f-v v-^-> v-ssr-v 't'zwA "^ '/A\ ^' * u v ^ Sj&g^;* -r* v-v. ,** .-'JJ .0' , „ t • o 0* * * • r "^> ^-V '.i • «o ,^> **• A> ^'f * A V ^ t s • 5 A ^ ^ *•••" THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS © Underwood & Underwood "treat 'em rough" American manned French whippet tank put out of action by a German shell, defending himself with his rifle Its operator is THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS 1914-1918 A YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR BY FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER, C.E. Mem. Am. Soc. C. E. ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919 Copyright, 1919, by The Centuby Co. Published, May, 1919 ©CL A 5 156 7 2 TO MY CHILDREN PREFACE It is one of my privileges, as a writer, to spend my days at home, and hence to enjoy a closer association with my children than falls to the lot of the average father. The youthful mind grows through asking questions, and all parents with a sense of their responsibilities do their best to answer them. During the progress of the Great War I was called upon on numberless occasions to explain to my youngsters what it was all about, and my efforts in this direction seemed so satis- factory to my own children that I am emboldened to put them in the form of a book, in the hope that they may prove equally so to the children of other parents not so fortunately situated as I have been. Frederic Arnold Kummbr. Oatonsville, Maryland, December 10, 1918. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAOB The Causes 3 II The Beginning of the War .... 20 III Germany's War Plans 26 IV The Drive Through Belgium ... 38 V The Battle of the Marne .... 46 VI The Race for the Channel Ports . . 56 VII Other Events in the Early Part of the War VIII Trench and Other Warfare in the Year 1915 80 IX Western and Turkish Fronts in 1915 90 X The Sinking of the Lusitania . . • 100 XI The Eastern Front During 1914 and 1915 106 XII Italy and the Balkan States . . .118 XIII Other Events in 1915 129 XIV Verdun and the First Battle of the Somme !35 XV Sea Power and the Battle of Jutland 148 XVI Russia, Austria, and Italy in 1916 . 156 XVII Rumania and the Near East in 1916 . 161 XVIII Other Events During 1916 . . . .168 XIX Uncivilized Warfare 175 XX The Beginning of the Year 1917 . . 180 XXI America Enters the War .... 192 XXII Military Operations in 1917 . . • 207 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX PAGE Effects of the Russian Revolution . 220 American Forces Abroad During 1917 225 The Beginning of the Year 1918 The Great Battle of 1918 . The Great Battle of 1918 . The Great Battle of 1918 . The Great Battle of 1918 . Results of the War . . . 232 237 265 284 301 322 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -Treat 'em rough" FronUs ?™V PAGE I Airplanes of a famous fighting squadron in France . W A German Zeppelin in flight over the North Sea . 33 Joseph Jacques Cesaire Joffre 49 The Western Front • ' ' American officer wearing protective armor found in ^ a captured German trench A working party of British Tommies going over the ^ top at night Russian artillery in action against the Germans on the Eastern Front 113 Campaigning in the Alps The famous Cloth Hall at Ypres, Belgium ... 128 129 Heavy British tank in difficulties A " Fleet" of French Whippet Tanks . . . • 129 u ... 160 German submarine Ruined French orchards German shell bursting upon the cathedral at Rheims 176 177 Edith Cavell 177 Captain Fryatt An American trench mortar battery at practice "somewhere in France" A 14-inch U. S. Naval Gun, with railway mount . 193 Austrians who had taken refuge in a cave ... 208 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The Italian Front 209V Marshal Ferdinand Fo-ch 224 General John Joseph Pershing 225/ Map of Turkey in Asia 240 Jerusalem 241 A tunnel of the St. Quentin Canal 272- Chateau-Thierry 273 Englishmen who helped win the war 288 Supreme figures in the war councils of the European Allies 289 Four famous Allied commanders 304 On the deck of the battleship New York . . . 305 Surrender of the German high seas fleet .... 320 President Wilson and party 321 FOREWORD The Battle of the Nations began in the year 1914, that is, one thousand, nine hundred and fourteen years after the birth of Christ, and lasted for over four and a quarter years. It was by far the greatest conflict in history, not alone be- cause of the number of nations and men engaged on the two sides and the losses in life and prop- erty sustained, but also, and more particularly, because of the supreme importance to humanity of the questions involved. Before the colossal struggle came to an end, over a score of nations had taken up arms, the fighting had extended from Europe to Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Pacific, and the ef- fects of the conflict had been felt in every quarter of the globe. It was in truth a world war, and at its roots lay the struggle for freedom, for self- government, on the part of the people, which has been going on ever since the dawn of history. The time had come, in the onward progress of events, when great and far-reaching changes in the world's social system were necessary, and hence, in one sense, it may be said that the war was inevitable, even though its immediate causes were the greed and arrogance of a single small group of men. For many generations the de- tails of this epoch-making conflict will be dis- vii viii FOREWORD cussed; countless books will be written about it, covering its every phase. Within the limits of a single volume we cannot hope to do more than give a brief outline of its causes, its progress, and its effects. These once grasped, it becomes pos- sible to undertake the study of the war in its more detailed aspects. A very few figures are needed to show how vast the struggle was. It is estimated, although such estimates are by no means exact, that the war cost the world, in military expenditures alone, close to three hundred billion dollars. The hu- man mind is unable to grasp such tremendous figures. Rough estimates of the casualties — that is, the number of men killed, wounded, and missing — in the armies of the various countries involved, are, for Russia, 7,000,000 ; for Germany, 6,000,000; for Great Britain, 3,000,000; for France, 4,000,- 000; for Belgium, 350,000; for Austria, 4,500,000; for Italy, 1,750,000; for Bulgaria, 200,000; for Turkey, 750,000; for Rumania, 200,000; for Ser- bia, 300,000; for Greece, 75,000, and for the United States, 275,000, a total of over 28,000,000 men. Over a million Armenians and other non- combatants were murdered. Losses in money and property almost beyond computation were sustained. The cost of the ships sunk, alone, was close to $6,000,000,000, while the value of the buildings and personal property destroyed in Belgium, France, Serbia, and other countries within the war zone runs to unbelievable figures. FOREWORD ix If, however, the losses were gigantic, the re- sults obtained may in a sense be said to have compensated for them. An epitaph over the graves of some British soldiers in France reads, "For your to-morrow they gave their to-day." In this beautiful thought we find the answer to the question, Was the war worth while? Future generations, reaping the harvest which this gene- ration has sown, will answer in the affirmative. The people of Germany, their nightmare of mili- tarism gone, of Poland, free and united after their many years of suffering and oppression, of Austria, no longer under the iron heel of the Hapsburgs, of Bohemia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Eumania, Transylvania, Bessarabia, Serbia, and the vast territories of Russia, of Tur- key, of colonies in Africa, freed from the brutal misrule of the Kaiser, and last, but not least, of the Allied countries of Europe and of the United States itself, will, as the blessings of world free- dom become more and more apparent, rise up and pay homage to those heroic men who, from so many countries and in so many climes, for the sake of our to-morrow gave us their to-day. We cannot approach the study of this war as we would that of any other war in history. It was really not a war, so much as a world move- ment — the greatest that mankind has ever known. THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS CHAPTER I THE CAUSES IN order that we may fully understand the causes of the great war let us look at a map of Europe as it was in July, 1914, before the war began. We find that the German Empire, ruled by the Emperor or Kaiser William II, and the Austro- Hungarian Empire, ruled, when the war broke out, by the Emperor Francis Joseph, stretched in an unbroken body of land from the shores of the North and Baltic seas to the river Danube. These two countries and Italy had agreed among them- selves that were any one of the three to be attacked by another power, the other two would at once come to its assistance. This agreement between Germany, Austria, and Italy was known as the Triple Alliance. The other three great countries of Europe, as the map will show, were England, France, and Russia. Of these nations, two, France and Rus- 3 4 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS sia, had an agreement to support each other in case of war, and the third, England, while not bound by any definite agreements with France and Russia, had given those countries to under- stand that if they were attacked by the Triple Alliance, she would come to their aid. This ar- rangement was known as the "Entente cordiale." England had also, some years before, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Japan, the purpose of which was to preserve the peace in the Far East. Six other and smaller nations in Europe, as well as one in both Europe and Asia, also demand our attention. These are Belgium, on the North Sea, partially surrounded by France, Germany, and Holland ; Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece, lying in the Balkan Peninsula, between the Black and the Adriatic seas, and Turkey, spreading from a small foothold in Europe at the tip of the Balkan Peninsula, across the Straits of the Dardanelles into Asia. It is necessary, in order to understand fully the causes which brought about the great war, to keep the locations of these several countries clearly in mind. First, however, before we can take up the im- mediate causes of the war, we must understand something about Germany, and its ruler, the kaiser. The German Empire, in the year 1914, was one of the richest and most powerful as well as one THE CAUSES 5 of the youngest nations in Europe. It consisted of a federation of kingdoms and smaller states under the rule of the German Emperor, who was also the King of Prussia. The Kingdom of Prus- sia had for a long time been a nation that loved war. The great Napoleon once said that the Prussian state was hatched from a cannon-ball. Less than a hundred years ago, and long after Washington had fought the war which made Amer- ica free, Prussia was an insignificant state com- pared with the great nations of Europe, such as France, Eussia, and England. The members of its ruling family, the Hohenzollerns, were thor- oughly unscrupulous, with little or no regard for the rights of others, and their great ambition was to make Prussia the leading nation of Europe. Prussia was thoroughly beaten and humiliated by France under Napoleon at the battle of Jena, in 1806, but her revenge came at Waterloo, when Bliicher arrived with his army and assisted in the defeat of the great emperor. This, however, by no means satisfied the rulers of Prussia. They longed for greater power, and determined to get it, by any and every means at their command. There was no German Empire at this time. The country we now call Germany consisted of a large number of separate states, each with its own ruler. There were also four free cities. Some of the states, especially those in the south, such as Wiirtemberg and Bavaria, hated the 6 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS Prussians cordially, but in spite of this fact the King of Prussia, William I, most ably assisted by his Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, determined to unite them in a single empire, of which Prussia should be the leading state, and he the supreme ruler. We need not follow in detail the devious steps by which this was brought about. Prussia 's meth- ods had been very much the same ever since the ancestor of the Hohenzollerns, the Elector of Brandenburg, first came into power. Her rulers believed that might makes right, and that in order to make one's country great it was necessary only to seize the lands of weaker neighbors. In this way the two Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, situated at the base of the Jutland Penin- sula upon which Denmark lies, were boldly taken, and when Austria, who had assisted Prussia in the theft, became angry because Bismarck would give her none of the spoils, the "Iron Chancellor," as he was called, at once attacked Austria and de- feated her decisively at the Battle of Sadowa, after a war which lasted only six weeks. This war made Prussia master of Austria, and she remained so for over fifty years. One of the chief reasons for the quick military successes which Prussia gained in her wars arose from the fact that her army was not a paid or regular army, hired for the purpose of defending the country or attacking its enemies, but an army THE CAUSES 7 of the people. Every man physically fit was obliged to serve, the nobles, who formed the mili- tary class, taking the positions of officers, while the common people were trained as soldiers under the most severe discipline in Europe. It was Frederick the Great, one of the earlier Hohen- zollern kings of Prussia, who instituted this sys- tem of universal military training, and as a re- sult of it his armies were able to seize and add to his dominions much additional territory, in- cluding a large part of the Kingdom of Poland, the other two parts of this unhappy country being held by Austria and Russia. One result of Prussia's success against Austria was the formation of the North German Confed- eration, which consisted of a union of all the inde- pendent states in the north of Germany under the leadership of the King of Prussia. Bis- marck's dream of a united Germany under Prus- sian domination was thus partly realized. It required a war to fulfil it completely, and this war Bismarck soon supplied. Flushed with suc- cess, confident that his country could defeat any nation in Europe, he proceeded by diplomatic means to cause Napoleon III, the weak and in- competent Emperor of the French, to declare war against Germany in 1870. France, with the glori- ous memories of the great Napoleon behind her, anticipated no difficulty in defeating Germany, but when the Prussian troops, assisted by the South 8 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS Germans (who had become suspicious of France's intentions toward them), crossed the border into France, it was soon evident that the French with all their bravery were not trained, equipped, or led as well as were the German forces, and the latter won a quick and easy victory. Within a few weeks two great French armies had sur- rendered, one at Metz, the powerful fortress of Lorraine, the other at Sedan. It would be well to remember the names of these two places, since by some strange coincidence the concluding acts of the great war took place at almost the same spots. Now that her armies had been captured, and with them her emperor, France declared herself a republic. She was helpless, however, and al- though Paris made a brave resistance and held out for several months, it was at last taken, and at the palace of Versailles William I, King of Prussia, was declared the German Emperor. Thus the German Empire was formed, in the year 1871, just forty-three years before the outbreak of the great war. France, defeated, was forced to pay to Germany a billion dollars and, what was even more impor- tant, to give up to her conquerors the valuable provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, situated along the western shores of the river Ehine. These prov- inces, the population of which was for the most part French, contained some of the most valuable THE CAUSES 9 deposits of iron in Europe, although at the time Bismarck forced France to give them up the value of these ores was not known. As a result of this war, which she had not sought and which had cost her so much money and ter- ritory, France felt a secret hatred for Germany, and the two countries regarded each other as nat- ural enemies. Germany, knowing that the people of Alsace-Lorraine were at heart in sympathy with the French, proceeded to make every effort to stamp out this feeling. The use of the French language in churches and schools was forbidden, the French national air could not be played or sung, nor could the tricolor be displayed. Such attempts at the repression of the patriotic instincts of a people have never succeeded, yet Germany persisted in them, for upon such repression her whole system of autocratic rule was based. She had followed the same course in Poland for years, without success, and Austria was doing the same thing in the case of the many millions of Italians, Poles, Yugo-Slavs, Czechs, Rumanians, Croats, Slovenes and others held under her rule against their will. In other parts of the world the same process was going on — in Turkey with the Ar- menians and Arabs, in Russia with the Poles, Finns, and other races. Down to the very end of the nineteenth century kings and emperors considered it their right to treat alien peoples and their territories as pawns, to be handed about from 10 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS one to the other in accordance with the results of some mighty game of chess played about the diplomatic peace table. This arbitrary and wrongful treatment of alien races was the chief underlying cause of the great war. From France's defeat in 1871 to the begin- ning of the great war, over forty years elapsed. Emperor William I died, and his son Frederick soon followed him. In 1888 Kaiser William II came to the throne, dreaming of world power. Arrogant without being able or brilliant, he soon quarreled with Bismarck, and dismissed him. During this time Germany had been secretly plan- ning, with the assistance of Austria, to extend her rule over still other alien peoples and races, and the new kaiser began to push with redoubled vigor his preparations for the war he knew was sure to come. These preparations did not consist alone in training armies and building ships, cannon, and fortifications. Other means were adopted. The people of Germany were told over and over that their wars in the past had been enormously profit- able to them, in both money and territory, and that the next war would bring to their doors the riches of the world. In the German schools war was glorified as man's highest duty; might was placed above right; children were taught to believe that the German race was superior to all other races, the chosen people of God, to whom was entrusted the divine mission to rule the world. All this THE CAUSES 11 nonsense was just as much a preparation for war as was the making of cannon; the kaiser's plans were to enslave other races and he thought that if he could make his people believe that in commit- ting these crimes against humanity they were carrying out a divine command, he would have no difficulty in gaining their support. The method was an old one. From time immemorial unscru- pulous rulers have claimed special permission from God to carry out their conquests so as the more easily to delude their ignorant subjects into assisting them. Hence the kaiser went up and down his country for twenty-five years, telling his people that small nations had no rights, and that he was ordained by God to give to these nations the sort of civilization they ought to have, whether they wanted it or not. It is improbable that the kaiser believed this ; he merely dreamed of being another Caesar or Alexander. Other and more sinister methods were being used to prepare for the coming war. In every foreign country Germany's secret agents were at work, collecting information, organizing treach- ery, planning revolt. Among the officers of her navy "Der Tag" ("The Day") was a common toast, and meant the day when war would begin. Books were written and widely read, showing how Germany planned to seize Belgium and northern France, control the Channel ports, defeat Eng- land, make herself master of India, Egypt, and 12 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS Western Russia, and gradually force her kultur, as she called her system of philosophy, upon all the races of the world. Among her schemes was one called Mittel- Europa, which embraced the formation of a huge central European empire, stretching from the Eng- lish Channel southeastwardly through Austria, the Balkan States, and Turkey, to Bagdad and thence to the head of the Persian Gulf. In preparation for this plan of a middle-European empire the kaiser had already visited Turkey and reached a secret understanding with the rulers of that country, while German capitalists had secured a concession to build what is known as the Berlin- to-Bagdad Railway, to run from Berlin via Vienna and Constantinople to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. This road was designed not only to de- velop a huge trade with the Far East, but to be used as a military highway for attacking England in India. A branch line from Aleppo ran down through Damascus to Jerusalem, pointing toward England's great waterway to the east, the Suez Canal. When war broke out, a large part of this Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad had been completed. In order fully to control this road, however, it was necessary that Germany, or her vassal, Aus- tria, should control the Balkan states of Serbia and Bulgaria, through portions of whose terri- tory the road was obliged to run. As events later proved, Germany was able to control Bulgaria THE CAUSES 13 by means of a secret treaty, promising that coun- try large increases in territory in case of a suc- cessful war. But Bulgaria and Serbia were bitter enemies, as a result of the former's defeat by Ser- bia in the second Balkan War, and the Serbians knew that the territory Germany had promised to Bulgaria was to be taken from them. Hence the control of Serbia by Germany and Austria became a very difficult matter. Serbia is inhabited by an ancient and brave people belonging to the great Slavic race, which also inhabits the greater part of Russia. Serbia had once been much larger, and the two Austrian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, unwarrant- ably seized by Austria some years before, were largely inhabited by people of her race. It was her dream to get these provinces away from Austria, whom she hated because the latter had persistently thwarted her desire to obtain a port on the Adriatic Sea, but Austria was bitterly op- posed to a greater Serbia. Here again we observe how the arbitrary oppression of one race by an- other brought about enmity and ill feeling. The Bulgarians were also largely Slavic, and the people of that country had little desire for an alliance with their national enemy Turkey, but this alliance was brought about by another autocratic ruler, not a Bulgarian by birth, the Emperor (or, as he called himself, "Czar") Ferdinand of Bul- garia, a crafty and unscrupulous monarch who 14 THE BATTLE OP THE NATIONS thought of himself as a miniature kaiser, and dreamed of becoming more powerful by extend- ing his rule over the peoples of other countries who did not desire it. Russia, being of the same race as the Serbians, naturally felt a deep sympathy for them and their national aspirations. She also had another and more selfish reason for taking their part. Ever since the foundation of the Eussian Empire by Peter the Great it had been the wish of that coun- try to obtain possession of Constantinople. Hemmed in by the nations of western Europe, Eussia had no outlet to the sea in the west except the port of Archangel, far to the north and use- less for a large part of the year on account of the ice. She wished to possess Constantinople in or- der to send her ships, laden with grain, oil, and other commodities, from the Black Sea to the Med- iterranean by way of the Straits of the Darda- nelles, upon which Constantinople is situated. But the possession of Constantinople by Eussia would have blocked at once Germany's plans for a great empire stretching through Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf. Hence Eussia and Germany used the Balkan States as pawns, to checkmate each other in their political schemes. Even Eng- land in the past, before the establishing of cordial relations with France and Eussia, had played this despicable game, and her statesmen had inva- riably supported the Turks and refused to allow THE CAUSES 15 them to be driven out of Europe, because she did not wish either Russia, or Germany and Austria, to obtain possession of Constantinople, fearing that her trade with the East would be menaced. All this wretched business of playing politics with nations as pawns is in the highest degree immoral and wrong, and the world has reason to hope that the great war has finally put an end to it. Such were the conditions of the various states of Europe when the fateful year of 1914 began. Germany, who had built up an enormous foreign trade in manufactured articles of all sorts, had become the most powerful nation on the conti- nent of Europe. The low-grade iron ores in Lor- raine, one of the provinces taken from France in 1871, had suddenly become very valuable, owing to new methods which were discovered for smelt- ing them. Germany found herself producing al- most as much steel as England, and far more than France. She had built a powerful navy, second only to that of England in size, and her merchant ships, under the flags of the great North-German- Lloyd and Hamburg-American lines, were to be found in every port of the globe. But still she was not satisfied. It was not enough to be great commercially; she wished to rule. Hor plans for launching the middle-European empire were ripe, and only the national aspirations of the Serbian people and their brothers in Austria stood in her 16 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS way. The kaiser and his military party decided that Serbia must be eliminated. To get Serbia out of the way it was necessary to find an excuse to attack her. Such matters have never been difficult, where kings are concerned, and in June, 1914, fate, or, as some think, the manipulations of German and Austrian agents, provided the excuse that was needed. The Arch- duke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife, visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, were assassinated by a mad student, who happened to be a Serbian. It did not take the kaiser and his advisors long to find in this event the opportunity they desired, if indeed they had not actually created it. It was contended by Germany and Austria that the act of the mad student had the secret approval of the Serbian Government, and was part of an organized plan to attack the Aus- trian monarchy and free Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was therefore decided to have Austria make de- mands upon Serbia so impossible and humiliating that no self-respecting nation could possibly sub- mit to them, whereupon, having refused these de- mands, she would at once be set upon and con- quered. If Russia, Serbia's friend, attempted to interfere, Germany would come to Austria's aid and keep Russia off. If Russia refused to be ter- rified by Germany, and with the help of her ally France opposed Germany's schemes, a general European war would result. The kaiser and his THE CAUSES 17 supporters doubtless weighed the case carefully and decided that "The Day" had come. They wanted war because they were ready for war, and believed that Germany would win a quick and de- cisive victory. England, they thought, would not come in; they would take care of her when they had finished with Russia and France. Austria was therefore instructed to send a note to Serbia, making demands of the most insulting and impos- sible nature. Almost as soon as the note was sent, Germany and Austria began secret prepara- tions for war. From what has gone before it is clear that the basic causes of the great war are to be found in the pernicious doctrine of the divine right of kings, whereby autocratic rulers arrogated to themselves the right to govern other peoples with- out their wish or consent. This system found its highest development in the governments of Ger- many, Austria, and Turkey. The personal ambi- tion of the kaiser to rule the world was but an extreme manifestation of it. His conception of the state was that of a collection of obedient and industrious slaves, under the sole rule of one man — himself. The democracies of England, France, and the United States were based on the opposite theory, that of rule by the people. It was inevi- table that in time these two theories should clash. It was asserted, in the beginning, that the war was merely a duel between Germany and England for 18 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS the commercial supremacy of the world, but this is not true. Germany could have obtained such supremacy by peaceful means — was in fact already far on the road to obtaining it when the war be- gan. She wanted actual rule, actual power, over other races, and Serbia was merely the first vic- tim. Such attempts to enslave other peoples nat- urally bring about resistance, a struggle to be free, and before the great war ended this cry for free- dom had been heard around the globe ; and the re- sistance of Serbia to Austria had developed into a struggle of oppressed peoples everywhere against their rulers, of democracy against autoc- racy, even in the ranks of the Allies themselves. In its largest aspect, the great war was a world revolution. The German viewpoint, of course, was very dif- ferent. Germany's leaders held that she must maintain a great army because she was surrounded on all sides by jealous enemies. Russia was re- garded as a constant menace, since the Slav na- tional aspirations ran counter to those of Ger- many. England and France were held to be en- vious of the growing commercial power of the German Empire. The kaiser and his supporters contended that Great Britain and the other Euro- pean nations had seized all the overseas terri- tories from which the raw materials of commerce could be obtained, and that the German people, just coming to the zenith of their power, should THE CAUSES 19 possess some of these sources of supply. The Germans were multiplying rapidly, and needed room for expansion. They felt that there should be colonies under the German flag, as there were under the flag of England. What right had the British to govern Australia, India, Egypt, the Ger- man statesmen asked, when Germany could govern them so much better? There was much talk about the " freedom of the seas." England, by reason of her powerful navy, her coaling-stations all over the world, controlled the trade routes. Germany chafed at this control, although there is no evi- dence that it was ever used in times of peace to hamper in any way her foreign commerce. It is perhaps possible to understand that a young and virile nation, dreaming of world power, might question the right of older nations to control vast sections of the globe by reason of prior conquest, but Germany could have hoped to replace Great Britain or France in this respect only by reason of superior ability to govern subject races and this ability she had never shown. Had she shown it, the British Empire would have collapsed at the first breath of war. That it did not do so is per- haps the best answer to German claims for world domination. CHAPTEE n THE BEGINNING OF THE WAB OF all the nations of Europe which we have mentioned in the preceding chapter, Bel- gium was perhaps the most peaceable. More densely populated than any other country in the world, devoted to industry of every sort, Belgium when the war began was quietly pursuing her way, happily governed by her democratic king, Albert, asking nothing from her neighbors except to be let alone. Owing to her geographical position, Belgium had been the "cock-pit of Europe" for centuries. Wars had been fought upon the fields of Flanders ever since the days of Julius Caesar and before. The epoch-making Battle of Waterloo took place almost within hearing of her capital city, Brussels. To free Belgium from the perpetual danger of war the great nations of Europe made, early in the last century, a solemn treaty guaranteeing her neutrality; that is, agreeing among themselves that in case of war troops were not to be moved into Belgian territory. Germany was one of the powers that signed this treaty, and the world at large supposed that she would prove faithful to her obligations. 