to face. There was no British Order of Battle in
sight. This, as the Germans knew it, you might find in a German
intelligence office; but the British were not going to aid the Germans
in ascertaining it by giving it any publicity.

By means of a map spread out on a table an officer explained the plan of
attack with reference to broad colored lines which denoted the
objectives. The whole was as explicit as if Bonaparte had said:

"We shall engage heavily on our left, pound the center with our
artillery, and flank on our right."

The higher you go in the command the simpler seem the plans which by
direct and comprehensive strokes conceal the detail which is delegated
down through the different units. At Gommecourt there was a salient, an
angle of the German trench line into the British which seemed to invite
"pinching," and this was to be the pivot of the British movement. The
French who were on both sides of the Somme were to swing in from their
southern flank of attack near Soyecourt in the same fashion as the
British from the northern, thus bringing the deepest objective along the
river in the direction of Peronne, which would fall when eventually the
tactical positions commanding it were gained.

Not with the first rush, for the lines of the objective were drawn well
short of it, but with later rushes the British meant to gain the
irregular ridge formation from Thiepval to Longueval, which would start
them on the way to the consummation of their siege hammering. It was to
be a battle by inches; the beginning of a long task. German _morale_ was
still high on the Western front; their numbers immense. _Morale_ could
be broken, numbers worn down, only by pounding.

Granted that the attack of July 1st should succeed all along the line,
it would gain little ground; but it would everywhere break through the
first line fortifications over a front of more than twenty-five miles,
the British for about fifteen and the French for about ten. The
soldierly informant at "Intelligence" reminded the listener, too, that
battalions which might be squeezed or might run into unexpected
obstacles would suffer fearfully as in all great battles and one must be
careful not to be over-depressed by the accounts of the survivors or
over-elated by the roseate narratives of battalions which had swept all
before them with slight loss.

The day before I saw the map of the whole I had seen the map of a part
at an Observation Post at Auchonville