. "We thus met the devastating effects of the enemy artillery and trench mortar fire and their surprise infantry attacks with more and more deeply distributed defensive lines and the mobility of our force. At the same time we developed the principle of saving men in the forward lines by increasing the number of our machine guns and so economizing troops." In the maze of these deep lines before the manyangled fire of machine guns French attack was to experience tragic check at the Craonne plateau. THE HE BRITISH AGREE TO FOLLOW FRENCH In the Allied plan of attack-a plan considerably modified by the Hindenburg retreat-it was arranged that combined British and French attacks should be made on the two pivots of the new German position. Thus, British operations against Arras on a lesser front were to be preparatory to more decisive operations by the French against the Craonne plateau, to be begun a little later on, and in the subsequent stages of which the British were to co-operate. If this combined offensive did not produce the full effects hoped for, it was arranged that the British should shift their attack to the Flanders area, and the French should lend their aid where it was most needed. To achieve such co-ordination, unity in command wàs essential and for the first time in the history of the war the British commander consented to place himself under a French generalissimo, Nivelle of Verdun fame. Sir Douglas Haig reserved to himself, however, the right of deciding when to break off his own action. Nivelle's appointment to succeed Joffre, in preference to Pétain and Foch, had in it something of surprise. That he was an advocate of decisive action appealed to a more or less war-weary France, faint-hearted over the "nibbling methods of Joffre, and the "limited objectives" of the Somme and Verdun fields. He was more popular than Pétain whose coldness and sarcasm made enemies among his equals, readier with a colossal scheme than Foch, at this time believed exhausted after a series of great actions. His war record was a distinguished one: |