20 THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 21 So confident was France that the neutrality of Belgium would be respected in case of war that she took no steps to fortify her Belgian frontier. All of France's great border fortresses, such as Verdun, Epinal, Belfort, were situated along her eastern frontier, where her territory joined that of Germany. It did not occur to the French peo- ple that Germany would ever dare to attack them by way of Belgium. One wonders at this confi- dence on the part of the French, since many books published in Germany dealing with the coming war had declared that Germany would certainly attack through Belgium, and great German mili- tary railroads running up to the Belgian frontier had been constructed solely for use in war. Eng- land did not feel so sure of Germany, and had already discussed with the Belgian military lead- ers what steps they should take in case Germany proved false to her trust. When the outrageous demands made by Aus- tria upon Serbia were sent to Belgrade, the Kaiser of Germany was on a yachting trip in the North Sea. It is said that he embarked upon this trip in order to make the world believe he had no thought of war. But just before his departure a great council was held in his palace at Potsdam, near Berlin, at which council the leaders of the nation, headed by the kaiser, secretly decided upon war. This council took place on the fifth of July, three weeks before the opening of hostilities, and 22 THE BATTLE 0^ THE NATIONS is of importance as proving the falseness of Ger- many's claim that the war was forced upon her. The moment the statesmen of Europe read the text of the demands made by Austria upon Serbia they knew that one of two things must happen: either the Serbian people would be obliged to give up their freedom, and become vassals of Aus- tria, or a great European war must be fought. It was this knowledge on the part of the statesmen of Europe that made the final days of the month of July, 1914, so momentous. While the people of the world were going quietly about their busi- ness, a frightful catastrophe was impending, of which they knew nothing. The lives and prop- erty of hundreds of millions of supposedly free and independent human beings were being juggled with by a handful of professional diplomats, acting in secret, planning to send millions of men to their deaths without consulting them in the matter by so much as a single word. Let us hope that in the future quarrels between nations will be settled openly, with the public's knowledge and consent, as they are settled by the people of the United States, acting through their President and elected representatives in Congress. If the great war marks the end of rule by autocracy, it has in all probability also done away with the evils of secret diplomacy. Serbia, on receiving Austria's demands, did her utmost to satisfy them, and thus preserve peace. THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 23 She accepted all the terms and conditions de- manded of her except one, which involved the question of her sovereign rights as a nation, and this question she was willing to leave to The Hague Peace Tribunal, or to the great nations of Europe to decide. Austria, however, demanded immediate and absolute submission. Meanwhile, many notes, telegrams, and appeals were being sent between the capitals of Europe, but Germany, confident in the strength of her army, opposed every offer which might lead to peace. She insisted that the other nations of Europe had nothing whatever to do with a pri- vate quarrel between Austria and Serbia, and virtually told the world to keep its hands off, threatening that those who did not do so would have to reckon with her. In spite of all appeals, Austria on July 28, 1914, declared war on Serbia, and proceeded to attack Belgrade. Russia, deeply concerned with the fate of her Slavic brothers in Serbia, began to prepare for war, and informed Austria that she would take Serbia's part. Germany instantly notified Rus- sia that if she opposed Austria, she would have to face Germany as well. France, Russia's ally, stood ready to go to her aid. England, in no way prepared for war except on the sea, hesitated, hoping until the last moment that a general Eu- ropean conflict might be averted. Her statesmen made numerous proposals for settling the dis- 24 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS pute, but Germany would listen to none of them. She had decided upon war. Pretending to believe that French airmen had dropped bombs on German cities (which, as was later shown, they had not done) Germany asserted that she had been attacked, and set her armies in motion. On August 1 she declared war on Rus- sia. Her troops at once crossed the frontiers of the neutral state of Luxemburg, and a little later, in spite of her solemn obligations, invaded Bel- gium. The Belgian Government was informed that if the German armies were permitted to pass through the country unmolested Belgium would suffer no injury, but that if resistance were offered she would be destroyed. As a neutral state, it was Belgium's duty to refuse passage to German troops. Not to have done so would have been to give up her neutral- ity and side with Germany. True to her obliga- tions, Belgium heroically resolved to resist the invader. Her king sent word to the kaiser that Belgium would fight for her rights. As a result German troops began to devastate the country with fire and sword, thus committing one of the greatest crimes in history. England, from the first to the fourth day of August, 1914, had hoped that a conflict might be avoided, or at least be confined to the territories of Austria and Serbia. Even when, on August 3, Germany declared war on France, she still strove THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 25 to avoid a general European conflict. But when Germany, in order to attack Russia's ally, France, invaded Belgium, the people of the British Empire rose in wrath and demanded war. England, they said, had given her word to defend Belgium in case of attack, and England's word must be made good. Democratic to the core, the people of this great nation were unwilling to stand by and see a small and peaceful country invaded, crushed, to satisfy Germany's ambitions. When the Ger- man chancellor declared in a public address that "necessity knows no law" and that Germany in order to win would "hack her way through" re- gardless of consequences, when this same chan- cellor told the British Ambassador that he did not believe England would go to war for the sake of "a scrap of paper," meaning thereby the treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, England, on August 4, 1914, declared war on Germany, and the greatest conflict in the world's history was under way. England, France, and Russia, known as the "Entente" powers, were thus arrayed against Germany and Austria. Italy, although a member of the Triple Alliance, refused to take part in the conflict along with its two other members, since the provisions of that alliance stipulated that it was for defense only, and Italy maintained that Germany and Austria had not been attacked. CHAPTER III Germany's war plans THE plan of the German military leaders, when the war began, was a simple one, and one that their "great general staff," as the head of the army was called, had worked out to the last detail, as carefully as a railroad official might work out the schedule by which to run his trains. This plan was to attack France by way of Belgium and Lux- emburg, with an army so strong as to be irresisti- ble, to capture Paris during the first few weeks of the war and thus render France helpless, and then to turn her forces against Russia. Germany knew that the Russians, France's al- lies, would attack her in the East as soon as the armies of the czar were ready to fight, but she believed that the Russian Army would not be ready for many weeks, and by that time she would have beaten France to her knees. In spite of her careful calculations, however, Germany made three great mistakes at the very beginning of the war, and these mistakes in the long run caused her final defeat. The first of these mistakes was to think that it would take the Russian armies so long a time to get ready to fight, to mobilize, as it is called. 26 GERMANY'S WAR PLANS 27 When an army is mobilized, the men of military age in certain prearranged classes must be gath- ered at various points on the railroads throughout the country, supplied with uniforms, arms, and equipment of every sort, and then transported, often for very long distances, to the places chosen for attack. With them there must be sent ammu- nition, food; ambulances, doctors, and nurses for the wounded; artillery of every sort; horses, trucks, airplanes, and countless other things that go to make up the equipment of a modern army. Russia is a very large country, with few railroads, and Germany thought that the tremendous task of mobilizing her army would take much longer than it actually did. She expected, too, that the Aus- trians would be able to keep the Russians in check until France had been defeated, and then, by means of the splendid system of German military railroads, running from east to west, the armies which had beaten France would be sent to settle with the Russians. This was Germany's first great mistake. Russian armies invaded East Prussia within two weeks after war was declared. The second mistake that Germany made was to think that the Belgians would sacrifice the honor of their country and allow the German armies to strike a treacherous blow at France un- opposed. When the kaiser sent word to King Albert of Belgium that his country would be saved great suffering if he would disregard his 28 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS obligations and permit the Germans to pass through Belgium peaceably, paying for any dam- age they might do, the gallant Belgian ruler re- plied that Belgium was neutral territory, that Ger- many had no right to cross it, and that if she attempted to do so, he would defend the honor of his country to the last. When King Albert made this reply to the kaiser, he knew very well that his little army could never hope to stop the mighty military machine of Germany, but he felt that his subjects would rather die than sacrifice their country's honor, and because of their splen- did courage at this critical time the Belgian people will go down in history as having committed one of the sublimest acts of which there is any record. From the moment the first German soldier set foot on Belgian soil, the people fought, suffered, and died with the utmost bravery, and as a re- sult the German drive toward Paris was held back for many days. This failure to estimate the tem- per of the Belgian people correctly was Germany's second great mistake. Her third mistake was to suppose that England would stay out of the war. The English people were having trouble at home on account of the Irish question. Some of the Irish wanted home rule, and England was ready to give it to them. Others, however, did not, and insisted upon re- maining under British rule. For a time it looked as though a civil war might result. Germany GERMANY'S WAR PLANS 29 thought that England was too busy over the Irish question to concern herself with the neutrality of Belgium. But the English were not too busy to remember their obligations. To the glory of Eng- land it will always be said that she kept her word. Scarcely had Germany begun her savage attack upon Belgium, when the great British fleet put to sea, ready for action, and English troops began to pour across the Channel to aid the Belgians and French in the defense of their homes. This miscalculation with respect to England was Ger- many's third great mistake. Such, in a general way, were Germany's plans at the beginning of the war. Let us now say a few words about the German Army. It is well known that when the great war broke out Germany possessed the largest, the best- equipped and best-drilled army in the world. Germany has asserted that the war was forced upon her by enemies jealous of her success, that she took up arms to defend her existence. If any evidence were needed to disprove this claim, it would be found in the fact that when the war be- gan Germany was ready for it in every particular, and no other nation in Europe was. Her army, as has been said, was an army of the people. Every man in the German Empire physically able to bear arms was obliged by law to serve his term in the ranks. A similar system existed in France and other continental countries, 30 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS but not in England, which depended for her safety upon her navy. Owing to her great population, Germany at all times had an immense number of troops under arms, while by calling on her older men, who had already received their military train- ing, she could put in the field close to ten million men. Austria, with her large population trained for military service, was not far behind, although her troops were of inferior quality, being largely drawn from Slavic and other provinces that hated the Austrian rule, and would fight only because they were compelled to do so. As for Turkey and Bulgaria, both of which countries later en- tered the war on Germany's side, each was able to put in the field large numbers of well-trained and efficient troops. The system of mobilizing the army in Germany was perfectly worked out. Every man had his uniform and equipment ready for him at the mili- tary depot in his section. When he was ordered into service he had only to claim his equipment by number, put on his uniform, shoulder his rifle, and join his regiment, ready to fight. Each regi- ment, division, army corps had its orders, pre- pared long in advance, and knew exactly where to go and what to do. Nothing was left to chance. Germany had not forgotten that her great general, Field-Marshal von Moltke, who won the war with France in 1870-71, had boasted that when that war broke out he had only to press a button GERMANY'S WAR PLANS 31 on his desk and send a telegram, and his armies were ready to move, like some perfectly con- structed machine. That the German great gen- eral staff, when the war began in 1914, was quite as ready, the first weeks of August amply proved. But it was not alone in the organization of their army that the Germans showed perfection. Its equipment also was perfect. Not a nation of in- ventors themselves, the Germans displayed re- markable ingenuity in improving the inventions of others. Thus, among other things, their sci- entists took up the airplane, invented by Ameri- cans, and greatly improved it for military pur- poses. Germany realized to a far greater extent than did the other nations of Europe the value of the airplane as a weapon of war, and especially as a means of scouting over the battle-field and sig- naling to gunners miles in the rear the direction and the ranges of the objects at which they were to fire. In the same way one of her scientists, Count von Zeppelin, took up and improved the dirigible balloon, building huge airships as long as an ocean-going liner, shaped like a cigar, and made of silk gas-bags enclosed in a light but rigid framework of aluminum. These balloons, or Zep- pelins as they are called, were equipped with powerful gasolene engines and were capable of traveling at high speeds, even against head winds. They were manned by crews of thirty or more, were armed with small cannon, and carried explo- 32 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS sive bombs to be dropped upon ships, cities, or fortifications. Still another branch of military equipment to which Germany paid great attention was the artil- lery. Light field-guns, of approximately three inches in diameter, were possessed by all armies; in fact, the 75-millimeter field-gun of the French, familiarly called the " seventy-five, " proved to be the best gun of its type in the war, but it was to the perfecting of heavy artillery that Germany devoted special effort. At the great Krupp works at Essen, as well as at the Skoda works in Aus- tria, experiments had been going on for a long time, in the development of mobile heavy howit- zers. The howitzer is a short, powerful gun some- thing like a mortar, and belongs to the high-angle type of artillery; that is, it is intended to be fired at a high angle, its shell rising into the air on a lofty curve and dropping upon its target from above. Guns with a low angle of fire, such as the 12-, 14-, and 16-inch guns found on battle-ships, are fired at their targets directly, and the shells from them rise into the air on a very low or flat curve. There is nothing new in the howitzer, and all armies were equipped with such guns to a mod- erate extent when the war began, but nobody but the Germans thought of constructing howitzers of huge size that would at the same time be mo- bile, that is, readily transported at such speed as ; :' W i g «« [ui ■I :> ill ! 'i GERMANY'S WAR PLANS 33 to form part of the equipment of a marching army. This, however, the Germans and Austrians suc- cessfully did, and to the general public these great 42-centimeter and 30.5-centimeter guns seemed one of the marvels of the war. As a matter of fact, they were merely very large howitzers, ranging in caliber up to I6V2 inches, so constructed that they could be taken apart and transported in sec- tions on especially designed motor-trucks. These guns had a great range, the largest, or 42-centi- meter type, being able to throw a shell weighing approximately a ton, filled with high explosives, over eighteen miles. Very few of the 42-centi- meter type guns were built, as they were not, strictly speaking, mobile, and had to be set up on a heavy concrete base requiring several days to prepare. But many of the lesser sizes, ap- proximately 8, 10, and 12 inches in diameter of bore, were made ready, and accompanied the German and Austrian armies on their various campaigns. The purpose of these guns was as follows : The fortified places that Germany knew would bar her road to France were protected by forts of the Gruson type, consisting of a thick concrete em- placement, above which rose a low curved steel dome resembling the back of a tortoise, and capa- ble of being rotated like the turret of a battle-ship. These land turrets were equipped with guns, and were armored to withstand attack from shells of 34 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS siege guns up to nine inches in diameter. No projectiles of larger size were anticipated, in siege operations. The Germans simply designed guns of larger size and longer range, which could stand off out of harm's way and with a few well- directed shots reduce any fort in the world to a mass of shattered masonry. Another type of artillery to which the Germans gave much attention was the machine gun. This is of two kinds, the heavy machine gun, mounted on wheels and usually drawn by a horse, and the lighter type, which can be carried, if necessary, by one man. Both consist of a rifle barrel, cooled by water or air to prevent it from becoming over- heated, into the breech of which shells are fed with great rapidity by means of a belt or drum. These guns are automatic; that is, the explosion of one shell supplies the power by which the empty car- tridge-case is ejected, the new shell forced into place, and fired. Their operation is thus contin- uous, and once the trigger is pressed, they go on firing of themselves, at the rate of several hun- dred shots a minute, until their ammunition is exhausted, or the barrel becomes too hot to per- mit of further use. Every nation included the machine gun in the equipment of its army, but the Germans, realizing that a few such guns carefully placed can hold off the attacks of an entire regiment, supplied their GERMANY'S WAR PLANS 35 men with great numbers of them, and used them with deadly effect until the very end of the war. These were not all the means that Germany had devised in secret to win the war for which she had been so long preparing. Her chemists had experimented extensively with poisonous gases, which would quickly choke and kill a man when breathed into the lungs. These gases were either to be released in clouds, which the wind would carry into the ranks of the opposing army, or were to be reduced to liquid form and fired in shells, spreading death among the enemy. Still another weapon of war devised by the Germans was the " flame-thrower," an apparatus usually consisting of a cylinder with a short hose attached, to be carried on the back of a man. These cylinders contained an oil which was to be lit and thrown in a flaming stream upon the enemy's ranks. Neither of these devices was new. The chem- ists of England, France, and America knew quite as well as did those of Germany how to employ such methods in making war. But the civilized nations of the world had agreed on certain rules of warfare, considering it their duty to render wars as humane as possible, and such methods were held to be unlawful. The Germans, however, believing themselves to be superior to all other races, chosen by God Himself to rule the world, did not feel bound by these rules. Such conven- 36 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS tions were mere "scraps of paper," which they felt they had the right to disregard whenever it suited their convenience to do so. Even in questions of honor the obligations which bound other nations seemed to mean nothing what- ever to the Germans. They were ready to sign any sort of agreement, reserving to themselves the right to break it whenever they saw fit. Thus they broke the treaty agreeing to protect the neu- trality of Belgium, and later on, as we shall see, refused to be bound by any of the rules of inter- national law. This fact should be carefully borne in mind, since it ultimately resulted in the United States' entering the war. In addition to organizing and equipping her army so efficiently, Germany spent a great deal of money upon her navy. Particularly did she develop another American invention, the submer- sible boat, or submarine. She built larger and more powerful boats of this type than the other navies of the world possessed, and planned to use them in sinking the ships of her enemies in order to offset the fact that her navy was not as yet the most powerful in the world. The other nations of Europe had also prepared for war, not as Germany had prepared, to conquer the world, but to defend themselves in case they were attacked. Thus France, with only about half the population of Germany, was obliged to main- tain a large standing army, and England in order GERMANY'S WAR PLANS 37 to protect herself against invasion, followed a naval policy of building two battle-ships to any other nation 's one. England maintained no stand- ing army of the people. Military service was not compulsory with her. Her regular army was employed to do police work in India, Egypt, and her other overseas dominions. It was made up of splendid soldiers, among the best in the world, but there were not many of them. In addition, England had a volunteer force not unlike the National Guard of the United States. These troops were called Territorials. We thus see that Germany, ready to break any convention or treaty she had previously signed if it suited her interests to do so, confident of the invincibility of her army, and convinced that it was her mission under God's will and command to conquer the world, stood at the beginning of August, 1914, an enemy of all mankind. CHAPTER IV THE DRIVE THROUGH BELGIUM THE invasion of Belgium by Germany has been called the greatest crime in history. The kaiser's action in attacking a neutral coun- try was in itself sufficiently criminal, but the treat- ment accorded the helpless people of that country by the German armies was so cruel, so utterly be- yond belief, that at first the world refused to credit it. When the terrible facts at last became fully known, a wave of sympathy and anger swept over the civilized world. Germany had outraged every law of God and man. Some of the great leaders of military thought in Germany, notably Baron von der Goltz, had written books setting forth the theory that war, if made sufficiently terrible, would not last long. Filled with this devilish doctrine, the Germans tried it first upon the Belgians. The world knew that to treat any self-respecting nation with cruelty could result only in that nation's resisting all the more bravely; but the Germans could not see this, and hence they stopped at no crime, no matter how horrible, in order to terrify their opponents and cause them to lay down their arms. From the moment they crossed the Belgian fron- 38 THE DRIVE THROUGH BELGIUM 39 tier, they began to indulge in the most unbeliev- able cruelties. Peaceful villages were burned ; old men, women, and children were shot or otherwise murdered by the thousands ; prisoners were killed or mutilated, and many other crimes, too terrible even to mention, were committed in the name of German kultur. The first city of any size that the Germans at- tacked, after they crossed the Belgian frontier at Verviers, was Liege, lying upon the river Meuse. This large town was well protected by a circle of twelve outlying forts of the Gruson type, built of concrete, with disappearing steel turrets. At first the Germans could make no headway against the determined defense of the garrison, and lost a large number of men. Within a few days, how- ever, they brought up their new heavy howitzers, and it required only a few shells, with their tre- mendous charges of high explosives, to reduce the forts to heaps of ruins. The world looked on in amazement. Never in the history of siege opera- tions had such huge guns been employed. When one of these monster projectiles descended upon a fort on the outskirts of Liege, the force of the explosion was so great that every man in the un- derground chambers was either killed or wounded. Military observers everywhere realized that in an hour Germany had shown there was not a fortified place in Europe which could be defended successfully against such an attack. 40 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS It took the Germans eleven days to complete the reduction of the defenses of Liege, and the delay greatly upset their plans. Soon, however, the German armies began to spread all over the east- ern part of Belgium, pillaging, burning, and mur- dering as they went. In village after village, town after town, the horrors of war as conducted by the kaiser and his armies were repeated. When the German troops entered a place, orders were given to arrest a certain number of the prom- inent citizens. If thereafter any resistance was offered, if but a single shot happened to be fired by some outraged inhabitant, the citizens who had been arrested, and who were called hostages, were promptly shot, and in many cases the town or village was burned as well. The German troops, prepared for all emergencies, carried with them small tablets of compressed inflammables, which, when thrown into a house, ensured its destruction. Theft was common everywhere, and was committed by soldiers and officers alike, in spite of the fact that in civilized warfare private property is sup- posed to be respected. Money, household goods, the gold and silver vessels of the churches, furni- ture, ornaments, jewelry, everything that could be carried away, was taken and sent back to Ger- many. Even one of the kaiser's own sons was guilty of this common thievery, looting a hand- some chateau of its priceless tapestries, paintings, and other objects of art and sending them home as THE DRIVE THROUGH BELGIUM 41 booty. Later on factories were stripped of their machinery, which was to be set up again in Ger- man factories. Heavy fines were imposed upon the Belgian and French towns and villages upon the least provocation. Even the bells of the churches, famous for their chimes, the brass and copper cooking-utensils of the peasants, door- knobs and chandeliers were seized, to be used in making shells, in the manufacture of which much copper and brass is required. No marauding band of savages ever acted with greater brutality. It is no wonder that, remembering the ravages made centuries earlier by the Huns under their famous leader Attila, the world came to call the present-day Germans "Huns." The kaiser had threatened that he would crush Belgium, and he did so with German thoroughness. The most notable case of destruction was the burning of Louvain. When the Germans entered this large and beautiful city on August 24, some shots were fired at them. It has never been clearly established whether these shots were fired by outraged Belgians trying to protect their homes, or by drunken German soldiers. But the German officers did not wait to find out. After first having a large number of the inhabitants shot, they ordered the place destroyed by fire, and this splendid city was soon little more than a heap of ashes. The terrible scenes in Louvain were repeated in 42 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS many other places. The German armies swept through Belgium like a raging flood, the soldiers singing their battle-song "Deutschland uber Alles," which means Germany over everything and everybody. War correspondents who hap- pened to be in the city of Brussels when General von Kluck's army marched through, wrote to their papers that such a magnificent yet terrible spectacle had never before been witnessed. For two days and nights the seemingly endless gray- clad columns marched through the streets — strong, rugged men, shoulder to shoulder, from curb to curb, like some resistless torrent. Behind them rumbled their heavy artillery. At their front flew airplanes, overseeing the line of march. The world stood amazed at this exhibition of Ger- many 's strength. At first the drive through Belgium met with little opposition. The Belgians fought with the greatest bravery, but they were hopelessly out- numbered. Help was coming from England, but the time was short, and the moving of large bodies of men with their complete equipment, by water, is a long and complicated operation. The bulk of the French Army was far to the east, attempt- ing an invasion of Germany through Alsace-Lor- raine. In spite of their heroic resistance the Bel- gians were brushed aside, the great fortress of Namur, between Liege and the French frontier, fell after a few shots from the German heavy THE DRIVE THROUGH BELGIUM 43 howitzers, and the way to Paris was open. Mean- while, a part of the Belgian Army had retired be- hind the forts of Antwerp, to the north, and the remainder had retreated westward toward the line of the river Yser, near the border between Belgium and France. A French army hurriedly sent into Belgium was badly defeated southwest of Namur, at Charleroi, and a little later the French border fortress of Maubeuge was besieged, and fell on September 7, after a determined resistance, before the heavy German artillery. This was the last attempt made by the French to hold steel and concrete forts against the German method of attack. The old theory was that the fortress would protect its garrison ; now it was seen that the garrison must protect the fortress, by operating in the open. We shall see a striking example of this later on, at the siege of Verdun. The French were defeated at Charleroi on Au- gust 23. On the same day the British Expedi- tionary Force, under the command of General (afterward Field-Marshal) Sir John French, first came in contact with the Germans at the Belgian city of Mons. This force, fresh from England, had been hur- riedly assembled, with little time for preparation, but it consisted of British regular troops, among the best-trained soldiers in the world. Their equipment in artillery, except in guns of the light- 44 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS est type, was poor. It was only the advance guard of the British forces that met the Germans at Mons, two army corps, some forty thousand men in all. Opposed to them were three or four times their number of the enemy. History records no more splendid example of bravery and endurance than that shown by the British troops at the Battle of Mons and during the subsequent terrible retreat. It was impos- sible, of course, for these men to stop the onslaught of the Germans, but they checked it, held it back day after day, taking a huge toll in lives, and holding each point until their regiments were shot to pieces and their ammunition exhausted. The army of General von Kluck, which formed the extreme right wing of the German forces, was advancing in a huge semicircle through Belgium and France, driving to the westward in the hope of outflanking the French and British — that is, of getting around and behind them, and thus cut- ting them off. Had it succeeded in doing this, a great French and British army would have been captured, and Germany might have won the war. French reinforcements, however, were hurrying up from the east, and the task imposed upon the British was to delay von Kluck, and prevent him from outflanking them, until these reinforcements arrived. No troops in the world ever performed a dim- cult task better. This ' ' contemptible little army, ' ' THE DRIVE THROUGH BELGIUM 45 as the kaiser had called it, went through one of the bloodiest retreats in history unconquered and un- dismayed. From the twenty-third of August to the twenty-sixth, which latter General French called in one of his dispatches "the most critical day," they fought and died, without allowing the Germans either to break through or to outflank them. From Mons through Valenciennes, Cam- brai, LeCateau, Marcoing, and St.-Quentin the British retreated, foot by foot, awaiting the re- inforcements which were hurrying to their sup- port. All through the latter part of August the Germans drove west and south, toward Paris, with the British and French "digging in" (that is, constructing shallow, temporary trenches), hold- ing their positions with dogged courage, and hop- ing for the day when they might in their turn attack. To retreat day after day taxes the spirit, the "morale," as it is called, of any army. Only the bravest and most determined troops can en- dure it. Such troops the Germans found barring their path. As the unfavorable news came day after day the world began to think that the Germans were invincible, and that the capture of Paris was a matter of but a few weeks, even days. Then came the greatest battle in history, the Battle of the Marne. CHAPTER V THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE THE Battle of the Marne will without doubt be regarded by future generations as the greatest battle of which there is any record in his- tory. It is true that in some of the later battles of the war there were more men engaged on the two sides, and the losses were heavier, but the results of this battle were more important to civ- ilization than those of any other battle that has ever been fought. If the Germans had won it, they would have taken Paris, conquered France, and driven the small British Army (about one hundred and twenty thousand men) into the sea. This accomplished, they might readily have con- quered all of Europe. With Europe at their feet, the kaiser's dream of dominating the world might easily have been realized. The United States might even have become a German province, and the civilization of the future have been regulated according to the German idea, by which they were to be the masters, and the other races of the world their slaves. That the Germans did not win the Battle of the Marne was due to the heroism of the French, and of their British allies. As we have seen, the huge and splendidly 46 THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE 47 equipped German Army, throughout the month of August, drove southwest through Belgium and France toward Paris. After the fall of Namur, the armies of the kaiser crossed the river Aisne, in northern France, and swept irresistibly toward the river Marne. They advanced in many strong columns, of which the most westerly one was that of General von Kluck. Other columns came through Namur, through the neutral state of Lux- emburg in the direction of Verdun, through Lor- raine, by way of the great German fortress of Metz, and from there south, opposite Nancy and Belfort, to the Swiss border. All of these great armies converged upon Paris. The central ones were under the command of the kaiser's son, the German crown-prince. General (afterward Marshal) Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, saw at once that his plan to invade Germany by way of Alsace and Lorraine was a failure. The German attack through Bel- gium came as a surprise. With the bulk of his forces far to the east, Joffre knew that he could not hope to defend Paris. He therefore began to withdraw his troops toward the west, in order to bar the way to the French capital. This opera- tion of moving hundreds of thousands of men a great distance, together with their artillery and other equipment, was a difficult one. While it was under way, the bloody retreat of the English and French continued. Day after day the world 48 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS waited, wondering why General Joffre did not give the word to stand fast, but the French general knew that he was not ready, and continued to order his armies to retreat. Having crossed the river Aisne, the Germans reached and crossed the river Marne, and Paris was so short a distance away that the thunder of the German guns was heard in its streets. There was no panic, but the government removed its offices to Bordeaux, and many persons left the city. Scarcely any one believed that Paris could be saved. Meanwhile a very great battle was being fought in the east of France, between the fortresses of Verdun and Nancy. The French, under General Castelnau, retiring after their unsuccessful at- tempt to invade Germany by way of the Bhine, were heavily attacked by German columns ad- vancing westward through Metz and Strasburg toward Nancy. The French fell back until they reached the line of hills along the river Meuse known as the Grand-Couronne, and here a great battle was fought. Not much was heard of it at the time, because the attention of the world was centered on Paris, but General Castelnau and his men defended their positions with the utmost bravery, with the result that the German flood was held back, and Verdun and Nancy remained in French hands. The victory was won by a very narrow margin; German troops succeeded © Moffett Studi JOSEPH JACQUES CESAIRE JOFFRE Marshal of France * J Ov |u 5 I I § ~ * 2 3 ■a o * e s< ? ? U^ < ~ m 13 -2 « W g fl-S H t- ■ FH "^ m M ro c W 0} G CD -C 03-5 E Eh From the Ger position signed THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE 49 in occupying one of the outlying forts of Verdun, crossing the Meuse south of that city at a place called St.