the impulse of his spirit soon
after he had taken command. A new era had come in France. That old
organization called the British Empire, loose and decentrated--and
holding together because it was so--had taken another step forward in
the gathering of its strength into a compact force.

II

VERDUN AND ITS SEQUEL

German grand strategy and Verdun--Why the British did not go to
Verdun--What they did to help--Racial characteristics in
armies--Father Joffre a miser of divisions--The Somme
country--Age-old tactics--If the flank cannot be turned can the front
be broken?--Theory of the Somme offensive.

In order properly to set the stage for the battle of the Somme, which
was the corollary of that of Verdun, we must, at the risk of appearing
to thresh old straw, consider the German plan of campaign in 1916 when
the German staff had turned its eyes from the East to the West. During
the summer of 1915 it had attempted no offensive on the Western front,
but had been content to hold its solid trench lines in the confidence
that neither the British nor the French were prepared for an offensive
on a large scale.

Blue days they were for us with the British Army in France during July
and early August, while the official bulletins revealed on the map how
von Hindenburg's and von Mackensen's legions were driving through
Poland. More critical still the subsequent period when inside
information indicated that German intrigue in Petrograd, behind the
Russian lines which the German guns were pounding, might succeed in
making a separate peace. Using her interior lines for rapid movement of
troops, enclosed by a steel ring and fighting against nations speaking
different languages with their capitals widely separated and their
armies not in touch, each having its own sentimental and territorial
objects in the war, the obvious object of Germany's policy from the
outset would be to break this ring, forcing one of the Allies to
capitulate under German blows.

In August, 1914, she had hoped to win a decisive battle against France
before she turned her legions against Russia for a decision. Now she
aimed to accomplish at Verdun what she had failed to accomplish on the
Marne, confident in her information that France was exhausted. It was
von Hindenburg's turn to hold the thin line while the Germans
concentrated on the Western front twenty-six hundred thousand men, with
every gun that they could spare and all the muni