, being held up
by machine-gun fire, could not be maintained in the cemetery, and it
was decided to approach Souchez by the main road so that they might
pour in their forces on the east, while, to the north, the French
force that had bitten its way into the Hache Wood was to continue its
advance. This maneuver decided the day. The Germans, who were in
danger of being cut off in Souchez, abandoned their positions, and
those who had retaken the cemetery, being in the same perilous
circumstances, regained by their communication trenches their second
line on the slopes of Hill 119. Thus fell Souchez to the French in two
days. The allied offensive was a short and sharp affair, skillfully
planned and bravely executed, but disappointing in result. At the
great price of 50,000 casualties the British had overthrown the
Germans on a front of five miles, and in some places to a depth of
4,000 yards, and had captured many prisoners and guns; but they had
not definitely broken the German lines. At a heavy cost the Allies on
the western front had captured about 160 German guns and disposed of
150,000 Germans, including some 27,000 prisoners, and the result of
their efforts was to shake the Germans in the west very severely and
to call back to France many troops from the eastern front. That the
blow was regarded by the kaiser as a serious one was shown by an Order
of the Day in which he declared that every important success obtained
by the Allies on the western front "will be considered as due to the
culpable negligence of the German commanders, who will lay themselves
open to being punished for incompetence." But if the Allies' successes
were due to hard fighting and brilliant dash, the fact that they did
not break right through the enemy's lines is an eloquent testimony to
the wonderful strength of the German resistance. The marvel was that
any were left alive in the first line after the preliminary
bombardment to face the bayonets and grenades of the attackers. In a
report from German General Headquarters, dated September 29, 1915, Max
Osborn, special correspondent of the "Vossische Zeitung," described
how the French artillery swept the hinterland of the German positions
in Champagne and then concentrated upon these. "The violence of the
fire then reached its zenith. Hitherto it had been a raging, searching
fire; now it became a mad drumming, beyond all power of imagination.
It is impossible to convey any idea of the savagery of thi