-Mihiel, of which we shall hear more, later. But here they were stopped, and the kaiser, who came to witness the fall of Nancy, was forced to see his troops thrown back in defeat, in spite of their bravery. Had Verdun and Nancy fallen, the Battle of the Marne could in all probability never have been won. In any other war this fighting along the Grand-Couronne would have ranked as an operation of the first magnitude, but although there were more men engaged than there were at "Waterloo, it was scarcely noticed, owing to the still greater events taking place in the vicinity of Paris. General von Kluck's army, as has been said, was the furthest west of all the German forces. The direction of his advance, toward the south- west, was such as to take him to a point west of Paris. It had been the hope of the German lead- ers to get around the left flank of the Allied armies, and crush them in upon that city. Von Kluck's advance was more rapid than that of the German center, under General von Biilow, to the left of him, and early in September he reached a point less than twenty miles from Paris, and almost within sight of its outlying forts. Sud- denly, to the astonishment of every one, von Kluck swung his forces toward the southeast, and be- gan to march directly across the front of the 50 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS defenses of Paris in the direction of Meaux. This maneuver has been variously explained. By some it is contended that having got "out of touch," as it is called, with von Billow's armies to the east, von Kluck had to move eastward and thus close up the gap. By others it is held that the purpose of the manceuver, since the Allies could not be outflanked, was to drive a wedge be- tween the French to the north of Paris, and that city, thus cutting them off from their base. It was in any event a dangerous move, as it ex- posed von Kluck 's right flank to attack by the British and French forces on the west. There is no doubt that the German general staff, which ordered the movement, greatly underestimated the strength of the British and French at this point. Their armies, concealed in the woods, had escaped observation by the German aircraft. General von Kluck 's change of front gave General Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, the opportunity for which he had been waiting. To understand thoroughly the events which now followed, one must bear several points in mind. In the first place, the Allies had up to now been greatly outnumbered. They also lacked heavy artillery, and were worn out by their long and grueling retreat. Soldiers who fall back day after day inevitably become discouraged. The Ger- mans, on the other hand, were flushed with vic- tory. Paris seemed within their grasp. THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE 51 There were, however, some reinforcements available which General Joffre had been gather- ing during the final days of August. An army of considerable size, made up of the French troops in the west of France, had been assembled at Amiens, under the command of General Manoury. These troops, lying to the west of von Kluck's line of advance, threatened his flank. Another force of considerable size had been gathered within the fortifications of Paris itself, in order to de- fend the city. They were under the command of General Gallieni, the military governor of the French capital. The French troops to the northeast of Paris were commanded by General Foch, who was then but little known outside his own country, although he was destined to become the commander-in-chief of all the Allied forces and a Marshal of France. His men were directly opposite the armies of Gen- eral von Biilow, commanding the German right- center. On September 4, General Joffre was ready to strike, and issued his famous series of orders which culminated in an appeal to the French armies to die where they stood rather than yield another foot of French soil. The armies of the Republic, and their British allies, threw them- selves upon the foe with indescribable courage, determined to win a victory or die in the attempt. The Germans learned too late of the presence 52 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS of General Manoury's army on their right. Scarcely had von Kluck turned to the southeast, thus exposing his flank, when Manoury's army, and the British under General Sir John French, fell upon him. At the same time General Gal- lieni ordered into service every taxicab and mo- tor-truck in Paris, and loading the garrison of the city upon them sent them at full speed to the front. General von Kluck 's armies, under this unexpected onslaught, fell back in retreat, thus uncovering the flank of von Billow's forces on their left. General Foch, perceiving this expo- sure of von Billow's flank, also attacked, at the same time sending to General JofTre his famous message, that his left wing was in confusion, his right crushed, and that he was therefore attack- ing with his center. And attack he did, not only upon von Billow's right flank, but later also upon his left, where a gap existed between the armies of von Biilow and of von Hausen, further to the east. The whole right wing of the German army of invasion was thrown into confusion and began a rapid retreat toward the river Marne, thus obliging the German forces further east, com- manded by the crown-prince, also to fall back, in order to preserve their line of front. Had the French and British been able to take full advantage of their victory, had they been able to pursue the beaten Germans as they would have liked, the retreat of the latter across the river THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE 53 Marne might have been turned into a disastrous rout. But they were too exhausted to press their victory to the utmost. Many thousands of Ger- mans were killed or captured as they fled north- ward, but their retreat was conducted with great skill, and they succeeded in withdrawing the bulk of their forces across the Marne, together with their heavy artillery, and still retreating, reached and crossed the river Aisne. Here, on the north bank of that river, they took refuge in a deep and powerful system of trenches, which had been con- structed in anticipation of just such an emergency. The German armies to the east, retiring so as to keep in line with those to the west, swung back- ward across the whole of northern France, like a great arm pivoted upon the French fortress of Verdun. As a result, the victory of the Marne left the Germans powerfully entrenched from Ver- dun westward straight across the northern part of France, to a point beyond the city of Soissons. The British and French made several attempts to cross the Aisne and drive the Germans from their trenches, but they were not in sufficient force, and lacked the heavy guns necessary for such work, and although the fighting here, called the Battle of the Aisne, was fierce and bloody, it did not result in driving the Germans back any further, and for nearly four years, with comparatively few changes, the opposing lines remained as they then stood. 54 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS It has been pointed out in a previous chapter that Germany's three great mistakes at the be- ginning of the war were her failure to estimate correctly the temper of the Belgians, her belief that Russia could not mobilize her forces quickly, and her confidence that England would remain neutral. We can now see more clearly the re- sults of these mistakes. In the first place the resistance of the Belgians delayed the German advance long enough to permit the British to send an army to France. England came in, and with her expeditionary force of some hundred and twenty thousand men held back the great German drive toward Paris until General Joffre was able to bring up his reinforcements, and later contrib- uted greatly to the victory of the Marne. In fact, many persons believe that without England's aid that victory could never have been won. As for Russia, her quick invasion of East Prussia forced the Germans to send to their eastern front many men who might otherwise have been used in France, and it is possible had they been there, the result at the Marne might have been different. Further, the entrance of England into the con- flict brought with it a power which in the long run did more to bring about Germany's ultimate defeat than any other one thing. This power was the British Navy. Ready for action the day war was declared, the British fleet at once began a blockade of the German coast. Powerful squad- THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE 55 rons took positions in the North Sea for the pur- pose of preventing either German merchantmen or German war-ships from entering or leaving the great ports of Hamburg, Bremen, or the naval bases at the entrance to the Kiel Canal (which crosses the peninsula on which Denmark lies, by way of the province of Schleswig-Holstein, and thus connects the North and Baltic seas). Ger- man commerce by sea instantly ceased, and, with trifling exceptions, was never renewed until the close of the war. At the same time, the German war-ships were shut up in their harbors land could not come out without offering battle to su- perior forces. Meanwhile, the seas were open to the Allies, and millions of men, hundreds of mil- lions of dollars' worth of food and supplies, were transported between England, France, and other parts of the world. Without the British Navy, ably assisted by French and Italian, and later on by American fleets, the Allies could not have won the war. It is not too much to say, then, that Germany's three great mistakes at the very beginning of the war caused her final defeat. CHAPTER VI THE EACE FOR THE CHANNEL PORTS AS soon as the Battle of the Marne was over, the course of the great conflict swept rap- idly to the north. The strong German battle-line across France ended west of Soissons, and south of the city of Noyon. The German right flank therefore was left, as military men call it, ''in the air," that is, it was unprotected, and if the British and French could get around the end of that line, they could outflank the enemy and attack them in the rear. Eealizing this, General Joffre at once sent a force northward under the command of General de Maud'huy, who with a mixed army of French colonial troops from northern Africa, called Senegalese and Turcos, and some French volunteers called Territorials, reached Arras, about half-way between Noyon and the North Sea. The German leaders, fully aware of the danger which threatened them, and determined in turn to do to the French exactly what the French were trying to do to them, that is, outflank them, also rushed powerful forces toward the north. Troops of the famous Prussian Guard Corps, and picked regiments of Bavarians did their utmost, in a 56 RACE FOR THE CHANNEL PORTS 57 series of terrific attacks, to break through the French lines about Arras, but General de Maud'- huy, with inferior forces, held them back, and the attacks failed. By the middle of October the French were entrenched securely as far north as Bethune, near the Belgian border, and the Allies' flank was for the time being safe. From Bethune northward to the sea stood the British and Bel- gians. This series of operations has been called the race for the channel ports, that is, the ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Havre, on the English Chan- nel in northern France. The Germans wanted these ports for several reasons. In the first place their possession would have prevented the Brit- ish from using the short cross-channel route to send men and supplies to France. To reinforce and supply their armies by a circuitous sea trip to ports on the east coast of France would have been both difficult and dangerous. In the second place the Germans wanted these ports so that they might attack England. The English coast is within the range of modern guns, at Calais. In the third place the Germans intended, if they could get these ports, to keep them permanently. The kaiser wanted easier access to the sea. It irked him to think that the English Channel, the great waterway between the North Sea and the Atlantic, was dominated by his enemies the Brit- ish. Hence the German armies made frantic ef- 58 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS forts to break, first the French and later on the British and Belgian lines which barred their way to the coast. Failing to break the French line from Arras to Bethune, the Germans now turned their attention to the Belgians and British. Having made secure their hold on the large French manufacturing city of Lille, close to the Belgian border, and having also now in their grasp the great iron- and coal- fields of Belgium and northern France, lying about Lens, they struck a violent blow at the Belgian Army along the river Yser, which empties into the North Sea. The operation failed. Although the Germans succeeded in crossing the river, and reaching Nieuport, they got no further. When, by opening the dikes along the Yser Eiver and its canals, the Belgians flooded the country, the Ger- mans found themselves operating in a territory that was impassable. They therefore shifted their attacks to a point further south, around the fa- mous Belgian city of Ypres. Two separate and determined attempts were made to break the British line at this point, the first lasting from October 20 to November 2, and the second from November 3 until November 17. For a whole month the thin British line held its own against furious attacks by superior numbers. When the earlier attacks failed, the kaiser brought up his crack troops, the famous Prussian Guard, and came himself to witness their victory, only to EACE FOR THE CHANNEL PORTS 50 see them in turn fall back, beaten, before the gal- lant British defense. The fighting was of the most bitter sort; a single English division, the 7th, lost over 350 out of its 400 officers, and 8000 out of its 12,000 men. Great as were the English losses, however, those of the Germans were greater. It is estimated that the attempt to take Ypres cost them 150,000 men. No troops in the world ever fought more bravely than did the British, and the French who came to their aid, about Ypres. Many of these men be- longed to the " contemptible little army" which had undergone the terrible retreat from Mons, and with their bodies they formed a living barrier which the Germans were unable to pass. Some were English Territorials, men fresh from the shop and farm, who had never seen a battle up to now, but had been hastily brought across the Chan- nel, to stand in shallow, mud-filled trenches, with- out adequate artillery protection, and resist the attacks of the flower of the German Army, equipped with every device that science could pro- vide. With the coolness of veterans they stuck to their positions, mowing down the Germans with rifle and machine-gun fire as the latter came on in dense masses, using their favorite close formation. It is said that at one point in the battle, with his last reserves gone, General French, the British commander, was about to order his men to fall back, and was prevented from doing so only by 60 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS the assurances of the general in command of the French forces on his right that reinforcements were on the way. This general, of whom we have heard before, was Ferdinand Foch, who did such brilliant work at the Battle of the Marne, and who was later to rise to the supreme command of all the Allied forces. Future generations, with complete information as to the number of men engaged on both sides in these two great battles, will wonder that the Germans failed to break through ; but it should be remembered that battles are not won by superior numbers but by the courage and faith of the men on the firing-line, and these English, French, and Belgian soldiers were inspired by a divine spirit of sacrifice, based on the knowledge that they fought in a just cause, which spirit the mechan- ically drilled German troops lacked. The saving of Paris and the channel ports, and with them the civilization of the world, was a triumph of spir- itual courage over brute force. Under the influ- ence of such courage the commonest soldier be- comes a hero, and, as was the case with the Greeks under Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae, a handful of men may hold back an army. The close of the terrible winter of 1914—15 found the opposing forces locked in what now came to be known as trench warfare, on a line nearly four hundred miles long, extending from the North Sea to the borders of Switzerland. CHAPTER Vn OTHER EVENTS IN THE EARLY PAET OF THE WAR DURING the drive of the Germans through Belgium, as has been seen, a part of the Belgian Army retired behind the forts of Ant- werp. In October, 1914, the Germans laid siege to the city and captured it. Like Liege and Namur, Antwerp was defended by rings of outlying forts, and was considered one of the strongest fortresses in Europe. For some reason the lesson of the German heavy howitzers seemed not yet to have been perfectly grasped, for the English decided that Antwerp could be held, and sent a force of naval guns and gunners to assist the Belgians in its defense. The siege was short and decisive. The German howitzers soon battered the outlying forts into submission, after which the guns were moved up and a bombard- ment of the city itself was begun. With their buildings falling about their ears, the Belgians had to surrender, although the greater part of the garrison managed to escape, and rejoin their com- rades along the Yser. Some, however, together with the English naval forces, retreated into Hol- land, and were interned ; that is, held virtually as 61 62 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS prisoners until the end of the war. This is the customary procedure, under the rules of warfare, when fighting men of any nation are forced to take refuge in a neutral country. The siege of Antwerp is notable because it was here that the first instance of the use of Zeppelin airships in bombarding cities occurred. During the siege the Germans sent Zeppelins over the city proper, not the forts, and dropped a number of bombs upon the place. A hospital and several other buildings were destroyed, and many per- sons, non-combatants, were killed or wounded. Had the Germans dropped these bombs upon the forts, it would have been understandable, although even on this point there was some disagreement, under international law, but to wreck ,hospitals, kill helpless non-combatants, was nothing but wil- ful murder, without military advantage, and the world so denounced it. It was not long, however, before every one began to realize that Germany intended to carry on the war without any regard for international law whatever, and the bombing of cities, hospitals, and unfortified places generally soon became a matter of almost daily occurrence. While events of such tremendous importance were taking place in Europe, another nation en- tered the war, on the side of Germany and Austria. This nation was Turkey. The Turkish Empire was formed by certain wandering tribes of Asia known as Osmanli (from EARLY PART OF THE WAR 63 the name of one of their chiefs, Osman), who were first heard of in the Eleventh Century. Followers of the Prophet Mohammed, they waged cruel war on the Christian nations of southeastern Europe, and finally, under their leader Mohammed II in the year 1453, captured the city of Constantinople, the old Byzantium, and thus ended the power of the Eastern Roman Empire. Crossing the Dar- danelles, this cruel and fanatical race extended its conquests northward until it had brought all of the Balkan Peninsula under its control. Grad- ually, as later on the sultan's power declined, the Turks were forced to give up their hold on the several Balkan states, and Serbia, Rumania, Bul- garia, and finally Greece gained their independ- ence. Had it not been for the jealousies of the great European powers, as shown in a preceding chapter, the Turks would long ago have been com- pletely driven out of Europe. All this intricate and underground diplomatic wire-pulling consti- tutes a history in itself; suffice it to say that it remained for Germany, a supposedly Christian nation, to ally herself with the Turks in order to war on other Christian nations. A new party had been formed in Turkey some years before the opening of the great war, called the Young Turks, led by Enver Bey, an ambitious and unscrupulous politician who had received his education in Germany. Enver Bey succeeded in deposing the aged sultan, Abdul Hamid II, and 64 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS although a new sultan was installed, he had little or no power, and the Young Turks proceeded to run the government as they saw fit. Ever since the visit of the kaiser to Constantinople, when he proclaimed himself the protector of all followers of the Prophet, German influence in Turkey had been growing stronger. The Turkish Army was equipped with artillery from the great Krupp works in Germany, and German officers came in large numbers to train its troops. A treaty be- tween Germany and Turkey probably existed, al- though the world did not know of it, by which the latter country was promised great rewards in case of a successful war. Egypt had once be- longed to the sultan, and still was nominally under his control, although actually governed by Eng- land. It would be easy, the kaiser's agents pointed out to the ambitious Enver Bey and his associates, for the sultan, who was also the head of the Mohammedan Church, to declare a jehad (or holy war, of the Mohammedans upon the Chris- tians), whereupon the millions of followers of the Prophet in Egypt, India, and elsewhere would at once rise in revolt against their English masters and slaughter them. This would enable Turkey to secure control of Egypt, and share with Germany the conquest of India and the Far East. In all this Germany was of course merely using Turkey as a tool, to further her own ends, but Enver and his associates, filled with pride at the thought of EARLY PART OF THE WAR 65 being made an ally of the powerful German kaiser, fell into the trap and dragged, their unhappy country along with them. At the outbreak of the war, before Turkey en- tered it, two German war-ships, the Goeben, a battle-cruiser, and the lighter cruiser Breslau, were on duty in the Mediterranean. Cleverly eluding the French and British war-ships that tried to capture them, they took refuge in the Dar- danelles. Here they should have been interned, by the rules of war, as has been explained, but to get around this the German Government sold them to the sultan. Whether any sale really took place is doubtful, but both the vessels and their crews were added to the Turkish Navy. This trick, against which the Allies in vain protested, was soon followed by Turkey's entrance into the war. England, realizing the danger which now threat- ened her power in the East, at once began to take steps to prevent Turkey from carrying out Ger- many's schemes. A small force of English and Indian troops under General Townshend was sent from India to Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf. This city is the ancient Bassora, famous in the Arabian Nights as the place from which Sind- bad the Sailor started on so many of his voyages. General Townshend 's forces began a slow and dif- ficult advance northward up the Tigris River to- ward the ancient city of Bagdad, to which, we must remember, the Germans had been constructing 66 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS their great Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad. The Eng- lish undertook their advance in order to gain pos- session of the terminus of this road at Bagdad. There were, however, uncompleted sections of it north of that city. We shall hear more, later, of this advance up the Tigris, known as the Meso- potamian Campaign. At the same time England proceeded to set aside the nominal ruler of Egypt, called the khedive, and to assume the actual governing of that country herself. Heretofore she had acted only in an ad- visory capacity, but the grave danger which threat- ened the Suez Canal made her action imperative. She also began to collect at Cairo, and along the line of the canal, troops from Australia and New Zealand as well as from India, in order to protect both the waterway and Egypt itself from the Turks. It was necessary to England that the Suez Canal should remain open. Many thousands of men from her Eastern possessions, as well as an enormous amount of commerce, passed through this canal. It was the great highway between Eu- rope and the East, and if Germany could have closed it, she would have dealt England a severe blow. A campaign having this as its purpose was already under way. A Turkish army, led by Ger- man officers, was advancing along the railroad from Aleppo, by way of Damascus and Jerusalem, toward the stretch of sandy desert country which lies to the east of the canal, and German engineers EARLY PART OF THE WAR (57 were preparing to construct a railway across this desert, and to make provision to supply the ad- vancing Turkish army with water. Germany's attempts to start, through the sultan, a holy war against the Christians was a failure. The followers of the Prophet in India and Egypt, in spite of the efforts of the kaiser's secret emis- saries, refused to turn against the English, who had governed them justly and well. The Arabians under Turkish rule, who inhabited the country east of the Suez Canal and south of Palestine, not only refused to fight against the English but actually started a revolution of their own against the mis- rule of the sultan, through which revolution they later gained their independence. One of the great outstanding features of the war at this time was the way in which the people of England's overseas dominions rallied to her support. Germany had supposed, among her other mistakes, that Canada, Australia. New Zea- land, South Africa, India, would all turn against Great Britain as soon as war was declared. Un- able to hold their own colonies in Africa and else- where except by force, the Germans thought that the same thing was true of England, and could not understand that the British Empire was bound together by ties of loyalty and love, the result of England's splendidly free, just, and democratic form of government. Throughout the entire war the men from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 68 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS South Africa, and India fought as devotedly, and contributed their money as loyally, as did those of England itself, and the great princes of India vied with one another in their efforts to show their devotion to the British cause. In Africa a great conflict began, having as its purpose the conquest of the German African col- onies. The people of England's possessions in South Africa were many of them Boers, of Dutch descent, who had been beaten by the British in a long war some years earlier, and it might have been expected that these men would seize the opportunity now presented to turn against the English, but with a few exceptions the South Afri- cans remained true to Great Britain, and began, under the leadership of the former Boer generals Smuts and Botha, a long and arduous campaign against the Germans. Other campaigns were started by the English, French, Belgians, and Portuguese (who later entered the war on the side of the Allies), and while the great conflict was go- ing on in Europe bands of native troops under German officers were being tracked through hun- dreds of miles of jungle in German East Africa, Southwest Africa, Togoland, and Kamerun. At the same time events of great importance were taking place in the Far East. Germany, envious because England and France controlled trading-ports in China, had determined some years earlier to secure possession of Chinese territory EARLY PART OF THE WAR 69 herself. Consequently, when, several years before the war, two German missionaries were killed in China, she used this as a pretext to demand com- pensation from the Chinese Government in the form of certain concessions, among which were a grant of land on the Shan-tung Peninsula, includ- ing the port of Tsing-Tau on Kiao-chau Bay. Here she spent much money in improving the port, building a German city, and constructing railroads into the interior. Beneath the guns of Tsing-Tau a part of the German Pacific fleet had taken refuge when the war broke out. Japan, England's ally, at once proceeded to lay siege to Tsing-Tau. Her troops, accompanied by a small force of British, began a campaign of many weeks, conducted with the utmost gallantry, at the end of which Tsing-Tau and the surrounding terri- tory were captured. When, at about the same time, the Caroline, Samoan, and other Pacific islands held by Germany were occupied by the Japanese and the Australians, Germany's last colonial possessions in the East were lost to her. At sea many stirring events were taking place. As has been previously pointed out, Germany de- pended upon her fleet of submarines to offset the difference in power between her navy and that of England. The English had, when the war broke out, more under-water boats than the Germans, but they were unable to make any very effective use of them, because there were no German ships 70 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS at sea to be attacked. The British ships, on the contrary, were constantly exposed to such attack, owing to the blockade they were maintaining against the German coast, and the patrolling operations made necessary by the steady stream of British vessels crossing the Channel to carry troops and supplies to Prance. Hence there were many opportunities afforded the Germans to use their submarines, and they took prompt advantage of these opportunities. On September 22, 1914, less than a month after the beginning of the war, three large, although old-fashioned, British ar- mored cruisers were sunk, within a few moments of one another, off the coast of Holland. They were the Aboukir, the Cressy, and the Uogue, and with them fifteen hundred officers and men were lost. The Aboukir was torpedoed first, and when the other two ships went to the rescue of her drown- ing crew, they were in turn sent to the bottom. As a result of this disaster, orders were issued by the British Admiralty that in future no war-ship was to go to the assistance of another when the latter had been torpedoed, on account of the dan- ger of being herself sunk. Many persons began to think, when the news of this engagement became known, that the Germans would soon be successful in sinking a large part of the British Navy, but steps were at once taken to protect the English battle-ships and battle-cruisers, while the work of EARLY PART OF THE WAR 71 blockading and patrolling the German coast was left to light cruisers and torpedo-boat destroyers, whose speed protected them from torpedo attack. The U-boats, as they came to be called from the German name Unterseeboote (undersea boats), were able to make only about fourteen knots while traveling on the surface under their oil-engines, and about eight while using their electric storage- batteries, when submerged. There were other losses of war-ships on both sides, from torpedo attack, as the war went on, but they were never serious enough to be an important factor in the operations by sea. Other naval engagements of considerable impor- tance occurred early in the war. A small British squadron under Admiral Cradock was stationed in the Pacific. There was also in the Pacific a squadron of fast German cruisers under Admiral von Spee, armed for the most part with 8-inch guns in their main batteries. All of the British ships except the flagship Good Hope carried 6-inch guns, the Good Hope mounting 9.2-inch guns in her main battery. The two squadrons met in Novem- ber off the coast of Chile, and the English were defeated, the Good Hope and another vessel, the Monmouth, being sunk with all on board. The su- perior speed of the German vessels enabled them to lie off out of range of the British 6-inch guns, while able to make full use of their 8-inch bat- teries. This naval disaster stirred all England, 72 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS and a fast and powerful battle-cruiser squadron under the command of Vice- Admiral Sturdee wai sent out to find the German fleet. The opposing forces met off the Falkland Islands, in the south Atlantic, von Spee having taken his vessels around the Horn. The British were at anchor in the harbor of Port William (Stanley Harbor) when the Germans came up, and it is supposed that the latter, who were searching for the old English battle-ship Canopus, known to be in that vicinity, were not aware of the presence of the other Eng- lish ships. The result of the battle was never for a moment doubtful. The British, with their 12- inch guns, pounded the German ships to pieces in a short time, and sent them to the bottom, with the exception of one light cruiser, the Dresden, which fled around the Horn and took refuge in a port of the island of Juan Fernandez, where she was later destroyed. In European waters there had been, in addition to the attack on the three cruisers mentioned above, a smart engagement in the Bight of Heli- goland, as the waters about that island fortress off the German coast are called, in which two small German cruisers and several torpedo-boat destroyers were sunk. The great fleets, however, were not destined to meet for nearly two years. On their eastern frontier, in East Prussia, the Germans in the autumn of 1914 won a brilliant victory. The Russian army under General Ren- EARLY PART OF THE WAR 73 nenkampf, advancing almost unopposed along the shores of the Baltic, sent the German population flying westward in terror, and threatened the for- tress of Konigsberg. The rumors brought to Ber- lin by the refugees caused great alarm. In this crisis the kaiser turned to one of his retired of- ficers, General von Hindenburg, with whom he had quarreled some years before. Von Hindenburg was especially familiar with the East Prussian country, and soon proved that in placing him in command the kaiser had made a wise choice. Waiting until he had received reinforcements, he so manceuvered his forces as to secure a position between General Rennenkampf 's army and an- other Russian force moving up from the south, and then attacked and beat them in detail. Ren- nenkampf, who should have come up to the assist- ance of the Russians advancing from the south, failed to do so ; there have been rumors of treach- ery on his part, but whether they were true or not, von Hindenburg gained a decisive victory over two armies which, if they had properly supported each other, would have outnumbered him. These two battles, called the battles of Tannenburg and Allenstein, cost the Russians over a hundred thou- sand men, and sent them flying back across the frontier in disorder. As a result of these victories, General von Hin- denburg, and General von Ludendorff, who acted as his chief of staff, became very popular in Ger- 74 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS many. A great wooden statue of von Hindenburg was later on erected in Berlin, and the people eagerly paid high prices for the privilege of driv- ing into it nails made of iron, silver, or gold, the intention being thus to cover the figure com- pletely with metal. Later victories in the East so increased von Hindenburg 's fame that he became the idol of the German public, and he was ultimately made the head of the great German general staff, but not before von Moltke, who lost the Battle of the Marne, had given way to von Falkenhayn, who in turn was deposed because he lost the Battle of Verdun. Von Hindenburg and his chief of staff, von Ludendorff, finally rose to become the mili- tary dictators of Germany, until they, too, Went down in defeat, before the supreme genius of Marshal Ferdinand Foch. There were other engagements in the East dur- ing the autumn and winter of 1914, notably the capture by the Germans of the strong Russian fortress of Lodz, situated to the west of, and pro- tecting, the city of Warsaw, in Russian Poland. In their first attempts upon Lodz the Germans suf- fered a severe check, being driven back with very heavy losses in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Later, however, they brought up their heavy how- itzers and began a siege of the place. The power- ful steel and concrete forts which surrounded Lodz were as useless before the heavy German EARLY PART OF THE WAR 75 guns as had been those of Antwerp and Liege. In a few days the place capitulated, the Russians realizing the impossibility of holding it, and as a result the Russian armies fell back upon Warsaw. In the Balkan States, where the war began, the Austrian Army captured Belgrade without much difficulty early in the war, in spite of brave resist- ance on the part of the Serbians, but they did not hold it long. While advancing south toward the city of Nish (situated upon the Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad not far from where that road leaves Ser- bian territory and enters Bulgaria), the Austrian forces were suddenly attacked by the Serbians and driven in the greatest confusion back across the Danube. England, as time went on, began to maintain a more and more strict blockade of the German coast. No German merchant ships were at sea, except a few in the Baltic. It was in accordance with the rules of war that the Allies should pre- vent any supplies from reaching Germany that would help her armies to win the war. Such sup- plies are called contraband, and if vessels carry- ing them attempt to enter a blockaded port they are subject to capture. For example, Germany does not produce either copper or cotton, yet she needed great quantities of both, the copper for use in making cartridges and shells, the cotton for making guncotton, which is the base of modern smokeless powder. England refused to allow any 76 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS neutral vessels to take contraband articles into German ports. She also refused to allow the pas- sage of food-stuffs intended for use by the German armies, and it soon became apparent that any foods entering Germany might either go to her army direct, or take the place of foods produced at home which had already been sent to the front. Therefore, it was not long before all food-stuffs were declared contraband, and their shipment to Germany forbidden. In spite of these restrictions, however, immense quantities of contraband reached Germany by way of Holland, Denmark, and the other neutral states of Europe. England could not prevent merchants in the United States from shipping cotton and grain to Holland, whence they soon found their way across the border into Germany. During the first two years of the war the importations of food-stuffs, cotton, metals, rubber, and a variety of other articles into the neutral states of Europe reached unheard-of proportions. The initial blockade instituted by England so angered the Germans that they at once decided upon a move which was contrary to all recognized rules of warfare. They sent out their submarines with orders to sink at sight any vessels, whether Allied or neutral, which attempted to enter British or French ports. Certain areas about the British Isles and the coast of France were declared by them to be war zones, forbidden waters, and they EARLY PART OF THE WAR 77 sent to the bottom all vessels that attempted to cross them. In this action by the German Gov- ernment may be found one of the fundamental problems of the war. International law, seeking to protect the non-combatant, had ruled that a na- tion at war has the right to stop and capture ves- sels carrying contraband, but it was especially provided that these vessels must first be searched, in order to determine whether or not there was contraband aboard. Then, if for any reason the captured vessel could not be taken into port, her captors were permitted to sink her, provided they had first used all necessary precautions to safe- guard the lives and property of her crew. The German submarines, however, carried too few men safely to attempt the search of a large merchant ship, and they could not take a vessel into port, even if they could capture her, because of the British blockade. Further, if they sank a cap- tured vessel because of their inability to take her into port, they were far too small to provide any refuge for her crew. Hence they began to sink, without either search to determine whether or not there was contraband aboard, or provision for the safety of their crews, all vessels they chanced to meet, and the unfortunate sailors, their personal belongings at the bottom of the sea, were forced to take their chances in open boats, often long dis- tances from shore, without the slightest assurance that they would ever reach land in safety. This 78 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS brutal and illegal policy on Germany's part out- raged the civilized world, and ultimately was the cause of the United States' entering the war. In striking contrast to this action on the part of the German submarines was the conduct of the few German cruisers that happened to be at sea when war was declared. Of these the most fa- mous was the Emden, a small but very fast cruiser which proved for months the terror of the eastern seas. Her exploits would in themselves fill a vol- ume, but although she sank many millions of dol- lars' worth of shipping, there is no record of her having failed to make adequate provision for the lives of the crews manning the vessels she sank. After a spectacular career of three months she was sunk by the Australian cruiser Sydney while lying in harbor at the Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, in November, 1914. Her crew fought hon- orably and well, and were nearly all killed. Cap- tain von Miiller, who commanded the vessel, was captured, and the English treated him with great respect, as a brave and honorable foe, a respect they were far from feeling for the commanders of the German submarines. In January, 1915, another engagement was fought, this time in the North Sea. A small squadron of German battle-cruisers suddenly ap- peared off the English coast and began to bombard some watering-places, killing a number of civilians. There was no military advantage to be gained by EARLY PART OF THE WAR 79 doing this, and it earned for the German naval men the contemptuous title of "baby-killers." A British battle-cruiser squadron was advised of the presence of the German ships, and pursued them. A running fight ensued, at great ranges, hits being made at distances of over ten miles. One of the German battle-cruisers, the Bliicher, being slower than her companions, was overtaken and sunk with heavy loss of life. The others escaped and returned to their bases. Such, in a general way, were the conditions on land and sea when the campaign of 1915 began. CHAPTER VIII TRENCH AND OTHER WARFARE IN THE YEAR 1915 AS we have seen, when the German armies re- treated across the river Aisne after the Bat- tle of the Marne, they took refuge in a system of trenches which had been prepared for them while they were making their great drive on Paris. The German general staff did not expect that their armies would ever use these trenches, since they looked for victory, not defeat, but being very care- ful, they made ready for any emergency. Trenches were not a new thing in warfare. They had been used, especially in the sieges of cities, for hundreds of years. But it remained for the Germans to develop them to the point of greatest efficiency. Their trenches along the Aisne, and later along the entire front from Switzerland to the North Sea, were not merely shallow ditches in which a man might stand to secure protection from rifle fire. On the contrary they were constructed with the greatest care, and upon the most scientific principles, and as time went on they came to be fortresses of the most impregnable character. In the first place the trench was dug, not in a 80 TRENCH AND OTHER WARFARE 81 straight line but in a series of zigzags, so that if it happened to be entered at any one point, the attacking forces could not shoot along the trench, but would be obliged to advance around continu- ous shoulders, behind which the defenders might take refuge. Also, where the nature of the ground permitted, the trenches were dug two and even three stories deep, in the form of great under- ground cellars, or dugouts, into which the troops holding them might retire in safety during a bom- bardment. Where the dugouts were not so deep, their roofs were made of steel and concrete, or heavy timbers covered with earth and bags of sand. In some cases they were lined with con- crete, floored like the rooms of a house, lighted by electricity, and furnished with beds and other household articles taken from the houses and cha- teaux near by. When a bombardment started, the German troops retired to the safety of their dug- outs and only the heaviest shells could reach them. In front of the trenches was row after row of very heavy barbed wire, through which the enemy could not pass, while to the rear led deep communi- cating trenches, along which food, ammunition, and other supplies were brought up under cover of darkness. Later on in the development of trench warfare, small round concrete and steel forts, called "pill-boxes," were constructed by the Germans. These "pill-boxes" contained ma- 82 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS chine guns, and were proof against anything ex- cept a direct hit by a shell of large caliber. Con- cealed as they were by underbrush, or earth, it was extremely difficult to locate them, or to hit them by cannon-fire at a range of several miles. The British lost many men in Flanders during the au- tumn of 1917, in attacking this form of defenses, but in spite of their losses the attacking troops would rush forward in open formation until some member of the party was able to throw a bomb through one of the ports or openings provided for the machine guns, thus killing every one inside. It has been seen that when the war began the German Army was the only one which was ade- quately provided with heavy artillery. The Allies at once took steps to supply their deficien- cies in this respect, but the construction of great guns of the howitzer type requires much time, and it was nearly two years before they were able to match their opponents gun for gun. Trench warfare brought about radical changes in the types of shells used, even by the light field- pieces. In the wars of the past shrapnel had been regarded as the most effective form of shell which could be used against an opposing army. A shrapnel shell is hollow, and inside it are placed hundreds, and in the case of the large sizes thou- sands, of small iron bullets. When the shell ex- plodes these bullets spread out over a great area, TRENCH AND OTHER WARFARE 83 killing or wounding many men. But it was soon found that however deadly shrapnel fire might be against an advancing body of men, it was of very little use against troops sheltered in trenches. Lord Kitchener, head of the English War Depart- ment, was very severely criticized, early in the war, for not realizing this fact, and providing the army with high-explosive shells. A high-explosive shell is, as its name implies, one containing a charge of some high-powered explosive, such as the famous T. N. T. (trinitro- tuluol), which is far more deadly in its effects than dynamite. Such shells, rained upon a line of trenches, will soon reduce them to a mass of wreck- age, even sweeping away the barbed-wire entangle- ments, and in the case of the great 18-inch shells which the British used in the latter part of the war, penetrating all but the deepest dugouts and blowing them to pieces. Between the opposing lines of trenches lay a barren waste known as "No Man's Land," into which it was certain death to venture by day. At night scouting-parties, called patrols, were sent out to raid the trenches of the enemy and bring back prisoners, from whom information as to the enemy's plans might be secured. By day, sharp- shooters, or "snipers" as they came to be called, lay hidden behind trees, rocks, or in other places secure from observation, and picked off any mem- 84 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS ber of the opposing forces who was careless enough to show his head above the parapet of his trench. The long months of trench warfare resulted in many new means of attack and defense being de- veloped. At an early period of the war the Ger- mans began the use of hand-grenades, or bombs, which consisted of small receptacles, usually of iron, containing charges of high explosives, at- tached to a handle or sling, and hurled across No Man's Land into the opposing trenches. The English and French, during the early months of the war, having no supply of such bombs, began to make them by filling discarded jam tins with explosives and attaching a short wick or fuse, which was lit when the bomb was thrown. Later on bombs of a more effective nature were manu- factured in large quantities. These improved bombs were exploded not by means of a lighted fuse but by the withdrawing of a small firing-pin. Once the pin was removed, the bomb would ex- plode in five or six seconds, which allowed the bomber just time to hurl it against the enemy. Larger bombs, called rifle-grenades, were made to be discharged from a soldier's rifle, being pro- vided with a long, slender stem or rod which fitted inside the gun-barrel. Many other means for throwing these bombs were devised, one of the earliest of which resembled the ancient Roman ballista, used for hurling stones into an enemy's TRENCH AND OTHER WARFARE 85 camp. These early bomb-throwers were actuated by springs, and sometimes by rubber bands, in the manner of a boy's sling. But it was not long before better means of throwing bombs were de- vised. The English brought out the Stokes mor- tar, a short but very effective gun resembling noth- ing so much as a section of gas-pipe, but capable of discharging across No Man's Land a steady stream of bombs. Other and larger trench mor- tars came into use, firing great bombs weighing fifty or more pounds, with devastating effect. For a long time the men of science in the opposing armies vied with one another in devising means to make trench warfare more deadly. While methods of offense were thus multiplying, means of protecting the men against them were likewise developed. Not only did men go back to ancient times for the ballista, but armor once more came into use. It was found that shell frag- ments and shrapnel caused many head wounds, and it was not long before the men in the trenches were equipped with steel helmets, called by them "tin hats," which afforded great protection. Later on forms of body armor were used by those engaged in especially hazardous work, such as cut- ting barbed-wire entanglements. As a result of the war, uniforms underwent a great change. The Germans, prepared in every particular, entered the conflict wearing suits of gray-green, which were extremely inconspicuous, 86 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS even at a short distance. The French in their blue coats and bright red trousers made excellent targets for the enemy, and it was not long before France abandoned her historic uniform, and sup plied her men with suits of pale, or horizon, blue. The British used the dull brownish-green khaki from the first, as later did the Americans. Another effect of trench warfare was to develop the use of underground mines. Mining and sap- ping had long formed a part of siege operations, and in trench work they were found very effective. Men in the various armies whose occupation in times of peace was that of miners, were set to driving long tunnels under No Man's Land, in order to reach points beneath the opposing trenches at which mines might be exploded, blow- ing the enemy into the air. Soldiers in listening- posts equipped with delicate instruments for de- tecting the sounds made by men working under- ground, were stationed at points in No Man's Land in order to give warning of these tunneling- operations, and then countermining was resorted to, a second tunnel from the opposing side being run out on a lower level, in order to blow up the men working in the first. Life in these trenches, especially during the first year of the war, was horrible in the extreme. Great hordes of rats, attracted by the presence of food, soon gathered, and became so bold that they even attacked sleeping men. Lice and vermin of TRENCH AND OTHER WARFARE 87 every sort swarmed upon the soldiers' bodies, and in the low-lying sections of Flanders the trenches soon became filled with water and mud. In these trenches the men were obliged to stand for many hours at a time, exposed to the bitter cold, and many lost their feet and legs from freezing. The dead lying in No Man's Land could not be buried, and the air was filled with sickening stenches. The Germans, with their usual forethought, had prepared a sort of fireworks, called flares, which were discharged into the air at night by means of especially designed pistols. These flares, taking fire when discharged, hung suspended in the air for many moments, lighting up the surface of No Man's Land with a brilliant greenish light. They were especially effective in exposing the opera- tions of the enemy's patrols. In order to obtain a view of the enemy's trenches by day, periscopes, borrowed from the experience of the submarines, were adopted. These peri- scopes consisted merely of wooden boxes, or tubes, equipped with mirrors, by means of which an ob- server might look out over No Man's Land with- out being obliged to expose his head above the parapet of the trench. Along with these various developments came the improvement of the airship. The huge Zeppelins were soon found to be of little value, owing to the large targets they presented, but the fast-flying airplanes came into ever-greater use. At first, 88 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS carrying but one or two men, they were employed only for scouting, but soon their size and engine- power were greatly increased, and the huge bomb- ing-plane was developed, capable of carrying up- ward of a ton of high explosives, to be dropped on enemy trenches and fortifications. Lighter ma- chines carrying men equipped with cameras, flew ceaselessly over the opposing lines, photographing every detail of the enemy's trenches. From these photographs maps were made, upon which every gun emplacement, "pill-box," or machine-gun nest was recorded, and when an attack began, the artillerymen used these maps in directing and regulating their fire. The ever-increasing use of the airplane for spy- ing out the location of the enemy's positions and guns soon brought into use a system of conceal- ment known as ' ' camouflage, ' ' from a French word which means, in effect, to cause an object to look like that which it is not. This disguising of things from observation soon took on large proportions. In its simplest form camouflage might consist of a few leaves or branches, spread or hung over a gun, so that its position might not be seen from above, but the science, if it may be so called, devel- oped rapidly under the direction of skilful artists on both sides. Guns and other objects were found to be less easily distinguished, even at short dis- tances, when painted in fantastic colors, and hence it became a common thing to see every sort of © Committee on Public Information AMERICAN OFFICER WEARING PROTECTIVE ARMOR FOUND IN A CAPTURED GERMAN TRENCH TRENCH AND OTHER WARFARE 89 object daubed with all the colors of the rainbow. Before long camouflage came to be used on ships, not only vessels of war, but merchantmen. The sight of great ocean-going liners covered with patches of green, red, black, and yellow, in the manner of a crazy-quilt, would a few years earlier have made the observer think that he had suddenly gone mad. To hide the movement of men and supplies along roads exposed to the fire of the enemy, huge screens were erected, painted so as to give the im- pression of foliage, or blank walls. Artificial tree- trunks were constructed and set up in No Man's Land as hiding-places for snipers. Even the dead bodies of horses were imitated, in papier-mache, and dummy guns, soldiers, and fortifications were frequently employed by both sides, in order to deceive the observers in the air. The first attempts made by the English and French to overcome the German system of trench defense were failures. The loss in human life was huge, and the world began to think that such defenses could never be taken, except at prohibi- tive cost. It was not until the latter part of the war that the English and French were able to solve successfully the problem of trench warfare. CHAPTER IX THE WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS IN 1915 THE British Regular Army was almost de- stroyed during the great retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Marne, and the defense of the channel ports around Ypres, and as a consequence Great Britain began at once to form a large new army. Lord Kitchener, famous for his brilliant work in the Sudan, and the Boer War, was now at the head of the War Department. All over England volunteers were training, and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the other overseas dominions of the empire men were rallying to the nation's support. In France the war was accepted in the most heroic spirit, and while the men left their farms and shops to defend their country, the women and children took up the men's burdens. Deprived of a large part of her iron and coal de- posits, France was obliged to look to England and America for fuel and steel, and this placed her at a great disadvantage. Germany, on the contrary, was drawing large quantities of both from the ter- ritories in Belgium and France which she had occupied. It is estimated that without these cap- tured supplies the Germans could have carried on the war for but a few months. 90 WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS 91 In the spring of 1915 the English made their first serious attempt to break through the German line of trenches. At the town of Neuve Chapelle they launched a heavy attack, capturing the en- emy's lines over a front of several miles. But the losses were huge, and military men were of the opinion that the few miles gained did not justify them. At the Battle of Loos, and in Artois, the results were much the same. It seemed at this time that the Germans could never be driven out of France by a frontal attack. During the summer the French made a similar attempt, on a far wider front. In the Champagne country, east of the city of Rheims, they sent their troops forward, after a terrific bombardment which leveled the Germans' front line of trenches. At first it seemed as though the French had won a great victory; they swept forward, not only over the first German lines, but even over the second and third, and captured many prisoners and guns, but when they had reached the enemy's rear lines, they found that they could not hold them. Con- centrated machine-gun and artillery fire played havoc in the French ranks, and after superhuman efforts they were obliged to fall back. Here, as at Neuve Chapelle, it seemed clear that the cost of breaking through carefully constructed trench- lines was prohibitive. Early in 1915 the Germans began the use of poison gas as a weapon of war, while attacking 92 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS the British lines in the vicinity of Ypres. This marks the first use of such a method of warfare. No one had supposed that Germany or any other civilized nation would employ such inhuman means to win a war, and when, on this April morning, Canadian troops saw clouds of greenish vapor rolling toward them from the opposing trenches they did not at first know what it meant. They soon found out, however. A few moments later they were surrounded by choking, suffocating fumes which sent them reeling in every direction. With no means of protecting themselves, these gal- lant men held their ground. Hundreds were over- come and fell writhing in agony, gasping for breath, their lungs seared and burned, but the re- mainder held on, in spite of the retreat of the French colonial troops on their right, and the German hopes of breaking through the British lines and reaching Calais were once more dashed. Had the Germans made this gas-attack on a wider front, the English lines would unquestionably have been broken. Within twenty-four hours after the gas-attack began, English chemists had crossed the Channel, and with their French associates were taking steps to protect their men against the use of poison gases. Curious masks, made of cloth and rubber, were designed, through which the poisonous fumes could not penetrate. Breathing was effected through a tube connected with a small box in WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS 93 which chemicals were placed, to neutralize the effect of the gases and render them harmless. Soon the gas-mask became a recognized part of every soldier's equipment, and masks were even designed for horses, so that artillery could be brought up during gas-attacks. In the East a very great operation was under- taken by the English, assisted by the French. This was the famous attack upon Constantinople and the Dardanelles, known as the Gallipoli Cam- paign. Owing to the progress of submarine warfare, the sending of food-stuffs to England and France was interrupted, and the Allied governments began to fear that a food shortage might result. There were known to be great stores of wheat in Russia, at Odessa and other ports on the Black Sea, but these could be brought out only by way of the Dardanelles, controlled by the Turks. At the same time the Russian armies were in need of ammunition and supplies of all sorts, which could be brought in only by way of the far northern port of Archangel, ice-bound during a large part of the year, or through the Siberian port of Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast, over six thousand miles away from the battle-front. These two considerations seemed to urge that an attempt be made to open the Dardanelles to traffic, and England therefore determined to force a passage of the straits. A fleet was sent to the eastern Mediterranean, con- 94 THE BATTLE OP THE NATIONS sisting of many of the older-type battle-ships and cruisers. Several French war-ships also joined the fleet. After a preliminary bombardment of the forts at the entrance to the straits, the battle-ships en- tered and began a systematic reduction of the Turkish defenses. The attack was making good progress when the Turks, under the advice of their German officers, began to send floating mines down the narrow waterway. As a result, several ships of the attacking fleet, both British and French, were sunk, and the attempt was finally given up. It has since been said that the Turks were short of ammunition, and that had the bombardment been continued for another twenty-four hours, the straits would have been opened and Constanti- nople would have fallen. It is idle to speculate upon the effect such a victory would have had upon the course of the war; Constantinople did not fall, and the fleet withdrew to await the coming of troops. There is no doubt that the original attack upon the Dardanelles should have been made by land and sea forces combined. It required a great deal of time to bring up Australian and New Zealand divisions stationed in Egypt, as well as French and British troops from the front in France, and many weeks passed before the expedition was finally ready to begin the attack. Additional war- ships were sent out from England, among them WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS 95 the new battle-ship Queen Elizabeth, mounting 15-inch guns. At last all was ready, and under a terrific bombardment from the Allied fleet land- ings at several points were made. The Turks, however, during the weeks that had passed since the first attack, had heavily rein- forced their armies and strengthened their de- fenses. Heavy howitzers, sent from Germany and Austria, were mounted in the forts, able to direct from their stable concrete platforms a plunging fire upon the Allied war-ships and transports. Wire entanglements had been built along the shore down to the water's edge and beyond, while ma- chine guns, carefully placed and hidden, swept every avenue of approach. Everything had been done to render the Turkish positions on the Gal- lipoli Peninsula as nearly impregnable as human ingenuity could make them. When the Allied troops finally reached land they found themselves confronted by almost insurmountable obstacles. No troops ever fought more bravely than did these hardy volunteers from Australia and New Zealand ("Anzacs" they were called, from the first letters of the words ''Australian-New Zealand Army Corps"), as well as the English and French troops which supported them, but the attack was doomed to failure. Transports crowded with troops were brought up during the night, and the men taken ashore at daybreak by means of barges and lighters. Subjected to a heavy fire, many of 96 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS these boats were sunk, and when the survivors reached the beaches, through wire entanglements built under water, they found themselves swept by a hail of machine-gun fire. In spite of these terrible conditions, the landings were finally made, and the Anzacs, with almost superhuman courage and in spite of extremely heavy losses, succeeded in driving the Turks back into the hills. The country, however, rocky and rough, proved almost impassable. The heat was terrific. There was no supply of water, and the arrangements for bringing it up were inadequate. As a result, the advance of the attacking forces was painfully slow. As they progressed inland, the difficulties which attended the bringing up of supplies of all sorts increased. The broken nature of the country provided the Turks with unusual opportunities for defense, and the small advances which the Allied troops were able to make cost them very heavy losses. For many weeks the at- tack went on, and at times it seemed as though success might crown the Allied efforts, but the Turks proved themselves brave and hard-fighting antagonists, and in the end the expedition was given up. By a skilful retreat, made without the Turks' knowledge, the Allied troops evacuated their positions on the peninsula and returned to their ships. This attempt to open the Dardanelles and take Constantinople cost the Allies over a hun- WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS 97 dred thousand men, and was one of the most tragic failures of th^ war. We have spoken of the dropping of bombs on the city of Antwerp in October, 1914. In Decem- ber of that year, on Christmas Eve, the Germans gave the world another example of their policy of frightfulness by dropping similar bombs on Lon- don. Airships of the Zeppelin type crossed the Channel and flew over the city, leaving destruction and death in their wake. Many persons were killed or wounded, and much property was de- stroyed, but no military advantage was gained. It is supposed that by these attacks, which were contrary to the rules of war, the Germans hoped to terrify the British to such an extent that they would ask for peace. If this was indeed their pur- pose, it failed miserably. The people of England, and of France as well (for Paris was also given a taste of this kind of warfare), were not fright- ened in the least. On the contrary, these inhuman attacks made them all the more determined to carry on the war until Germany should be utterly defeated. At frequent intervals, during the next three years, the attacks were repeated, first with Zeppelins, and later on, when the latter proved too easy of destruction, with airplanes, and many hundreds of persons lost their lives, but the only result was to send more and more men to the recruiting-stations. 98 THE BATTLE OP THE NATIONS From the beginning German f rightfulness was a boomerang which recoiled upon the heads of its perpetrators. It was persisted in until very nearly the end of the war. It was only when the Allies, at last goaded into retaliation, began to drop bombs on the German cities along the Rhine that the German authorities denounced the prac- tice as inhuman and illegal and demanded that it be given up by both sides. It is interesting to note the peculiar psychology of the Germans in this and other similar respects. So long as the bombing of cities from the air affected only their enemies, it was considered proper and right. When, however, German cities were affected, the practice at once became illegal. Many evidences of this oblique method of thinking are to be met with on the part of the Germans during the war. The explanation may possibly be found in the be- lief on the part of the German people that they were superior to other peoples, supermen, in fact, to whom the rules of conduct and morality prac- tised by the rest of the world did not apply. During 1915 the world was treated to still an- other exhibition of this policy of frightfulness through the use of liquid fire in war. The an- cients used such means to destroy the ships or wooden towers of their enemies, but it was left to the Germans to employ them against human beings. A story is told of a young interne in a British base hospital, who, when he saw the first WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS 99 scorched and blackened victims of this horrible method of making war, tore off his white coat and rushed out to enlist, determined to do his bit to put a stop to such practices. Throughout all this time Belgium was held in the iron grip of the invader. Being a manufac- turing country, it was obliged to import the bulk of its food, and now, shut off from the world, it faced starvation. It was of course the duty of the Germans to feed the population of the territories they had occupied, but Germany, short of food- stuffs at home, decided to let the Belgians starve. Had it not been for the people of England, France, Holland, and the United States the situation of Belgium would have been desperate, but through the efforts of humane Englishmen and Americans, a commission was formed for the relief of the starving Belgians and great quantities of food were sent into the country and distributed, under the direction of the German authorities. Bel- gium's martyrdom had only just begun. She was later to endure not only the pangs of hunger but the terrors of slavery as well. CHAPTER X THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA THE crowning achievement of German fright- fulness was the sinking of the great trans- atlantic liner Lusitania. No other event in the course of the war so stirred the anger of neutral countries, or did so much to convince them that Germany was a nation of barbarians. On May 1, 1915, the British ship Lusitania, of the Cunard Line, left New York for Liverpool with 1257 passengers and a crew of 702 men, making a total of nearly 2000 men, women, and children aboard. She carried a general cargo of merchandise, and a few cases of cartridges, but no explosives of any sort. She was unarmed. As has been pointed out in a previous chapter, the rules of war as laid down by international law provide that an unarmed merchant ship cannot be legally sunk, in time of war, without first being warned, and after that searched, to determine whether or not she carries contraband. Further, if circumstances prevent her captors from taking her into port, they cannot sink her until every precaution has first been taken to provide for the safety of the passengers and crew, and for the 100 THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA 101 preservation of their personal property. These rules were made in order to protect as fully as possible the lives and welfare of non-combatants. The German Government, having decided to sink the Lusitania, knew that it would be impossible for their submarines to warn the vessel of her fate. Had they done so, the liner would have escaped owing to her great speed. They therefore under- took to issue tills warning by publishing in the newspapers of America a statement advising the public that the waters around Great Britain and Ireland had been declared by them to be a war zone, and that persons taking passage on ships passing through those waters were in danger of losing their lives. One of the rights always strictly maintained by the United States and other nations was that which permitted neutral non-combatants to take passage on enemy merchant ships, even during the prog- ress of a war. It was held that no nation had the right to stop traffic by sea, or to prevent the citi- zens of neutral countries from exercising their right to go about their legitimate business. Hence Americans who were planning to cross to England on the Lusitania were not deterred by these news- paper warnings. They had the right, their gov- ernment told them, to cross the ocean on a peaceful merchant ship, and they did not propose to give up this right at the command of the German Gov- ernment. On the first of May the Lusitania set 102 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS sail, with her large complement of passengers and crew. On May 7, when near the Irish coast, the vessel was torpedoed without warning, and sank in less than twenty minutes, with a loss of 1195 persons, over a hundred of whom were American citizens. There went up from the whole civilized world a cry of horror at this barbarous act, but the Ger- man people, instead of feeling a sense of shame, gloried in the deed. Throughout Germany the event was celebrated, school-children were given a holiday, and a medal was struck in honor of the occasion. The German Government pretended to believe that the vessel was armed and that it car- ried a cargo of ammunition, but it was shown later that neither of these contentions was true. A wave of resentment swept over America when the news was received, and the country came very near to entering the war, but the Administration at Washington felt that the time had not arrived, and the United States remained neutral. It became apparent to the statesmen of both England and France, soon after the war broke out, that the factories of those countries would be un- able to supply the immense quantities of shells and other materials required by modern warfare. Hence large orders for munitions were placed in the United States. It was held by international law to be strictly within the rights of any neutral nation to supply a belligerent with such materials, THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA 103 the chance being taken, of course, that they might be captured or destroyed by the enemy while in transit. Germany, during previous wars, such as that between Spain and the United States, or be- tween Russia and Japan, had freely availed her- self of this privilege, and her great Krupp works at Essen had made large profits by carrying on trade in arms and ammunition. But when Amer- ica began to exercise the same right by sending supplies to England and France, Germany con- tended that the United States was helping her enemies, and made violent protests. The sinking of the Lusitania brought this ques- tion to a head. Although the vessel carried no munitions of war, the rights of American citizens on the high seas had been violated, and President Wilson at once sent a sharp note to Germany, demanding that she disavow the sinking, punish the commander of the submarine responsible for it, and make prompt reparation for the American lives which had been lost. Germany, through her shrewd ambassador at Washington, Count von Bernstorff, made a pretense of agreeing to these demands, but first attempted to maintain that the vessel was armed and carried munitions of war. Meanwhile, other passenger ships had been sunk, both before and after the loss of the Lusi- tania, and American lives had been sacrificed, but Germany explained through diplomatic channels that she had not ordered these sinkings, and by 104 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS quibbling of various sorts avoided any definite settlement of the question. She argued that her use of submarines to prevent food-stuffs and sup- plies of any kind from reaching England was a measure of retaliation against the English block- ade, which she claimed was starving her people, but the facts are that the German submarine war- fare began before the English Government put into effect its policy of excluding from Germany all food-stuffs which might aid her enemies to win the war. Germany's claims on this score were absolutely false. Many persons in the United States thought that war should have been declared against Germany when the Lusitania was sunk, but after a time the public clamor died down, and America remained neutral. It was also claimed, even in Congress, that the United States should not help Germany's enemies by sending them ammunition and guns, it being forgotten that such supplies would have been sent quite as willingly to Germany, had that coun- try possessed any means of transporting them to her ports. But there were no German ships at sea, and hence Germany wished by influencing the United States to make her enemies as helpless in this respect as she was herself. Meanwhile, German spies and secret agents of every sort were at work, carrying on a campaign in the United States itself, the object of which was to cripple the country's trade with England and THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA 105 France. Many factories engaged in making muni- tions of war were burned or blown up, with loss of life, and strikes were fomented wherever possible. All this work was done under the direction and supervision of Germany's ambassador at Wash- ington, Count von Bernstorff, and his military and naval aides, Lieutenant von Papen and Captain Boy-Ed. German influence in America was very strong, and the imperial government felt such confidence in it that the kaiser had the impudence to tell the American Ambassador at Berlin, Mr. Gerard, that he would "stand no nonsense from America," while about the same time one of his officials remarked that there were in the United States five hundred thousand German reservists, who would fight on the German side in case of war. Mr. Gerard quietly replied that there were five hundred thousand lamp-posts in the United States upon which these reservists would be promptly hanged. Such was the condition of affairs between Ger- many and the United States in the year 1915. CHAPTEE XI THE EASTERN FRONT DURING 1914 AND 1915 ON the eastern front tremendous operations were under way during the autumn and winter of 1914, and throughout the year 1915. Russia, although checked in her advance into East Prussia, owing to von Hindenburg's victory at Tannenberg, was for a time successful in her cam- paign against Austria. The armies of the czar were, when the war began, under the command of the Grand-Duke Nicholas, a brilliant and able leader. Advancing with a great army across the Austrian frontier in August, 1914, he effectually checkmated an inva- sion of Russian Poland that the Austrians had begun, and drove their forces in the direction of the city of Lemberg, capital and largest city of Galicia, having a population of two hundred thou- sand. In a great battle the Austrians were de- feated, and the armies of the czar under Generals Russky and Brusiloff effected a junction at Tarno- pol and began a rapid advance upon Lemberg. Heavy fighting continued throughout the latter part of August and the early part of September, the Russian armies, directed by the Grand-Duke Nicholas with great strategic skill, forcing the 106 THE EASTERN FRONT 107 Austrians to give way in a general retreat. On September 2 the Russians took Lemberg. Without interruption the Russian advance kept up. By September 8 the Russian forces were in touch with the enemy at the town of Rawaruska, west of Lemberg, where, after furious fighting, the Austrians were again defeated, and a little later, on September 14, they were driven with great slaughter across the river San. By the end of the month the Russians had conquered all of eastern Galicia, caused the Austrians losses of two hundred and fifty thousand men in killed and wounded, taken one hundred thousand prisoners, and laid siege to the fortress of Przemysl. Przemysl, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants, was strongly fortified and withstood a long siege. Its garrison of over a hundred thousand men made a brave and spirited resistance which lasted for seven months, and it was not until the latter part of the following March that it finally capitulated. Meanwhile the Russian armies had swept on in the direction of Cracow, the powerful Austrian for- tress on the river Vistula, and to the southwest had reached the line of the Carpathian Mountains, which form a strong natural barrier between Ga- licia and the plains of Hungary. By the middle of November the forces of the grand-duke were within fifteen miles of Cracow, in the north, and were threatening an invasion of Hungary in the south. The inhabitants of Cracow sent urgent ap- 108 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS peals to Germany for aid, and Berlin began to feel alarmed. The advance through Cracow, directed toward the northwest, would if successful cut off the Austrian armies from their German allies and open the way for an attack on Germany itself. At this period of the war the Allies had great hopes that the " Russian steam-roller," as it was called, would before long prove the deciding factor in the conflict. Early in December, in answer to the Austrian appeals, German troops began to arrive to aid in the defense of Cracow. Meanwhile, the extreme left or southern wing of the Russian ad- vance had sustained some severe checks, notably at Czernowitz, capital of the Austrian province of Bukowina. The arrival of the German troops soon stiffened the Austrian resistance. Not only was the ad- vance upon Cracow checked, but Austrian and German troops, entering Galicia through the southern passes over the Carpathians, threatened to cut off the Russian raiding-parties which had advanced into Hungary through other passes fur- ther to the north, and these parties had to be withdrawn. The passes themselves, however, the Russians still held, and a series of tremendous battles for their possession now began. From Christmas Day, 1914, throughout the entire re- mainder of the winter furious combats, in thick mountain forests covered with snow, went on, with victory in the balance. These great battles for the THE EASTERN FRONT 109 passes of the Carpathians marked a critical period of the war. Meanwhile, further to the north, the Germans under von Hindenburg had begun a powerful ad- vance through Russian Poland, which had as its objective the capital city of Warsaw. Lodz, as we have seen, had already fallen, but the Germans were unable to gain much ground beyond it to the east. During the winter of 1914-15, German strategy underwent a change. The plan to defeat France and then turn on Russia had failed. France was not defeated, and the Russians were pressing Aus- tria hard along the Carpathians. The German general staff therefore reversed its plans, and de- cided, while holding off France and England in the West, to inflict upon Russia a great defeat, and put that country out of the war. The battles for the passes of the Carpathians ended in the month of April, 1915, and were in ef- fect a Russian victory, since Russian troops still held two of the passes, as well as Lemberg and the greater part of Galicia. Przemysl had fallen to them and the Germans began to see that if they expected to defeat Russia they would be obliged to put forth much greater efforts than they had yet made. Consequently a gigantic army, provided with immense quantities of shells and many heavy guns, was sent to the eastern front from Germany, and united with large Austrian forces. This great 110 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS concentration of men and materials was made in secret, and the campaign was entrusted to the command of General (afterward Field-Marshal) von Mackensen. Soon there took place an utter change in the eastern situation. The troops under General von Mackensen, num- bering over two million men, were concentrated in greatest force along the line of the Dunajec River. The opposing Russian forces at this point were inferior both in numbers and in equipment, espe- cially of the heavier types of artillery. General von Mackensen 's plan in this vast operation was literally to blast a hole through the Russian lines by means of his heavy guns, and then to rush through the opening thus made a huge force of men. The plan succeeded perfectly. On May 2 a hurricane of fire was directed upon the Russian lines on a narrow front opposite Gorlice. In the course of four hours, seven hundred thousand shells were fired, many of them from 7-inch Krupp guns, others — huge projectiles, weighing half a ton — from the Austrian 30.5-centimeter (12-inch) Skodas. The Russian positions were literally blasted to pieces. Their lighter artillery was smothered. "Within a few hours the German- Austrian troops were entering Gorlice. For a depth of two miles, on a front of ten, the Russian lines had been penetrated. By some oversight the Russians had not pre- pared second- and third-line positions to which THE EASTERN FRONT 111 they might fall back in case of defeat. The Ger- man and Austrian troops poured through the gap they had made, constantly deepening and widening it, and the great retreat gradually spread north and south, on each side of the break, as was the case with the Germans after their defeat before Paris at the Battle of the Marne. But the Ger- mans had their strongly prepared positions along the Aisne to retire to, while the Russians had nothing but the several rivers which lay between them and the frontier. They were also threatened by a great outflanking movement of the Germans and Austrians coming up from the southwest. At the river San the Russians turned, and with the utmost bravery checked the advancing enemy in a great battle, but nothing could stop the German drive. The lack of artillery was the cause of the Russian defeat. Steadily their lines fell back. By the third of June Przemysl was recaptured, and by the twenty-second of that month the Aus- tro-German forces were back in Lemberg. It was not long before the Russians had been completely driven out of western Galicia. This Galician campaign under General von Mackensen is regarded by military authorities as one of the most brilliant of the war. Within a few weeks the Russians had lost everything that they had gained in almost a year. It demon- strated to the world once more the perfection of the German military machine. One can form 112 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS some idea of the size of the campaign by consid- ering the losses, which on the two sides amounted to a million men. While these important events were taking place in Galicia, others of equal importance had oc- curred farther north. The Eussians, after their defeat by von Hin- denburg at Tannenberg, retired across their fron- tiers, behind the Niemen River. German attempts to follow them failed. Then the Russians began a second invasion of East Prussia, advancing from their base at Grodno. The Germans, in too small force to take the offensive, contented themselves with defending their territory, and by the end of October, 1914, this second invasion came to an end. Then the Germans, having been reinforced, began a drive for Warsaw, which finally resulted, as we have seen in a previous chapter, in their capture of the Russian fortress of Lodz. Terrific fighting occurred for mile after mile east of Lodz, in the direction of Warsaw, all during the months of November and December, 1914, and January, 1915, but the Russians defended the city with the greatest bravery, and by the middle of February the fighting had died down, and Warsaw was still in Russian hands. In order to weaken the Ger- man drive against Warsaw, the Russians began, late in December, a counter-drive into East Prus- sia, thus for the third time invading that territory. Crossing the river Niemen, the armies of the czar o En « H E-i CO «i H H W o 02 H O H a 5 o Q3 ffi-g U £ I x 02 s 02 P MILITARY OPERATIONS IN 1917 209 the coast of Belgium, and thus deprive them of the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend, used as bases for submarines. In the main the plan failed. The weather conditions were against the British. Incessant rains turned the battle-field into a mo- rass. Tanks were useless. Heavy guns could with difficulty be moved. After many weeks of the most desperate fighting the attempt to capture the Belgian coast was given up. The Germans claimed a victory, and in so far as they had de- feated the British purpose, their claim was jus- tified. The attacks further south, however, had greatly improved the British positions. The high ground formerly held by the Germans was now in the hands of their enemies. The French, in April, also undertook a great attack against the German lines along the Aisne. General Nivelle had been made the commander-in- chief of the armies of France, and he sent his troops forward on a wide front between Soissons and Rheims. By the middle of April the Germans had lost twenty thousand prisoners and a large number of guns. The high ground north of the Aisne along the ridge known as the Chemin des Dames (Road of the Ladies) was taken, and the German losses in killed, wounded, and prison- ers reached the great total of two hundred thou- sand. It seemed as though the French armies were in a good position to break the German lines. But their losses had been heavy, and the Chamber 210 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS of Deputies at Paris became alarmed. They re- fused to allow General Nivelle to proceed with his attack, on account of the great loss of life, and a little later he was relieved of the chief command, the position being given to General Petain. But the high ground here, as well as in Flanders, was now in Allied hands, and the positions of the Ger- mans were under constant observation and artil- lery fire. In November the British struck at the famous Hindenburg Line opposite Cambrai. The attack was made without the usual long-continued artil- lery preparation, and was thus in the nature of a surprise. A large number of tanks had been assembled, unknown to the Germans, and when they advanced, tearing down the barbed-wire en- tanglements, and killing the German machine gun- ners at their posts, the British troops were able to advance almost at will. They went forward until the spires of Cambrai were in sight, and for a short time were completely through the Hinden- burg Line. Cavalry was sent forward, and it seemed as though the German lines had been defi- nitely broken. But the British, under General Byng, did not have the necessary reserves to fol- low up the attack. The success of the tanks had surprised them almost as much as it had surprised the enemy. Had the British been able to send a quarter of a million men through the gap they had created, the Germans would have been driven MILITARY OPERATIONS IN 1917 211 out of France, but these men were not at hand. Consequently, when the Germans launched strong counter-attacks a few days later, the British out- posts were driven back, and much of the ground gained was recovered by the enemy. It was dur- ing these counter-attacks that American troops first fought against the Germans. American en- gineers, working on the railways behind the Brit- ish lines, were caught in the German advance, and throwing down their picks and shovels, took up rifles and aided the British in repelling the enemy. It was to the Italians that the Allies looked for success during the closing months of 1917. The armies of Italy, driving forward along the Bain- sizza Plateau toward the northeast, had reached a position only thirty-five miles from the city of Laibach, sometimes called the key to Vienna. They were also within sight of the city of Trieste. The campaign from August until October gave promise of the most brilliant results. Then Ger- many once more came to Austria's aid, and the whole situation was changed. German agents had been busy, sowing the seeds of revolt through- out the Italian armies as they had previously done along the Russian front. The Italian soldiers were told that the Allies had deserted them. Newspapers, printed in Germany but supposed to come from Rome, were scattered throughout the Italian armies, containing articles to the effect that the Allies had been defeated, that London 212 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS had been captured by the Germans, and that re- sistance was useless. Suddenly the German and Austrian forces struck a terrific blow against the Italian lines in the vicinity of the town of Capo- retto. Traitors behind the Italian lines gave false orders to retreat. Almost before the Italian com- mander, General Cadorna, realized what had hap- pened, the Germans and Austrians were pouring through the Italian lines and descending into the fertile plains of Venetia. The whole Italian front was obliged to retreat. The army became demoralized. A quarter of a million troops were made prisoners, and thousands of guns were captured. As the Italian armies re- treated in disorder to the southwest, they aban- doned position after position at which the world hoped they might make a stand. For a time it seemed as though the whole of northern Italy might be overrun by the invaders, and the way into southern France left open to the Teutonic forces. The situation was very grave, and French and British reinforcements were hurried to the Italian front. The Italians, however, while badly beaten, were by no means overcome. When they reached the line of the river Piave they made a stand. This river crosses northern Italy, from the mountains, to the Adriatic Sea near the historic city of Ven- ice. There were furious battles along the river, MILITARY OPERATIONS IN 1917 213 and also in the mountain passes to the north, but the Austrian drive was stopped. The Italians lit- erally died at their posts. Their losses in men and material were enormous, but Italy was saved. The stand of the Italian armies along the Piave was one of the most remarkable military recoveries in history. Its success is credited largely to Gen- eral Diaz, who replaced General Cadorna as the Italian commander-in-chief. The Allied front in Macedonia, north of Saloniki, was still comparatively inactive, but during this long period of inactivity many preparations had been going on. The Serbian forces, retreating ragged and starving through the mountain passes of Albania, were taken by the Italian Navy to the Island of Corfu, and here were strengthened, re- freshed, and supplied with the necessary equip- ment. In this way a new Serbian Army was built up which later in the war was to win great vic- tories. The situation in Greece had by now become so acute that the Allies decided to take drastic action. With Athens under the guns of Allied war-ships, King Constantine was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Alexander, and with his German wife he fled from the country and took refuge in Swit- zerland. As a ruler he had done little or nothing to advance the cause of the Greek people, and when upon his retirement Premier Venizelos took 214 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS the reins of government in his hands, matters soon began to assume an aspect favorable to the Allied cause. On the eastern front the Russians, in July, at- tempted an advance in southeastern Galicia, and achieved a momentary success by capturing the cities of Halicz and Kalusz, with prisoners and booty. The disorganization which was spreading so rapidly through the Russian armies, however, rendered the advance but a flash in the pan. Within a few weeks German and Austrian forces began a series of strong counter-attacks which soon drove the Russians back to their frontiers. As a fighting-unit the Russian Army no longer existed. In Palestine the British and French expedition from the Suez Canal and up the Sinai Peninsula was making steady progress. Advancing under the greatest difficulties through the desert country east of the canal, the forces under General Allenby, assisted by the Arab tribes which had revolted against the rule of the sultan, swept up the coast and captured Gaza, known in Biblical history as the city from which Samson carried away the gates. This success was quickly followed by the capture of Jerusalem. The fall of this historic city was of unusual significance. Not since the days of the Crusaders had Jerusalem been in Christian hands. With the utmost reverence Gen- eral Allenby entered the city on foot, and took possession of the place in the name of the Allies. MILITARY OPERATIONS IN 1917 215 The site of the Holy Sepulcher thus finally passed from the control of the sultan. At once the effects of Turkish misrule began to disappear. Jews, Syrians, Arabs, and the other elements which made up the population of the city, safe beneath the flags of Great Britain and the Allies, went about their affairs in peace, with sure knowledge that justice would be maintained. North of Jerusalem the Turkish armies, under the command of their German leader, Field-Marshal Liman von Sanders, entrenched themselves in strong positions in the hills, barring the Allied ad- vance toward Damascus. In Mesopotamia the British-Indian advance up the river Tigris was making excellent progress. General Aylmer, who had failed in his attempts to relieve General Townshend a Kut-el-Amara, was succeeded by General Maude, who pushed his way northward until he reached the outskirts of Bagdad. After a spirited engagement the city fell, and the British continued their advance north- ward in the direction of Mosul. At Bagdad, how- ever, General Maude was suddenly taken ill, and died within a few days. He is supposed to have been a victim of cholera, although there were rumors that he had been poisoned. The advance northward continued under the command of Gen- eral Marshall. General Marshall's right flank, which it had been hoped might be linked up with the Russians 216 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS operating in northern Persia, was suddenly ex- posed by the collapse of the Russian armies. The campaign in the Caucasus, which had begun so brilliantly, went to pieces, and soon the Turks had recaptured Erzerum and were pressing eastward on the heels of the retreating enemy. Detach- ments working toward the southeast into northern Persia were thus on General Marshall's right flank, and he was obliged to proceed with the greatest caution. Between the forces of General Marshall in Meso- potamia and those of General Allenby in Pales- tine lay the great Arabian desert. The British plan of campaign was as follows: General Mar- shall's forces were to work northwestwardly, around the eastern fringe of the Arabian desert, through Mosul, while General Allenby 's armies were to advance northeastwardly, around its west- ern edge, through Damascus. These two lines of march would thus converge and meet at the city of Aleppo, on the Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad, south of Constantinople. Joining here, they would threaten that city with attack from the south. It was an ambitious plan; the distances to be traversed were great — many hundreds of miles — but steady progress was made, and suc- cess would result in putting Turkey out of the war. Events in Europe, however, were far too serious for the Allied commanders to attach great importance to these operations in Asia Minor. MILITARY OPERATIONS IN 1917 217 Defeat on the western front, in France, would quickly render them of little or no value, and con- ditions in Russia were such as to cause many to feel that such a defeat was by no means out of the question. During the year 1917 the development of the airplane had progressed with giant strides. The Zeppelin, of which so much had been expected, had proved to be a costly failure. The perfecting of the anti-aircraft gun soon rendered it dangerous for these vessels, presenting as they did such large targets, to expose themselves over fortified places, and when a fleet of them was in large part de- stroyed in a raid over London, the Germans dis- continued their construction and devoted them- selves to the development of the airplane. When the war broke out England possessed about a hundred of these heavier-than-air craft, but it was not long before the number grew into the thousands, and she was rivaling Germany in the size of her air fleet. France and Italy, too, devel- oped machines of great speed and power, and the aerial navies of the several countries at war soon took on formidable proportions. At first the prac- tice was to develop individual flyers of great brav- ery and skill, whose scores in enemy planes shot down mounted until in some cases they approached the hundred mark; but these men, set upon by groups of enemy machines, were in time killed and it became apparent that better results could bo 218 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS obtained by operating airplanes in squadrons, and hence the individual flyer became subordinated to the work of the aerial fleet. Three classes of planes came into general use. One was the small and very swift combat plane, used to protect groups of heavier machines em- ployed in bombing-operations, or in observation work. A second was the bombing-plane, of great size and carrying at times several men, together with thousands of pounds of bombs to be dropped on enemy fortifications, munition plants, railroad yards, junctions, and the like. A third class con- sisted of planes used for observation work, and especially for photographing the enemy's lines. The English perfected a system of making double photographs, which, when placed in a stereoscope, showed the object pictured in relief, so that the height of trench parapets, gun emplacements, and the like could be determined with a considerable degree of accuracy. As the war drew to a close, many instances occurred of airplanes being used for direct attack upon bodies of men, transport trains, and batteries on the ground, the swift-mov- ing aircraft descending to low levels and skimming along over trenches or roads, too low to be at- tacked by anti-aircraft guns, and moving too rapidly to be readily hit by the fire of infantrymen or machine guns. In spite of the lessons of the war abroad, the United States made little or no effort to equip its MILITARY OPERATIONS IN 1917 219 army with aircraft prior to entering the war. After hostilities began a huge program was be- gun, but many and needless delays occurred, and when the war came to a close American aircraft production was just getting under way. Had the conflict been prolonged, the United States forces would have had at their command more airships than were possessed by all the Allied armies com- bined. CHAPTER XXIII EFFECTS OF THE KUSSIAN REVOLUTION RUSSIA, during the year 1917, progressed rap- idly toward complete anarchy. Having no central government worthy of the name, the coun- try began to break up into a number of separate states. The Cossacks of the Don region declared their independence. Siberia refused to submit to the misrule of the Bolsheviki at Petrograd, con- trolled by Lenine and Trotzky. The great wheaF- growing country of the Ukraine, bordering on the Black Sea, set up a separate government. Li- vonia, Esthonia, Russian Poland, Finland, all de- clared themselves free from Russian control. The government at Petrograd, if government it could be called, had succeeded in disorganizing the army and disrupting the empire. Germany, anxious to remove her armies to the western front, proposed peace. Delegates from both countries met at the Rus- sian fortress of Brest Litovsk, now in German hands, in March, 1918. The government at Petro- grad was represented by Trotzky. The new Ukrainian republic also sent delegates. The Ger- mans proposed terms of peace which left them 220 EFFECTS OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 221 absolute masters of Russia, and these terms were accepted. Betrayed by the paid agents of the Bolsheviki, Russia was virtually placed in German hands. A pretense of self-government was al- lowed, but German forces of occupation were to see that the stores of grain and other food-stuffs were to be devoted to the feeding of the German people. The few clauses in the treaty which fa- vored the Russians, Germany at once repudiated. To her this agreement was merely another "scrap of paper." Under the pretense of maintaining order, German armies advanced into Russia, Ger- man military governors supplanted the local au- thorities, and the peasants were ordered to turn over to their German masters all stores of food- stuffs in their possession. It was expected that this food, shipped back to Germany, would relieve the dangerous food shortage in that country. By her own criminal methods, however, Ger- many defeated herself, as she had defeated herself from the first. The peasants of the Ukraine, of other parts of Russia, refused to give up their stores of food, even under torture, and soon were in open revolt. The whole country was given over to pillage, and guerilla warfare went on be- tween the German forces of occupation and the Russian peasants. The amount of food collected was disappointingly small, and what little finally reached Germany and Austria had no appreciable affect upon the situation. The rule of anarchy 222 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS set up by the Bolsheviki satisfied no one. Every man who owned property of any sort, or land, was looked upon as an oppressor of the people, and was promptly robbed, or murdered. Organized industry ceased. The Bolsheviki claimed that the factories belonged to the people, but their efforts to operate them were failures. The Russian peas ants, in their mad dream of freedom, failed to understand that all effort must have an intelligent head to direct it. With every man's hand turned against his neighbor, there was no order, no co- operation, and hence no progress toward real free- dom. The Russian Czar, who had been sent by the revolutionists into eastern Russia, was accused of dealing with the enemy, and shot. His death, in July, 1917, had no effect on the situation. Russia was drifting rapidly into a state of anarchy, and it seemed clear that only a strong military force could bring about a stable government. In Rumania much the same state of affairs ex- isted. The German forces of occupation, under Field-Marshal von Mackensen, compelled the king and government of Rumania to conclude a treaty of peace which left that country virtually a vassal of Germany. On May 6 this treaty was signed, and Rumania ceased for the time being to be an independent nation. Here, as in Russia, the plan of robbing the peasants of their scanty stores of food was put into operation, but the results were disappointing. "What small stocks of food the EFFECTS OF KUSSIAN REVOLUTION 223 people had they concealed, and very little found its way into Germany. The Russian Army, as an organized force, no longer existed. The advance toward Lemberg in July, under General Brusiloff, to which we have already referred, amounted to nothing. The doc- trines of the Bolsheviki had undermined the mor- ale of the army. The Russian soldiers no longer wished to fight. In the north the Germans attained a military success of considerable importance. Forces op- erating along the Dvina River captured Dvinsk, and advanced upon Riga from the south. The city quickly fell, and the road to Petrograd was open. The German fleet at the same time steamed into the Gulf of Riga and landed troops upon the is- lands lying in the gulf. These naval operations had no great significance, the most notable feature of them being the escape of the Russian fleet from the Gulf of Riga to the safety of the guns of Kronstadt, the great fortress at the head of the Baltic Sea, off Petrograd. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1917 the German troops in Russia flowed steadily westward. In the regiments which remained, older men, or those whose physical condition prevented them from undertaking the rigorous duties of active front-line work, were left in place of those who were more efficient. The greater part of the Ger- man heavy artillery was sent to France, in prep- 224 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS aration for the greatest offensive that the world had ever seen. The German leaders knew that they must win a victory in 1918 or they could not hope to win at all, and they bent every effort to- ward that end. Photo by Press Illustrating Service. Inc. MARSHAL FERDINAND FOCH Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces © Harris & Ewing GENERAL JOHN JOSEPH PERSHING Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces CHAPTER XXIV AMERICAN FORCES ABROAD DURING 1917 WE have already spoken of the excellent work done by the American Navy in for- eign waters. The number of merchant vessels sunk by the submarines of Germany was very large, but it had fallen far short of the total which the kaiser's government had expected. During 1917 four million five hundred thousand tons were sunk, but the shipyards of America and the Allied countries were humming with activity, and there seemed every prospect that these losses, great as they were, would be made up. Over three hundred American war-ships of all sorts were sent abroad, manned by seventy-five thousand men. The great battle-ships joined the British fleet, thus still further increasing the odds against Germany, while destroyers and cruisers were employed to guard the transports which car- ried troops to France. As a result, only three American troop-ships were sunk by enemy sub- marines, and these were on their way home from France, so that the losses in men were very small. Many stations were built on the French coast from which American seaplanes operated, patrolling the waters off shore and guarding the incoming 225 226 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS transports from submarine attack. Admiral Sims, in command of the naval forces abroad, and Admiral Rodman, in charge of the United States battle-ship fleet, won the admiration of the Allied commanders by their efficient cooperation. It was due largely to these officers that the con- struction of a mine barrier across the North Sea between Scotland and Norway was begun. The German sea-going submarines were obliged to take this route in passing from their home ports to the ocean, and it was decided to stop them by placing in their path a barrier of explosive mines. Special mines were designed for this purpose, and the construction of one hundred thousand was be- gun. When the war ended, eighty-five thousand of these mines had already been made and sent abroad, and within a short time it would have been impossible for German U-boats to have left the North Sea by this route. The Marine Corps of the navy did splendid work ashore in France. The exploits of these fighting men will be mentioned later. In every respect the United States Navy proved ready and efficient, and its record during the war was one of which every American should feel proud. The work of the army began with the arrival in France of General Pershing and his staff. They were quickly followed by a regiment of engineers, which reached port late in June. By the end of October there were many United States troops in AMERICAN FORCES ABROAD 227 France, and on the twenty-sixth of that month they first entered the trenches and began their training in actual warfare. It was well known to military men, both in the United States and abroad, that long-continued training was necessary, in order that troops might become familiar with the intricate details of trench warfare. The use of bombs, trench mortars, and the like, the construction of dugouts and shelters, the conducting of night raids, defense against gas- attacks, patrol work, all the details of this highly specialized form of warfare, were new to the Amer- ican soldier, and could be learned only by ac- tual experience. No matter how well drilled troops might be, this experience was necessary if trench warfare was to keep up, and one of the problems which confronted General Pershing and his staff was that of securing this experience for the American soldiers in the shortest possible time, in order that they might take their places in the line beside the veterans of England, France, and the other Allied countries. The first shot fired by American troops against the Germans was sent across the lines on October 27, from a French 75-millimeter gun manned by United States artillerymen. Field-guns of this type were being manufactured in American plants, but special machinery for their construction had first to be built, and progress in turning them out was necessarily very slow. For this reason the 228 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS United States forces abroad were obliged for a long time to depend upon guns of French make, and even when the war came to an end, the pro- portion of American-made artillery in France was very small. During the autumn and winter of 1917 minor trench operations were conducted by General Pershing's men along that section of the front lying south of Verdun, and known as the Toul sec- tor, because it was based on the French city of Toul. Gradually this entire sector was taken over by American troops, who began to learn the secrets of trench warfare from actual experience. The process, however, was exceedingly slow. It was well known that in open fighting the American sol- dier was the equal of any fighting-man in the world, but in trench work he was at a great dis- advantage. It remained for Germany in the final year of the war to commit another of her fatal blunders. Instead of holding her fortified lines in Belgium and France and defying the Allies to drive her from them, she deliberately advanced and gave battle in the open, thus at once bringing into the conflict hundreds of thousands of Ameri- can soldiers who had had no experience in trench warfare whatever, and in such warfare would have been of little immediate use against her. As the troops from America landed, they were sent at once to training-camps far behind the bat- tle-front, and here their instruction began, under AMERICAN FORCES ABROAD 229 the direction of French and English veterans. While these fighting-units were in training, other detachments were engaged in the construction work made necessary by the coming armies. Lum- bermen from the South and the West found them- selves operating sawmills in the French forests in the Vosges Mountains, and elsewhere. Engineers prominent in the civil life of America were to be seen building roads, bridges, railways, camps, docks, and storage depots of every sort. Famous doctors and surgeons gave their skill in providing for the sanitary welfare of the coming armies. Organizations such as the Red Cross, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Knights of Co- lumbus, the Salvation Army sent their represen- tatives abroad to provide for the comfort and well- being of the troops. Many thousands of skilled mechanics, disdaining the high wages which were being paid to such men at home, gave their services to the government at a soldier's pay in order to go abroad and do their part in the great work of construction behind the lines. Among both these men and the combat units were to be found many negroes, who proved their bravery and devotion to the country not alone in work behind the lines but equally so at the front, where their courage in attack, especially with the bayonet, attracted wide-spread attention. The organization of the United States Army abroad differed somewhat from that of the armies 230 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS of the Allies. In order to understand fully the operations in which the Americans took part dur- ing the year 1918, the details of this organization should be grasped. The American "division" as it is called, was much larger than the divisions of the European armies, and comprised in all some 28,000 men. Of these men, there were four regiments, consisting of three battalions each, or twelve in all, in the first line. Each battalion consisted of four companies of 250 men each, or 1000 men to the battalion. The first line infantrymen numbered therefore 12,000 men. There were also a regiment of en- gineers, a machine-gun battalion, a brigade of ar- tillery consisting of three regiments, and a signal- corps battalion, a trench-mortar battery, and the necessary transport, medical, and police units. Taking the division as a unit, six were required to make up an army corps, namely, four combat di- visions, one depot division, one replacement di- vision, and two regiments of cavalry. Three to five of these army corps constituted an army. It will thus be seen that an army corps embraced 168,000 men, and an army, from 500,000 to 840,000 men. Two American armies were in operation when the war came to a close, and a third was in process of formation. No victories on the field of battle were won by the American Expeditionary Forces abroad dur- ing the year 1917, but in war the greatest victories AMERICAN FORCES ABROAD 231 are not always won on the field of battle. The thousands of young Americans who landed in France daily were creating a menace to the power of the kaiser which neither he nor his generals could afford to ignore. Their sneers were for the consumption of the people at home ; they them- selves knew that when the American forces reached their maximum strength German imperialism was doomed, and hence they made frantic efforts to gain a decision before that strength was reached. CHAPTER XXV THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAE 1918 THE year 1918 began very quietly, from a mil- itary standpoint, yet it was merely the quiet before the storm. Preparations for the great German offensive went on with feverish activity. The German leaders hoped to obtain a military decision of some sort during the year, upon which a negotiated peace might be based. Yet there was growing throughout the world a feeling of op- position to the German plans which rendered victory for the kaiser impossible. The British, French, Italians, and Americans, while Germany's principal opponents, were by no means her only ones. Portuguese troops held a sector of the front in France. Brazil and Cuba had entered the lists and were preparing expeditions. China, at war with Germany, proposed to send troops to the front, while hundreds of thousands of Chinese la- borers were at work behind the lines in France. Polish regiments, recruited on both sides of the water, went to the front under their own flag. From every part of the world men came to as- sist in bringing about the defeat of Germany. It was recognized everywhere that, no matter what 232 BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1918 233 the cost, the forces of the kaiser would have to be beaten. In addition to their constant air attacks upon the submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend, the British Navy made a gallant and successful at- tempt to render these ports useless for the German under-water boats. An expedition was prepared with the greatest secrecy, having as its object the blocking of these ports by sinking vessels across their channels. At night, under cover of smoke screens, the antiquated war-ship Vindictive was sent into the harbor of Zeebrugge, accom- panied by other craft, including a submarine loaded with high explosives. The submarine was driven against the Mole, an artificial breakwater which forms the Zeebrugge harbor, and exploded, while at the same time the Vindictive, together with the Thetis, the Intrepid and the Iphigenia, loaded with concrete, were sunk in the entrance of the canal leading to Bruges. The loss of life on the Vindictive and the destroyers which accom- panied her, exposed as they were to the concen- trated fire of the German shore batteries, was very heavy. The Vindictive was hit one thousand times, but the British sailors and marines did not flinch, and the operation was successfully carried out. The results at Ostend were not so satisfac- tory, but at both places the channels were seriously obstructed, and although the Germans tried their best to clear them, the daily bombing-operations 234 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS carried on by Allied air forces prevented them from doing so. This success seriously impaired the efficiency of the German submarine campaign. The Germans, in some spirit of desperation, at- tempted a submarine attack along the American coast. U-boats, equipped for a long stay at sea, crossed the Atlantic and began operations against American coastwise shipping. They did not at- tempt to attack the United States transport serv- ice, efficiently guarded by American cruisers and destroyers, but confined their efforts to sinking barges, fishing-boats, and sailing vessels along the New England coast. Their depredations amounted to nothing, from a military standpoint, and the American public laughed at them. The constant bombing of London and Paris from the air caused the Allies to retaliate. Great bomb- ing-planes were sent over the German cities along the Ehine, and many munition factories, chemical works, and the like were destroyed. Germany began to get a taste of the horrors she had been in- flicting upon the cities of England and France, and, as has been pointed out in a previous chapter, she promptly begged that such bombing-operations should cease. It is of interest to note that while autocracy in Germany and the nations allied with her was steadily becoming weaker, in the great democratic nations opposed to her it was becoming stronger. This apparent paradox requires explanation. BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1918 235 Some one has said that the most perfect form of government in the world would be a "benevolent autocracy." This may be true, but autocracies are rarely benevolent, and thus the nations living under democratic rule have placed about their rul- ers many safeguards by which their powers would be regulated and curbed should any tendency ap- pear toward the gathering of too much authority in the hands of any one man. In times of war, however, these constitutional regulations and safe- guards must of necessity be set aside, and the men in authority be given power which they would not need in times of peace, and which in such times would be promptly taken away from them. Thus we find in England the chief authority centered during this war in the prime minister, Lloyd George ; in France, in Olemenceau, called because of his savage energy "The Tiger"; in Italy, in Premier Orlando; and in the United States, in President Wilson. These men, possessing the con- fidence of the people of their respective nations, wielded for the time being almost, if not quite, as much power as the kaiser himself. In fact, as we have already said, the people of Germany and Austria were beginning to show signs of restless- ness under their autocratic form of government. Reforms were demanded by them which would limit the power of their rulers as such power was limited in more democratic countries. This movement on the part of the people of the Central 236 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS Powers, as Germany and her allies were called, ultimately exercised a profound effect in bringing the war to an end. In March, 1918, the final test of military strength began. The conflict which followed constitutes the military history of the year 1918. CHAPTER XXVI THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 The German Offensive T^TE use the expression "The Great Battle V V of 1918," because throughout that entire year, from March, when the weather makes fight- ing possible, until November, when it usually comes to a halt on account of cold and rain, a huge battle was in progress. No such battle as this had ever been fought before, and it is devoutly to be hoped that no suoh battle will ever be fought again. The conflict involved, on the two sides, and on the various fronts, forces amounting to over twenty- five million men, and although the battle was fought over many areas widely removed from one another, it was really but one vast and final conflict between the forces of autocracy on the one hand, directed by General von Ludendorff, and the forces of democracy on the other, directed by Marshal Ferdinand Foch. It was in truth a bat- tle of giants. In a general way the Battle of 1918 may be di- vided into six great phases, as follows: (1) The German Offensive. (2) The Allied Counter-Offensive. 237 238 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS (3) The Austrian Drive against Italy and the Italian Counter-Offensive. (4) The Allied Drive against Bulgaria. (5) The Campaign in Palestine. (6) The Campaign in Mesopotamia. We will deal with these various phases of the battle as they occurred. First let us note the position of the American troops on the western front. It had been found that the training afforded by placing the men on quiet sectors of the line was far too slow. It was necessary that these troops should more quickly gain experience in actual fighting. As a result many American regiments were brigaded with the English and the French, that is, were placed under the command of generals of these nations, and sent to the front as units of their divisions or army corps. Soon we find American soldiers operating at many points along the long line from the North Sea to Switzerland, notably in the Champagne country, upon the battle-front in Picardy, in Flan- ders, and elsewhere. By the end of April, 1918, half a million American troops had been landed in France, in spite of the desperate efforts made by the German submarines to stop them, and the menace of their presence was felt all along the front. We have spoken in a previous chapter of the so-called peace made by the Germans with Russia and the Ukraine at Brest Litovsk. It is probable THE GREAT BATTLE OP 1918 239 that the Germans knew this peace could not be permanent, but it did suffice to enable them to move their troops to the western front, and begin the tremendous and final effort toward victory by which they hoped to end the war. The great gen- eral staff knew very well that if they did not win in 1918, they could not win at all, since the increas- ing number of American troops would ultimately counterbalance the superiority in numbers which the bringing of men from Russia temporarily gave them. It seemed to be clearly a case of "now or never. ' ' It is said that there was some disagreement on the part of the great general staff as to the advis- ability of making this huge and desperate attack. Von Hindenburg, the nominal chief of staff, is re- ported to have opposed it, contending that it would be wiser for Germany to hold fast to what she had in Belgium and France by defending her powerful Hindenburg Line, and defying the Allies to drive her from it. But von Hindenburg 's power had begun to wane. His younger and more audacious assistant, General von Ludendorff, who held the position of quartermaster-general, urged the at- tack by every means in his power and promised the kaiser and the German people that he would win a great victory. His plan was to break through the British and French lines where they joined along the river Somme, and sweep down the Somme Val- ley to the sea. A glance at the map will show the 240 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS results to be expected from such a manceuver. By taking the city of Amiens, and reaching the mouth of the Somme, Ludendorff hoped to cut the British and French forces in two. The armies of Great Britain would be crowded to the northwest against the channel ports, while those of France would be driven back upon Paris. It would then be an easy matter to attack and defeat each in detail. The plan, Napoleonic in its strategy, aroused great enthusiasm in Germany when it later on became known. Von Ludendorff was the idol of the peo- ple, the man of the hour. Filled with hope of vic- tory, the kaiser gave the word to go ahead. General von Ludendorff 's plans had been care- fully made. A new system of attack had been worked out, known as the "von Hutier" system, because it was first employed by the general of that name against the Eussians in the drive on Kiga. From every regiment throughout the army the strongest and most active men were selected and formed into special units known as shock bat- talions. These shock troops were to lead the at- tack, leaving the poorer men to bring up the rear, as well as to guard those sections of the front which were relatively quiet. A tremendous use of gas was planned, not of the older kinds which had been released along the trenches to be blown by the wind into the opposing lines, but of newer and deadlier gases, enclosed in liquid form in shells, to be hurled from guns of large caliber into areas far rt w M tn « ;i - 3 H ■— G fa C o ja fa «r* >, British Official Photograph JERUSALEM The conqueror of Palestine, General Allenby, entering the captured city on foot THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 241 behind the enemy's front. One of the worst of these new gases was known as mustard gas, be- cause of its odor. It had the power to cause ter- rible burns, and penetrated the thickest clothing. Areas drenched with it remained uninhabitable for many hours, and its slightest touch would send a man to the hospital for weeks. Special light field- artillery was built, to be drawn by men, instead of the horses ordinarily used, and these light pieces were to be employed to demolish the enemy's trenches, fortifications, and tanks. Thousands of trench mortars were employed to prepare the at- tack. The men detailed for special service, such as bomb-throwing, or the use of liquid fire, were carefully drilled in their particular duties ; in fact, the whole attack was rehearsed in secret behind the lines as carefully as a theatrical manager might rehearse a play. Every man knew exactly what he had to do. Naturally the Allied commanders realized that the attack was impending, and made preparations to resist it. But their greatest difficulty lay in the fact that they could not know at what point along the many hundreds of miles of battle-front the attack would take place. The ' ' initiative, ' ' as it is called, lay with the Germans, and this gave them one advantage which is always possessed by the attacking forces, namely, that of surprise. They might elect to drive toward Verdun, or through the Champagne country about Rheims, or 242 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS along the Somme, or to the coast in the direction of Calais. Not knowing what the Germans meant to do, the Allies were unable to concentrate their reserves at any one point, since all points had to be protected. This was the first disadvantage un- der which the Allies labored. The second, which had impeded their efforts all through the war, arose from the fact that they had no unity of com- mand. Their different armies were all under dif- ferent leaders. There were the Belgians under King Albert, the British under Field-Marshal Haig, the French under General Petain, the Ital- ians under General Diaz, the Americans under General Pershing. These different commanders consulted one another, of course, but each had his own ideas, his own plans. There was no concerted action, none of that singleness of purpose which had rendered the Teutonic armies so formidable from the first. General von Ludendorff com- manded from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, from Riga to Palestine, and this gave him a tre- mendous advantage. Germany, her vast preparations completed, be- gan the attack on the morning of the twenty-first of March. The front chosen stretched for nearly fifty miles north and south of the river Somme, from near Arras southward to the river Oise. The German efforts were immediately and enormously successful. Heavy mists, throughout the early morning, aided in the surprise. The British first THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 243 positions were taken almost before their defenders knew that an attack had been launched. The Ger- man shock troops, accompanied by their detach- ments of light artillery and machine guns, liquid- fire projectors and bomb-throwers carried out their carefully rehearsed plans as though they had been on parade, and tore through the British lines almost at will. Meanwhile a concentrated bom- bardment had drenched the territory behind the Allied positions with great quantities of gas, ren- dering the bringing up of reinforcements and sup- plies very difficult. The British and French were of course greatly outnumbered, in some cases fighting four and five to one. This resulted from the fact that the Germans had concentrated, on the front chosen for the attack, a huge body of re- serves, which they threw into the battle with reck- less fury. The location of the attack had been carefully hidden. Even the German troops them- selves did not know their leaders' plans. Hun- dreds of thousands of men had been concentrated at central points far behind the lines, concealed during the day from Allied airmen, in forests and ravines. During the night before the attack they began to move, marching many miles in the dark- ness, and arriving upon the scene of battle in the morning, when they were at once thrown into the fight. The British Fifth Army under General Gough, which held the southern end of the English lines, 244 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS where they linked up with the French, was not defeated — it was overwhelmed, suffering huge losses in men and guns. The Allied troops along the entire line of the attack fought with the most desperate bravery, holding their positions against greatly superior numbers until they were shot down or surrounded and forced to surrender. Their artillery and machine guns, playing on the dense masses of the advancing enemy, caused tre- mendous slaughter in his ranks. Line after line was swept away, but still the Germans came on, filled with the promise of a great and final victory. Under their iron discipline they marched in close formation over the British trenches, closing up their ranks as hundreds fell, yet never ceasing to advance, often over piles of their own dead. In many cases the British and French machine guns became red-hot from continuous firing, and had to be abandoned. In others the supplies of am- munition were exhausted and the confusion behind the lines caused by the incessant gas-bombard- ment prevented their being renewed. Fighting doggedly, the British and French fell back, holding point after point with the utmost courage, while waiting for their reserves to come up. The fighting was no longer conducted from permanent trenches, these having long ago been passed in the Allied retreat. Open warfare of the old order was now in progress, the men taking cover in ruined houses, behind walls, or in such THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 245 shallow shelters as they could dig in the earth in the few hours given them to intrench. Without sleep or food for days, the retreating troops fought until they dropped from exhaustion, but still the great German advance went on. As has been pointed out, the Allies' reserves were held at certain points behind the lines, ready to be sent wherever they were most needed. But the bringing up of large bodies of men, with their equipment, requires much time. The British re- serves in France were small. Many men had been withdrawn to work in the shipyards, on account of the great losses caused by the German sub- marines. There was also a reorganization of the British armies going on, having to do with the reduction of the number of men in each division. To some extent the British were caught unpre- pared, and it was to the French that they were obliged to look for reinforcements with which to check the retreat of General Gough's demoralized army. French troops, hurried up from the south, were thrown into the battle on both sides of the Somme. But the German advance had gained tremendous momentum. Like an avalanche it rolled on, sweep- ing everything before it. The people of the Allied nations held their breath as day by day, during that first black and terrible week, the Germans drove on mile after mile until it seemed that noth- ing could stop them. Pessimists began to say that 246 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS the end had come, that Germany was on the eve of winning the war. To add to the spirit of de- moralization which sprang up, the Germans had begun to bombard the city of Paris with a long- range gun, capable of throwing a sihell over sev- enty miles. The gun was a huge 15-inch naval piece, taken from one of the German super-dread- noughts lying idle in the Kiel Canal. By mount- ing it to fire at a high angle, and using what is called a sub-caliber projectile, that is, a shell smaller than the bore of the gun, but so constructed as to receive the explosive force of the powder charge intended for a shell much larger and heav- ier, the Germans were able to surprise the world by shelling Paris from a distance of seventy-two miles. The shells, dropping at regular intervals in the streets of the French capital, killed and in- jured many persons, but if the Germans expected the French to be terrified, they were mistaken. Paris, grave and determined, read the bad news from the Picardy front and went on its way un- dismayed. Frightfulness had once more failed. Day after day the British and French lines along the Somme bent back — ten, twenty, thirty, forty miles — like a huge bow, but they did not break. At one point the Germans came so near to break- ing through that they were held back only by a hastily assembled force of engineers, stretcher- bearers, camp servants and other non-combatants. These men, seizing rifles, bringing up machine THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 247 guns, stopped the dangerous gap in the British lines until reinforcements could arrive. Many Americans, some of them engineers, fought here, under the command of General Carey, of the Brit- ish Army, and for several days only this impro- vised force prevented the Germans from sweeping through to Amiens and separating the French and British armies. No troops, however well trained and equipped, can continue an advance such as the Germans were making, without becoming exhausted, and also without getting ahead of their transport and their heavy guns. When they had gone forward close to fifty miles, the armies of General von Luden- dorff began to slow up, waiting for food, ammuni- tion, artillery. At the same time, as more re- serves reached the British and French, the resist- ance became stronger. But the Germans were within sight of Amiens, their immediate objective, and shells from their heavier guns had already begun to fall in the town, and upon the cathedral. The situation was desperate. Then something took place which changed the aspect of things over-night. This was the appointment of General Ferdinand Foch, whose name we have heard be- fore, to the position of supreme commander or generalissimo of all the Allied forces. An event- ful meeting took place, when the situation looked blackest, between General Foch, General Petain, the French commander-in-chief, and Field-Mar- 248 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS shal Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British. They sat about a small table in a village behind the lines, and General Foch traced upon the table-top his plan to save Amiens and stop the German ad- vance. General Foch did not displace General Petain, the heroic defender of Verdun, as com- mander-in-chief of the French ; nor in fact, did he displace any of the other Allied generals. He was placed in supreme command over them all. General Petain, Field-Marshal Haig, General Diaz, the Italian commander, and General Per- shing all welcomed the opportunity to concentrate the supreme command, in this dark hour, in the hands of the brilliant French strategist. On the fourteenth of April Foch assumed charge of the situation with the simple announcement that Amiens would not fall. Nor did it. The Germans were stopped at Montdidier, a few miles east of the city, and there they were held, unable to ad- vance another mile. The great German drive had gained much territory, and inflicted heavy losses upon the Allies in killed, wounded, prison- ers, and guns; but their own losses had been huge, and they had failed to accomplish what they set out to accomplish, namely, to break the Allied lines and drive a wedge between the British and the French. Exhausted by their own efforts, the Ger- mans in Picardy paused to re-form their forces for a new attack. General von Ludendorff's strategy possessed one fatal defect. Human ma- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 249 terial could not endure the strain necessary to keep the mighty effort going. Like some ponder- ous engine deprived of its steam the German at- tack was forced finally to come to rest of its own weight. Before this, General Pershing, putting aside for the moment his own plans for attack in the sector south of Verdun, about Toul, placed the entire forces under his command at the disposal of Mar- shal Foch, to be used as the latter might see fit. Troops were sent from Toul to increase the French reserves about Montdidier, and early in May, 1918, it was arranged that the British were to transport from America ten divisions, to be used along the northern part of the line, from the North Sea south to Arras. These troops, it will be remembered, had had no actual experience in trench warfare, but they were ready to attack whenever the opportunity offered, and their superiority over the German troops was soon made apparent. The day the German drive began, March 21, 1918, Premier Lloyd George of England, realizing that the Allies were outnumbered, called upon President Wilson for one hundred and twenty thousand American troops monthly. The President replied that if England would supply the ships, the United States would furnish the troops. England did supply the ships, and the number of men asked for each month from the United States was not only sent 250 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS but doubled. Premier Lloyd George has since de- clared that when the appeal of March 21 was made the situation of the Allies was desperate. The German belief that the American troops would not fight was a gigantic blunder. As early as May 28 the results of it were apparent. On that date an American division on the Picardy front near Montdidier undertook and carried out an attack against the town of Cantigny, capturing all their objectives with a speed and dash that at once demonstrated to both the Allied commanders and the enemy that in fighting of this sort the troops from the United States had no superiors. Meanwhile the Germans, foiled in their attempts along the valley of the Somme, began new and more desperate thrusts further to the north, in the hope of finding a weak spot in the Allied lines. Vio- lent but unsuccessful attacks were made against the British opposite Arras, after which the large reserves of Crown-Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who commanded the German forces in Flanders, were hurled forward along the valley of the river Lys, south of Ypres. In huge numbers the Ger- mans swept over Messines Ridge, so brilliantly taken by the Canadian forces during the previous year, and reached and took Kemmel Hill, in spite of the desperate defense offered by the British, and the French reserves which had been sent north to assist them. This hill formed an important part of the English system of defenses. There THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 251 were, however, other hills to the west of it which remained in Allied hands. The fighting in this attack was of the most des- perate character. The Lys Valley is narrow, com- pared with the valley of the Somme, and the great German armies crowded into the new and small salient created by their advance were subjected to terrific artillery fire from the British guns on the high ground surrounding it to the west. Their losses were great, but they kept on with the utmost determination. This ridge of hills, of which Kemmel was one, was the last natural de- fensive position between the Germans and the coast. Had they taken it, nothing could have pre- vented them from reaching the channel ports and thus realizing their long-cherished ambition. But although the Germans got as far as Merville, just east of the important railway junction at Haze- brouck, they could progress no further. Field- Marshal Haig issued his famous order, telling his men that they were fighting with their backs to the wall and must die rather than give up more ground, and the line held. The Germans had driven a second great salient into the Allied lines, the first being in Picardy. A salient, in military parlance, is an indentation or bulge, formed by forcing back the enemy's lines without breaking them. Thus, in the great drive to Montdidier the Germans advanced in the center nearly fifty miles; yet the two ends of the bulge 252 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS thus formed, resting on Arras in the north and the line of the Oise in the south, held firm. It was as though the Allied lines had been stretched into a huge semicircle, as a rubber band might be stretched, while still tightly held at each end. The same conditions existed in the valley of the Lys. The anchor positions of the salient at the north- ern and southern ends held fast, and the Ger- mans were unable to take them. The kaiser came in person to witness the attack on Kemmel Hill, and some of his utterances at this period of the war indicate that he felt not the least doubt of a great German victory. Yet by the first of May General von Ludendorff had so exhausted himself by his attempts that it was a whole month before the German armies were once more able to make an advance. The Allies used the month to good ad- vantage in strengthening their positions. The third great drive of the Germans took place at the end of May, two months after the opening of the campaign in Picardy, and proved to be as much of a surprise to the Allies as those which preceded it had been. This time the Germans struck straight toward Paris. They had employed the weeks which had elapsed since the drive in Flanders in making their usual careful preparations. The world wondered, dur- ing these weeks, why Marshal Foch did not strike. The great strategist, however, intended to do far more than merely drive the Germans back on the THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 253 Picardy front; he was maturing plans to win the war. Meanwhile, the steady stream of Amer- ican troops crossing to France at the rate of a quarter of a million men a month was providing him with the forces he needed with which to strike, when in his opinion the time to strike had come. The third German drive was made on a front of about thirty-five miles, and was aimed toward the south, from the positions the German armies had held for so long upon the north bank of the river Aisne. Its objective was Paris, and there is no doubt that it caught the Allies napping. The French front, naturally very strong because of the hold they had secured the year before upon the high ridge north of the Aisne known as the Chemin des Dames, was lightly held, and many of the troops on this part of the front were veterans of the intense fighting in Picardy and Flanders, who had been sent to the Aisne sector to rest. The Chemin des Dames was thought to be the strong- est natural position along the entire western front, and it is unlikely that the French expected the Germans to attack it. When they did so, the Ger- man armies under the command of the crown- prince tore the Allied line to pieces. The French and British troops in the front lines from Soissons in the west to Rheims in the east were almost annihilated, and the Germans crossed the Aisne on a wide front. Between them and Paris lay three rivers, all valuable as defensive 254 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS positions — first the Vesle, then the Ourcq, then the Marne. These rivers were very familiar to the Germans, since it was across them that they had retreated northward after their great defeat at the Battle of the Marne in 1914. So complete were the preparations of the Germans, so great their numbers, that they swept almost without a check across two of these rivers and once more found themselves approaching Paris at the Marne. Again the huge German machine slowed up of its own weight. Rheims had been placed in a dan- gerous salient, but the attack died down. Soissons was once more in German hands. The situation looked blacker to the Allies than ever. The German thrust toward Paris reached the banks of the Marne at the town of Chateau- Thierry, a name which will always be famous in American history as that of the place where a battalion of United States machine gunners, be- longing to the Marine Corps, checked the victor- ious German advance. These men, brought to the front in motor-vehicles, went into battle on June 6, and by their coolness and bravery prevented the Germans from crossing the river at this point. Chateau-Thierry lies on both sides of the Marne. The American machine gunners held the south bank, and served their guns so effectively from behind ruined walls and other shelters along the bank of the river that all the efforts of the Ger- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 255 mans to cross were in vain. At last the old stone bridge across the river was blown up by French engineers, and the many Germans crowded upon it perished. American troops had already distin- guished themselves in France, in the taking of Cantigny, and the Allied commanders felt no doubts as to their bravery, but it was at Chateau- Thierry that the world came to realize their value as soldiers under the most striking and dramatic conditions. As soon as the drive toward the Marne came to a standstill, the Germans attempted another ma- neuver. The great bulge in the Picardy country toward Amiens, and that in the Marne region to- ward Paris, were separated, hung up, as it were, by the French positions between them, along the river Oise. If these positions could be taken, and the French driven toward the southwest, the two great salients could be united in one, forming a vast semicircle from Arras to Rheims, the cir- cumference of which would almost touch Paris. With a salient so vast in his hands, von Luden- dorff would have the room necessary to manoeuver his great armies in a final drive toward the French capital. This attack along the Oise had as its ob- jective the city of Compiegne. To the satisfaction of the Allies, it failed. The French lines were held in force, and although the Germans managed to gain a few miles, the attack brought them 256 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS no results of importance, and French counter-at- tacks soon regained much of the territory which had been lost. Meanwhile, desperate fighting continued along the Marne front, in which United States troops covered themselves with glory. At Belleau Wood, on the Metz-to-Paris road, furious attacks were launched by picked German troops. They were opposed by units of the Marine Corps, and here some of the most terrible fighting of the war took place. The marines, with superb courage, not only broke the German attacks but advanced, and by June 11 had captured most of the wood. It was an immensely strong position, filled with concealed machine-gun nests, but in spite of the strength of the position, the best German troops were out- fought, and the wood taken at greater cost to the enemy than to the Americans. So pleased were the French by this success that they officially changed the name of the wood to the "Bois de la Brigade de Marine" (Wood of the Marine Bri- gade). Again, on July 1 American troops captured the town of Vaux, in a brilliant assault, carried out with clockwork-like precision. Everywhere the soldiers from overseas showed a courage, a con- tempt for danger, which won the admiration of the Allied command. General Pershing had hur- ried up to the support of the French in the Cha- teau-Thierry sector the Third Division, which had THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 257 just come from its preliminary training in the trenches, and the Second Division, which had been held in reserve near Montdidier, and which con- tained the units of the marines who fought so gal- lantly at Belleau Wood. These regulars and ma- rines proved themselves to be the equals of any troops in the world. Other units were also now available for use with the French, owing to rein- forcements which the British had received, and five of the ten divisions which had been operat- ing on the British front were withdrawn for use further south. In this fighting along the Marne in June and early July, it is reported that on one occasion orders were issued by the French command for the American troops to retire, and that General Omar Bundy, in command of the Second Division, U. S. A., met this order with a reply which thrilled the American public as few things had thrilled it since the beginning of the war. "We regret being unable to follow the counsels of our masters, the French," General Bundy is said to have writ- ten, "but the American flag has been compelled to retire. This is unendurable, and none of our sol- diers would understand not being asked to do whatever is necessary to reestablish a situation which is humiliating to us and unacceptable to our country's honor. We are going to counter- attack." Counter-attack they did — presumably, however, 258 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS with the permission of the supreme command — with the result that the German advance toward Paris was stopped. All America sent up a cry of triumph. The American troops had met the best men that Germany had to offer, and had beaten them decisively. Many persons believe that but for the valor of these American troops Paris would have fallen. It is impossible to say just what effect the fight- ing at this point had on the general situation. That so brilliant a commander as Marshal Focli, with his great drive against the weakly-held Ger- man right flank in preparation, would have left the road to Paris open, seems incredible. Pos- sibly he issued the order to retire, knowing that the further the Germans got south of the Marne, the worse their situation would be when they at- tempted to get back. The French and British had faced a similar situation in 1914, which culminated in the first Battle of the Marne. Only their long and painful retreat made that victory possible. It would undoubtedly have been humiliating to the American forces to be obliged to fall back, but the Allies had been obliged to retreat on many oc- casions in the past, and had done so without loss of morale. And yet, in spite of these considerations, it is probable that this action on the part of the Ameri- can troops around Chateau-Thierry did more to bring about Germany's final defeat than any num- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 259 ber of tactical successes would have done. It told the German soldiers something that they had not yet fully realized, something that their leaders had carefully hidden from them — that the Ameri- can fighting-man was not only their equal but their superior. This knowledge, spreading rapidly throughout the German Army, and then to the peo- ple at home, caused an impairment of morale of incalculable value to the Allies. The Germans re- alized that victory against increasing numbers of such men was impossible, and hence it may well be said that the American successes at Chateau- Thierry marked the beginning of the end of the war. Psychological factors are often as impor- tant as — sometimes more important than — actual victories in the field. Had the American forces carried out their orders and retreated, Paris might not have fallen, but the Germans would have said to themselves, "The Americans are falling back. They are afraid to face us," and this belief on their part would have greatly strengthened their determination to win. On the contrary, the bril- liant work of the American regulars and marines disheartened them, made them see that their ef- forts were hopeless. As a result, the German armies began to go backward. From their defeat at Belleau Wood on they never won a battle of any consequence. A German officer, colonel of a guard regiment, said to his captors, "These Amer- icans are terrible. For every ten you kill, there 260 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS are a hundred in their places, seeming to spring from the ground. Nothing seems to stop them, and we — we are weary of war. " It is of particu- lar interest to note, as an example of the bravery with which the American soldiers in France fought, that during the many engagements in which they took part, they captured from the Germans close to fifty thousand men, while themselves losing in prisoners less than five thousand. General von Ludendorff, everywhere foiled in his attempts to secure a decision, now began to pre- pare for a final effort. The summer was rapidly slipping away. The steady flow of troops from America continued. If the German high com- mand had ever felt any doubts of the ability of the American soldier to fight, those doubts had been fully set at rest. It was indeed ''now or never" if Germany was to win a victory during the re- maining weeks of 1918. Von Ludendorff hurried his preparations. He was ready to resume his drive across the Marne by July 15. It was the only thing he could do. In the valley of the Lys, in Picardy, he could not hope to accomplish now what he had failed to accomplish in the spring. The Allied lines had been too well reinforced. In desperation he struck straight for Paris, hoping that such a brilliant success as the capture of the French capital would restore his rapidly diminish- ing military reputation and delude the grumbling THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 261 people at home into believing that they had really- won a victory. The attack took place on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, or to be exact, in the early morning hours of the day after, the Germans sup- posing, no doubt, that after the celebration of their national holiday the French would be unpre- pared. The armies of the crown-prince flung themselves at the Allied lines on a front which extended from Chateau-Thierry east and north around Rheims, and on through the Champagne country half-way to Verdun. The attack was al- most a total failure. From Rheims eastward the French, assisted by British, American, Italian, and Polish troops, did not budge an inch. On the contrary, under the brilliant leadership of Gen- eral Gouraud, they threw back the attacking col- umns with tremendous losses and in some places succeeded in gaining ground. In this fighting east of Rheims General Gouraud introduced new tactics. When the German bom- bardment of his front-line positions began, he with- drew his men to the rear. Then, when the Ger- mans advanced over the shattered trenches expect- ing the French to be annihilated, they were first met with a terrific curtain of fire, or "barrage," as it is called, after which the Allied troops swept forward and cut them to pieces with the bayonet. These barrages, first introduced by the French, 262 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS soon became an important factor in infantry ad- vances. By carefully regulating the fire of a large number of guns, usually of the French 75-milli- meter type, stationed far in the rear, it was found possible to place ahead of the advancing troops a wall of exploding shells, usually shrapnel, through which it was almost certain death to ad- vance. Sheltered behind this curtain of fire the men formed for the attack, and when the barrage was "lifted," that is, when the range was in- creased so that the line of exploding shells was placed further ahead, the troops swept forward. When this movement of the fire curtain was contin- uous, the curtain slowly advancing, it was called a "creeping" or "rolling" barrage, and the at- tacking troops were expected to follow behind it> taking care not to advance too rapidly and thus be caught in the fire of their own guns. General Gouraud's success prevented the Ger- mans from driving another great salient into the Allied lines between Rheims and Verdun, and thus taking the French and American lines south of Verdun in the rear. But it was in the loop west of Rheims, the wedge projecting down to the Marne at Ohateau-Thierry, that the danger lay. In spite of the brilliant work done by the Ameri- can machine-gun detachments in holding the bridges across the Marne at Chateau-Thierry in June, the Germans had been able to effect crossings of the river further to the east, and were making THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 263 a desperate attempt to work their way behind the city of Rheims and thus surround and capture it. As a result, the troops at Chateau-Thierry had been obliged to withdraw. Then came the final German effort to reach Paris. The drive across the Marne was no more success- ful than had been that further east. The concen- tration of German troops at the point of the wedge was large and the crown-prince, in the hope of breaking the Allied lines, threw into the attack his very best men. The Germans were now about forty miles from Paris, and to the general public the situation looked dark, although Marshal Foch was about to afford the enemy a great surprise, of which the public knew nothing. When the troops of the crown-prince swept across the Marne they were heavily attacked by the American and French forces south of the river, and thrown back with enormous losses. Once again the Germans were outfought. Chateau- Thierry was retaken and the German backward movement had begun. The great German offensive of 1918 came to an end at the Marne. General von Ludendorff had sacrificed a vast number of men, his reserves were greatly depleted, yet he was as far from vic- tory as ever. In spite of the reassuring reports issued by the great general staff, reports intended to allay the growing discontent of the German peo- ple, Germany was beaten, and the kaiser and his 264 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS generals knew it. Now Marshal Foch, at last ready to strike, began his tremendous counter- offensive. CHAPTER XXVII THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 The Allied Counter -Offensive Begins ON July 18 Marshal Foch struck his first great blow against the forces of the kaiser, an at- tack along the German right flank from Chateau- Thierry northwest to the city of Soissons. It was conducted by French and American troops under the command of General Mangin, and achieved a great success. As we have seen, the Marne salient or wedge was over thirty miles broad at its base, which ran eastward from Soissons to a point north of Rheims. As the German advance progressed to- ward the Marne, the salient became narrower, finally ending in a point which rested upon the Marne in the neighborhood of Chateau-Thierry. So confident had the Germans been of success that they did not take steps to protect properly their long western flank, extending from Soissons to Chateau-Thierry. It was their weak point, and Marshal Foch knew it. Hence he began to con- centrate his forces to the west of the German line of advance, bringing up large bodies of men and many guns under cover of darkness and conceal- 265 266 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS ing them in the forest of Compiegne. Many American divisions, even those with but slight training, were placed at Marshal Foch's disposal by General Pershing, and did splendid work in the ' attack. Without the usual preliminary bombard- ment, the advance began early on the morning of July 18, behind a rolling barrage, and made rapid progress. In spite of the reserves brought up by the enemy, the attack progressed steadily, and at the expiration of five days' fighting the Americans had taken the heights dominating Soissons, while all along the line they and the French troops fight- ing with them had captured many villages, and sent to the rear thousands of prisoners and a large number of guns. The German leaders began to see that unless they quickly withdrew their men from the Marne salient, there was every probabil- ity that they would be cut off. Before taking up a discussion of the battles which now followed one another in rapid succes- sion, let us examine briefly Marshal Foch's strat- egy and compare it with that of General von Lu- dendorff. The German commander-in-chief placed his faith in huge, powerful strokes, resembling blows with a battle-ax, or a two-handed sword. It has been characteristic of the Germans throughout history to fight with such weapons. After each of these great blows there was necessarily a long wait, while the next one was being prepared, and dur- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 267 ing such a wait the enemy was able to recover him- self and strengthen his positions. Marshal Foch, on the contrary, began to strike the German lines at many points, delivering against them lightning- like thrusts not unlike those made with a French rapier, each thrust forming part of a definite and comprehensive plan which had as its purpose not merely to drive the Germans out of Belgium and France but to defeat them utterly by capturing or destroying their forces. Only by capture or destruction can an army be finally defeated. Mere gains of territory here and there result in nothing decisive. Marshal Foch had made up his mind to crush the Germans, and it is a noteworthy fact that when the kaiser's government finally asked for a cessation of hostil- ities, the German armies were at the great French commander's mercy, their situation so critical that within a short time they would have been obliged to surrender. Such was Marshal Foch's ambi- tious purpose, and in spite of the fact that the fighting season was half gone when he began his counter-attack in July, he still hoped that with ordinary weather conditions he would be able to accomplish his aims before the- end of the year. We must look at the map of Belgium and France to appreciate what now followed. The northern end or flank of the German line rested, as we know, upon the Belgian coast of the North Sea, the southern end on the frontier of Switzerland. 268 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS Neither could be "turned"; that is, Allied forces could not by any strategic means be moved around the ends of the German line, since the heavy Ger- man fortifications on the coast of Belgium pre- vented the landing of such forces in the north, while the neutrality of Switzerland prevented an outflanking operation in the south. Marshal Foch conceived two great plans. One was to surround and capture the German armies in Belgium and France by crushing in the two ends of the gigantic salient which their northern battle-line formed, one end of which rested on the North Sea, the other on the fortress of Metz, near Verdun, and the other was to drive a great wedge of his own into German territory south of Metz, thus cutting the whole German line from Belgium to the Swiss border- in two. Such an operation, if successful, would re- sult in the German armies in the north — that is, in Belgium and France — being captured, while those in the south, from Metz down the eastern frontiers of France to Switzerland, being separated from the northern armies, could not go to their assist- ance. No such vast plan of campaign was ever before conceived by a military commander, because no such conditions of battle as existed in France had ever before confronted such a commander. Be- fore the fighting ended in the early part of Novem- ber, Marshal Foch had practically accomplished the first part of his plan. The second part was THE GKEAT BATTLE OF 1918 269 never carried out, because the war was over before it could be put into execution, but a large American army under General Pershing was ready to strike on the very day that hostilities ceased. The attack of General Mangin against the west- ern side of the Marne salient, which began on July 18, sent the Germans hurrying back from the Marne toward the positions from which they had started, on the Aisne. But they could not retire immediately, because they had sent down into the Marne salient immense stores of food, ammuni- tion, and other supplies, and many heavy guns, in anticipation of their advance upon Paris, and all this accumulated material they desired to take back with them. Hence they fought desperately to hold back the French-American advance from the west, as well as the advance from the south being made by French and American troops who had crossed the Marne to its northern bank and were driving the Germans ahead of them. Attacks were also begun from Eheims westward, and for a time the public thought that Foch in- tended to drive from both directions across the base of the Marne salient and cut it off, as one might close the mouth of a bag by drawing a string, with the result that the men and material in the salient would be captured. The Marne salient, however, was too broad at its base, and too shal- low, for such a plan to succeed, and it is unlikely that Foch expected it to do so. Also, the German 270 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS resistance was very strong, many divisions being rushed to the crown-prince's aid from the armies in Flanders. What Marshal Foch did accomplish was to drive the Germans back toward the Aisne with extremely heavy losses in both men and ma- terial. The greater part of their heavy guns they saved, but they were obliged to abandon or destroy large quantities of ammunition and other stores. Since the opening of the German offensive in March, the nature of the fighting, as we have be- fore pointed out, had changed, and was now, for the time being at least, largely in the open. The American troops, unskilled though most of them were in trench warfare, were able in this open fighting to take their places beside any soldiers in the world. This rendered them available al- most as soon as they landed, and these young men from every part of the Union — fresh from cities, villages, farms, of many races and creeds, white or black — were soon displaying the most superb heroism all along the battle-front, from Flanders to Verdun. At the river Ourcq, where the Ger- mans attempted to make a stand on their retreat to the Aisne, at the river Vesle, where they held for a considerable period, these young Americans performed countless feats of valor. In fact, the French officers, who had been obliged by great losses to conserve the lives of their men in every possible way, considered the Americans too reck- less. THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 271 Fearlessly led, they would dash forward with the utmost bravery against the hundreds of con- cealed machine-gun nests with which the Germans strove to cover their retreat, and heedless of their losses, would kill the gunners and capture the guns. These machine-gun detachments consisted of picked men, left behind by the Germans to hold back the enemy while the bulk of their forces es- caped, and although they faced almost certain death, they fought with the greatest courage and determination. The English and French had learned by bitter experience to attack these guns, hidden in every conceivable place, by the use of tanks and light field-artillery, or by outflanking them and taking them in the rear, but the Amer- icans at first disdained all such devices, and swept forward in costly frontal attacks. It was not long, however, before they, too, learned not to sac- rifice themselves so recklessly; but, as had been pointed out, this very recklessness helped to win the war by showing the Germans the nature of the men with whom they had to deal. Throughout all this open fighting there was a tremendous use of airplanes, not only for observ- ing the disposition of the enemy's forces, and photographing his lines, but also in actual fight- ing. On many occasions airplanes would descend to within a few hundred feet of the opposing columns, and attack them with machine-gun fire, while supply-trains were frequently dispersed and 272 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS destroyed by the use of both machine guns and bombs. In these operations the American avi- ators did notable work, although usually in planes of foreign make, owing to the slowness with which the great airplane program in America went for- ward. This was true of many classes of equip- ment. General Pershing reported, after the close of the war, that only 1379 airplanes of American make were in Prance when the war ended, and that in the artillery branch all the guns of the 75- millimeter (3-inch) and 155-millimeter (6-inch) types in use by the army were manufactured in France by the French Government, with the excep- tion of 109 of the first-named type. The same thing was true of tanks. Had the war extended into the year 1919, the American Army would have been fully supplied from factories at home, but through the genius of Marshal Foch it was brought to a close earlier than any one expected. The shortage which existed in tanks may have had something to do with the methods which the Amer- ican troops employed when attacking machine-gun nests. While the Germans were still trying to extri- cate themselves from the Marne salient, Marshal Foch struck the second of his lightning-like blows. This time the British, along the river Somme, were chosen for the attack, so that instead of striking at either side of the great Picardy salient, the blow was aimed at its center. Under General Rawlin- ^£k © Underwood & Underwood The ruined main street © Underwood & Underwood Where U. S Marines defended the crossing of the Marne CHATEAU-THIERRY THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 273 son the British troops advanced with their accus- tomed gallantry, and in a series of drives which began on August 8, forced the Germans back in a battle which has been called the Third Battle of the Somme, the second having been the German advance in March-April, and the first the great battle which took place in 1916, just after the at- tack on Verdun. This Third Battle of the Somme was hotly contested, the Germans resisting with great bravery, but soon Albert, Bray, and Combles had fallen and the enemy was forced back along the river in the direction of Peronne. Then followed other blows, now here, now there, short, swift, decisive. When strong resistance de- veloped against an attack at one point, and the Germans had strengthened this part of their line by drawing reserves to it from some other point, Foch, instead of driving on, would cease his efforts here and strike unexpectedly elsewhere. As a re- sult the German leaders became bewildered under the rain of blows. They did not know at what point on their long lines the next attack might come, and hence hesitated to shift their reserves. Many divisions had been sent toward the Marne, to help the crown-prince out of his dangerous posi- tion. Then, too, the new German lines were far longer than the old ones, curving as they did around the great salients which had been won, and being longer, they required many more men to hold them. 274 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS At this stage of the battle the German leaders apparently concluded that having tried von Luden- dorff's plan of a great offensive, and failed, they would now try von Hindenburg's, which, it will be remembered, was to stand on the defensive in Belgium and northern France, and defy the Allies to drive them back. But such a stand could not be made in the hastily constructed defenses which formed the new German line. For this it was nec- essary to go back to the supposedly impregnable Hindenburg positions, and hence a retreat east- ward was begun. The Germans intended to carry out this retreat slowly, withdrawing their troops in a safe and orderly manner, hoping to hold off the Allies until the approach of winter rendered further operations impossible. Then, their states- men argued, their armies could be rested and re- fitted during the winter months, and meanwhile a peace might be secured by diplomatic means which would not be unfavorable to Germany. But Marshal Foch had no intention of allowing the Germans to do this if it lay in his power to prevent it. He determined not only so to shatter the German armies by constant attacks that they would reach the Hindenburg Line in no condition to defend it, but also to carry out operations which had as their purpose the destruction of the Hin- denburg Line itself. He saw things on a huge scale, and therein lies his greatness. A smaller man might well have been content to turn what a THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 275 few weeks before had seemed a German victory into a German defeat. Foch, however, had bigger plans. He not only meant to defeat the Germans : he expected to win the war. American troops, acting with the British under General Rawlinson, captured the town of Morlan- court, after a brilliant attack, on August 10. Meanwhile, those operating north of Chateau- Thierry had crossed the Ourcq, and taken the town of Fismes, on the river Vesle. Elsewhere, with the British and French, the "dough-boys" were giving a good account of themselves, fighting hard but cleanly, and receiving everywhere the praise of the generals in command. All along the western battle-front, from Rheims to the North Sea, a series of blows was now crush- ing the Germans back toward the Hindenburg Line. The French, driving eastward from Mont- didier, took Lassigny and Roye after desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and their attacks north- ward, to the west of Soissons, began to threaten the Germans ' hold on the Aisne River even before the forces of the crown-prince, in their retreat, had reached it. English armies, with Americans aid- ing, were hammering at the Lys salient, and before long the Germans were driven from Kemmel Hill, and were falling back once more toward Messines Ridge. The Third Battle of the Somme began on a front from the vicinity of Montdidier in the south, to 276 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS and beyond Albert, and by the end of August ex- tended as far north as Lens, its front being then over thirty miles. On August 24, by capturing the strong position of Thiepval, the British forced the enemy out of Bapaume and threatened Cambrai. Since the eighth the British had taken sixty thou- sand prisoners and several hundred guns, and the French were not far behind. On September 1 the British took Peronne, and were driving south- east toward St.-Quentin. The French meanwhile were carrying out a series of brilliant operations east of Noyon, which they had taken, along the river Oise. They pur- posed through these to work themselves into posi- tions from which they might encircle the St.- Gobain Massif, a high plateau situated at the el- bow of the Hindenburg Line, where it ceased to run southward and turned sharply to the east. This position, with the fortified cities of Laon and La Fere, formed the great central anchor of the Hindenburg Line, and was considered impreg- nable. This Hindenburg Line, to which we have so often referred, was the position from which the Germans started their great drive in March. At some points they had advanced far to the west of it, while at others they had not advanced at all. One of the latter lay between Arras and Lens, at the northern end of the battle-front. Another lay north of Verdun, along the river Meuse. Mar- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 277 shal Foch now began operations designed to cut the Hindenburg Line at both points, while the Germans were retreating, bewildered, between them. The attack in the north was made by the British under Generals Home and Byng. On the twenty- fifth of August Field-Marshal Haig's forces crossed the Hindenburg Line in the direction of Cambrai and Douai, south of Lens, and advanced down the Arras-Cambrai road toward what was known as the Drocourt-Queant switch-line, that is, a line built between those two towns in the rear of the old Hindenburg Line, and supposed so to reinforce it as to render it impossible of capture. On the twenty-eighth Croisilles fell, followed by Bullecourt, and on the second of September the British had cut completely through the Drocourt- Queant switch-line and were advancing in the open within a few miles of Douai and Cambrai. When we speak of the British, we refer of course to troops not only from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, but also from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the other British possessions. All vied with one another in the bravery with which they fought for the mother country. This successful attack upon the Drocourt- Queant switch-line, which was carried out by the combined operation of infantry, tanks, and air- craft, was one of the decisive battles of the cam- paign. British cavalry now began to operate in 278 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS the rear of the Hindenburg Line. Very much, however, remained to be done. Behind the Hin- denburg Line were other strong positions, con- nected with it by cross-lines, and a break at one point was local in its effect and did not mean that the whole line must fall. Successful in the north, Marshal Foch now turned to the southern end of the line, near Verdun. Here stood General Pershing, with a large and constantly increasing American army, ready to advance northward along the Meuse and cut the Hindenburg Line at its southern end. Before he could do this, however, it was necessary that the great St.-Mihiel salient, where the Germans had succeeded in getting across the Meuse south of Verdun in 1914, should first be eliminated. It will be remembered that this salient projected out across the Allied lines like a huge wedge, its point at the town of St.-Mihiel, on the Meuse, its base resting upon the Hindenburg Line in front of its powerful anchor position, the fortress of Metz. While this salient existed General Pershing could not with safety advance north along the Meuse, for the salient would lie across his rear, a source of great danger. To the Americans, therefore, was assigned the task of " wiping out" the St.-Mihiel salient. This was the first extensive operation undertaken by the American Army as an inde- pendent force, and needless to say it was carried THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 279 out in a manner to uphold the army's best tradi- tions. On September 13 the battle began, and in just twenty-seven hours the salient had been destroyed, one hundred and fifty-five square miles of French territory had been recovered from the enemy, and over fifteen thousand officers and men had been captured, together with hundreds of guns and large stores of ammunition and supplies. No operation on any front during the course of the war had been carried out with greater precision and dispatch, and the news of the clean-cut and decisive victory surprised and delighted the Allied world. The attack was made by two separate forces, one driving north against the southerly side of the salient, the other driving east against its westerly side. It was planned to have these two forces meet, and thus cut off the salient as though with a pair of pincers. The distance to be covered was less in this case than in the case of the Marne salient; and General Pershing's plan to " close the bag," and thus capture the enemy within it, suc- ceeded. Accompanied by tanks, aircraft, and every other device of modern warfare, the "dough- boys ' ' attacked and once again the Germans found them to be irresistible. As soon as the attack be- gan to make definite progress the German com- manders, realizing that they could not hold the 280 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS salient, began to withdraw their troops from it. Many escaped, but the number captured was large. It is of interest to note the vastness of the prep- arations made necessary for even a moderate-sized modern battle; for the operation at St.-Mihiel, compared with some of the great battles of the war, such as that at Verdun, was not large. It required, in the first place, the services of 600,000 men, in and behind the lines, more than took part on both sides in any battle of the Civil War. A hundred thousand detailed maps and 40,000 photo- graphs were printed and distributed, showing accurately every trench, gun position, hillock, stream, road, or path within the enemy's lines. Five thousand miles of telephone wire were laid, connecting 6000 instruments. To operate this system alone required the services of 10,000 men. Carrier-pigeons, to carry messages back from the lines, were employed in thousands. Thirty-five hospital trains were provided for the wounded and over 70,000 beds, of which, fortunately, only a small proportion were needed. More than 1,500,000 shells were fired during the battle, and millions of rounds of small-arm ammunition, while 4800 automobile trucks were used to carry the men and supplies to the front. These few figures show clearly the magnitude of such an operation. In the St.-Mihiel engagement the American air forces were assisted by squadrons from both the French and the British, so that the total air forces THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 281 engaged were the largest that had been assembled for any one operation on the western front. This gave the supremacy of the air entirely to the at- tack, and prevented the Germans from observing the preparations which were being made. At the same time that American armies were driving across the base of the salient from the south and west, French colonial troops attacked the point of the salient, opposite St.-Mihiel, and made their scheduled advance. After an artillery preparation lasting four hours, the two American forces, numbering about two hundred thousand men on the fighting-line, went forward, with tanks and squads of wire-cutters; the entanglements were leveled ; the infantry swept over the German front and support trenches, throwing the enemy into confusion. Almost before the Germans real- ized what had happened, the advancing columns met in the neighborhood of the town of Thiaucourt. So quick was their advance, so complete the sur- prise, that in some places the German cooks served to the Americans hot food that had been prepared for their own men, while a battery of guns in the salient kept on firing for hours quite unaware of the fact that they had long since been surrounded. The American victory at St.-Mihiel brought the Allied lines close to the outlying forts of the German fortress of Metz, which, it will be remem- bered, was the scene of a great French surrender during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Soon 282 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS these outlying forts were under bombardment, and the civil population of the city began to flee into the interior. Keeping the German lines before Metz under constant pressure, General Pershing was now ready to begin his advance along the Meuse north of Verdun. His objective was Sedan, twenty-five miles to the north, and to reach it it was necessary to clear the Germans out of the great Argonne Forest, and to cross the most powerfully constructed line of fortifications in the world. Meanwhile, over a million and a half American troops had been landed in France, and the two-million mark was rapidly being ap- proached. A general survey of the situation in France and Belgium at this stage of the great battle shows that, in the north, the Allied attacks had cut the Hindenburg Line east of Arras, thus threatening the railroad running north through Cambrai, Douai, and Lille, and then eastward through Bel- gium into Germany by way of Liege. This was the first great avenue of retreat by which the Ger- mans might hope to take their armies back to the Rhine, in case of defeat. In the south, their other rail line of retreat ran through Mezieres and Sedan, toward which latter point General Pershing was now about to advance. In the center of the great arc, the German armies, badly beaten, were struggling to get back to the Hindenburg posi- tions, far in their rear, and forced to turn at every THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 283 step and meet the terrific smashes of the English and French. The German situation was daily be- coming more critical. Let us leave this portion of the battle-front for a moment, and see what had been going on in other parts of the world. CHAPTER XXVIII THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 Operations in Italy, Macedonia, Turkey, and Russia IN June, 1918, General von Ludendorff ordered the Austrians, who had remained quiet for a long time along the Piave River in Italy, to attack. He realized that his great drives in France had brought him no nearer to victory. The Austrian Army was still large and powerful, and he hoped that greater success might attend its efforts than had rewarded those of the Germans on the west- ern front. The object of the drive was to force the Italian armies along the river and in the moun- tains south of Trent to give way, thus allowing the Austrian forces to overrun northern Italy. This accomplished, the way into France from the southeast would be open, and the entire western battle-front might then be taken in the rear. It was an ambitious plan, but it failed. The Italian armies had been thoroughly reor- ganized after the disaster at Caporetto the pre- ceding year, and, with the assistance of British and French divisions stationed on their front, gave the world a surprise. The Austrian attack was not only a huge failure, resulting in only 284 THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 285 trifling gains, but on June 23, a week after it be- gan, the Italians counter-attacked so successfully that they drove the enemy back over the Piave with losses estimated at close to one hundred and fifty thousand men. Here, however, the Italian armies halted, and the front again became quiet. Meanwhile brilliant torpedo-boat attacks on the Austrian naval bases of Polo and Cattaro, in the Adriatic, had resulted in the destruction of several Austrian war-ships of the largest type, while at the same time Italian contingents were fighting with splendid courage along the battle-front in France. Late in October, the Italian armies, acting in accordance with Marshal Foch's extensive plans, themselves attacked. A regiment of American troops had been sent to fight with them, not be- cause of any military necessity, but to show the Italian people that America was with them, heart and soul. The Italian attack began on October 24, and resulted in one of the greatest victories of the war. Close to two million Austrian troops held the front and reserve positions along the line from the mountains to Venice, at the head of the Adriatic, against which the Italian armies, with five divi- sions of French and English and the small Ameri- can contingent, now hurled themselves with the utmost valor. The Austrian lines crumpled as though they had been made of straw. In ten days, 286 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS they had lost four hundred thousand prisoners, and close to seven thousand guns, while the losses in materials and supplies of every sort were colos- sal. Hundreds of villages, thousands of square miles of territory, were freed from Austrian domi- nation, and the advance had penetrated the enemy's lines for an average distance of thirty miles. Marshal Foch had delayed ordering the attack until bad weather had begun to make the provisioning of the Austrian armies in the moun- tains difficult. Every detail of the attack was thought out in advance with the greatest care, and the rapidity with which the Italian armies swept forward has seldom if ever been equaled in mili- tary history. Driving toward the northeast, the forces of General Diaz reached Vittorio Vaneto and Longarone, and cut the Austrians in the moun- tains off from those along the Piave, rendering their situation hopeless. On October 29, five days after the attack began, an Austrian officer came through the Italian lines under a flag of truce and asked that the fighting be stopped and an armistice granted. The Italians, suspecting some trick and questioning his authority, refused to enter into negotiations, and the attack went on. The next day a large delegation of Austrian army and navy officers, headed by one of their generals, ap- proached the Italian front near Rovereto and was taken at once to the headquarters of General Diaz. From here the request for an armistice was trans- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 287 mitted to the Supreme War Council of the Allies at Paris (a council composed of representatives of the Allied nations, with power to deal with all matters pertaining to the military conduct of the war) and terms which amounted virtually to Austria's unconditional surrender were signed. By November 4 the Italian flag was flying over Trent and Trieste, and Germany's strongest ally had retired from the war. All Italy was ablaze with joy. Another of Germany's allies had preceded Aus- tria, however, in abandoning the cause of the Cen- tral Powers. This was Bulgaria, of which we have heard little since her unexpected attack upon Serbia in 1915. Affairs in the Balkan States had been quiet, on the surface at least, for a long time. The party in Greece favorable to the Allies, headed by Veni- zelos, had been steadily growing stronger, and in the spring of 1917, as we have shown, the Allied nations forced the abdication of King Constantine, and placed his son Alexander on the throne. The real ruler, however, was Venizelos, and under his direction the Greek Army had been quietly getting ready for war. On June 29 Greece declared war on Germany, and the Allies at Saloniki gained valuable reinforcements. It was not until Sep- tember, 1918, however, that the blow against Bul- garia was struck, and then it came with the force of a thunderbolt. 288 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS 3c*le or /-IILCS BUDAPEST 'ae&xc&w *** t R stootq J * X> u VA M ? BUCHAREST «*^ BELGBA*BD OCJ?/k/OI0> ■m/>r#r >Hii.lPPOPOir-S f*: lii ' AORIANOF DURAZZO) Map of the Balkan States, showing the location and composition of the Allied forces north of Saloniki. A part of the Serbian Army had, it will be re- membered, been driven into the mountains of Al- bania by the Austro-German and Bulgarian in- vaders. These men, ragged and foot-sore, but still undaunted, struggled through the mountains to the coast of the Adriatic, and were transported from there to the island of Corfu, through the efforts of the Italian Navy. Here they were rested, fed, and © Underwood & Underwood ENGLISHMEN WHO HELPED WIN THE WAR Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig Admiral Jellicoe Sir Julian Byng General Townshend w. ^ ill riBft*Fii I It — ^ J O < .S a o * B3 "m H H H a hrt M I— I o I— I t- c O a-g £ E £ P £-2 O Pi O' CO a pi °» 5ffl W 3 5 X a rn C ►^ a 5 £ I— I a) 03 3 « -1 P E 2 fa fa a « ■§ fa !s 6 I CO "7 1 THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 289 equipped by the Allies, and later they rejoined the units stationed at the front north of Saloniki. In 1916, assisted by the French, the Serbian forces made a considerable advance toward the northeast, and succeeded in driving back the Bulgarians and their Austrian and German allies from their posi- tions around Monastir. On November 19 the city fell, and the Serbians were once more in possession of their ancient capital, as well as of several thou- sand prisoners and many guns. Here the advance rested, until the great blow of 1918. The Allied force, which had lain idle at Saloniki for so long, and been the subject of so much adverse criticism, was now about to vindicate its long months of preparation. This force at Saloniki, now under the command of the French general Franchet d'Esperey, was made up of soldiers of many nationalities. In addition to the French, British, Italian, Serbian, and Greek contingents, there were men from the oppressed provinces of Austria, who had either been made prisoners, while fighting against their will in the Austrian Army, or had escaped from that country and joined their brothers in the fight for freedom. These Yugo-Slavs and Czecho- slovaks hoped, as a result of the war, to achieve their independence. Owing to the supreme efforts which Germany and Austria were making in France and Italy, the bulk of the forces of these two countries had been 290 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS withdrawn from the Saloniki front, leaving to the Bulgarians the principal part in the task of keep- ing the Allies in check. There were, however, still considerable forces of Austrians operating in Albania, and both Germans and Austrians with the Bulgarian armies in the neighborhood of Monastir. In a general way, the Bulgarian forces were divided into two parts, one part operating in the west, around Monastir, the other in the east, around Lake Doiran, and along their own frontier. The valley of the Vardar, down which, it will be remembered, the great Austro-German invasion under von Mackensen passed in 1915, separated these two Bulgarian armies. In rough and moun- tainous country of this kind, with few roads or railways, communications are bad, and the sup- plying of troops with food and ammunition is a difficult problem. The Allied plan of campaign was to cut off the Bulgarian army in the west from that in the east by driving up the Vardar Valley. On September 14 the attack was begun, and soon spread along the entire front from Monastir to the Bulgarian frontier, a distance of over a hundred miles. On the right, British and Greek troops struck toward the Bulgarian border in the vicinity of Lake Doiran. Serbians, French, and the associated Slavic troops drove against the enemy's center, and around Monastir, while to the extreme left, where the battle-line crossed into THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 291 Albania, an Italian army began a great outflanking operation. Along the entire front the Allies were brilliantly successful. Within a week they had advanced up the valley of the Vardar a distance of forty miles, and were threatening the Serbian city of Uskub. On the twenty-sixth of September the British on the right, who had fought their way across the Bulgarian frontier, entered the Bul- garian city of Strumnitza, on the road to Sofia, the capital. Three days earlier the Serbians, fighting savagely both to regain their homes and punish their Bulgarian enemies, stormed the Drenska Massif, forming the defenses of Prilip, and captured that city. French cavalry entered it on September 24 and the Bulgarians were re- treating everywhere in the greatest disorder. The advance up the Vardar soon cut the com- munications between the two Bulgarian armies, and the forces in the west, finding themselves in danger of capture, began a hurried flight eastward through the hills. By September 30 the French and Serbian forces entered Uskub, the enemy hav- ing fled after burning his stores. The battle was by this time a huge rout, with the Allied forces pursuing the fleeing Bulgarians in every direction. So serious had the situation become that as early as September 26 the Bulgarians saw that further resistance was hopeless, and announced that they were sending plenipotentiaries to Allied headquar- ters asking for a cessation of hostilities. There 292 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS were rumors that the Germans, who had become alarmed by this sudden collapse of one of their allies, were sending von Mackensen with rein- forcements from Rumania, but the Bulgarians had had their fill of war. King Ferdinand, the Bulgarian ruler, who as we have previously seen had forced his unfortunate country into the con- flict by reason of his bargain with the kaiser, sud- denly abdicated in favor of his son Boris and fled from the country. Negotiations for an armistice were opened with General d'Esperey at Saloniki on September 28, and the Bulgarian envoys were told that the only terms they would be granted amounted to unconditional surrender. Forty-eight hours were allowed them to consider the matter, during which period the fighting was halted. The Bulgarian Government did not hesitate. On the thirtieth of September Bulgaria surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, and withdrew from the war, a month before the collapse of Austria under the heavy blows of Italy. This was the first breach, there- fore, in the ranks of the Central Powers, and the effect, both politically and from a military stand- point, was tremendous. In Germany a sense of defeat rapidly spread. The loss of Bulgaria cut Turkey off from her allies. Neither by the Berlin-to-Bagdad road nor by way of the Danube could the Germans com- municate any longer with Constantinople. By THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 293 the use of the Bulgarian railroads, now open to the Allies, the forces at Saloniki could be quickly- transported southward to the Dardanelles, and the Turkish capital taken ; or they could be sent north, thereby not only freeing Rumania from German control, but, by crossing the Danube, quickly in- vading Austria itself from the south. Already the oppressed races in that loosely bound together country were seething with the spirit of revolt, and it needed only the presence of invading armies to bring about open rebellion. With these condi- tions in the rear, it is not surprising that the Aus- trians were unable to withstand the terrific as- saults of the Italian armies along the Piave in October. While Bulgaria's surrender terminated hostili- ties against her armies, the campaign against the Germans and Austrians in Serbia and Albania proceeded rapidly. French, Italian, Serbian, and Slav forces swept northward, clearing the enemy out of Albania, northern Serbia, and Montenegro. Nish, the strategic point on the Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad, soon fell, while in Albania the port of Durazzo was attacked from the sea by an Allied naval force, in which American submarines were included, and its defenses destroyed. Within a few days the city was occupied by Italian forces operating by land. The Serbians soon after reached the Danube, and crossing it, advanced into Austria. There was virtually no resistance. 294 THE BATTLE OP THE NATIONS Within a few days Austria herself was to surren- der and withdraw from the war. During the month of September Turkey, with the Bulgarian disaster impending, was threatened in another quarter. We have seen that General Allenby, commanding the British and Allied forces in Palestine, had taken Jerusalem. He was now again on the move. Opposing him north of Jerusalem, on a line ex- tending from the sea southeastwardly to the river Jordan, were Turkish armies numbering one hun- dred and fifty thousand men, under the command of the German field-marshal Liman von Sanders. East of the Jordan, and between that river and the Arabian desert, was a considerable force of Arabs, who had revolted against the rule of the sultan, and formed the independent state of Hedjaz, under their king, Hussein I. These Arabs, operating with General Allenby, harassed the left wing of the Turkish armies. The nature of the country north of Jerusalem caused the British commander to undertake a bold stroke. The valley of the Jordan is separated from the sea-coast by a high range of hills, but along the coast itself is a narrow stretch of fairly level country, sloping down to the sea. General Allenby 's plan was first to engage the attention of the Turkish forces by attacking them in the east, along the valley of the Jordan. Then, while they were so engaged, he planned to break through THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 295 their lines at the sea-coast by a sudden attack, and to send through the breach thus made a large force of cavalry, which force, by advancing rapidly northward, was to reach the rear of the Turkish armies in the Jordan Valley and surround them. Their flight eastward, across the Jordan, would be prevented by the Arabs. The plan succeeded perfectly. On September 18 British and French forces began the attack, and the next day cavalry, including camel corps and Indian regiments, were pouring through the breach and sweeping rapidly up the coast. Turn- ing eastward toward the Jordan, this force occu- pied Nazareth, and the retreat of the two Turkish armies in the Jordan Valley was cut off. A third Turkish army, operating east of the river Jordan, was similarly isolated by the Arabs, who by cut- ting the railroad to Damascus at Derat, just east of the Sea of Galilee, destroyed their means of retreat. By the twenty-second of September the encirclement of the Turks was complete, and pris- oners began to surrender in large numbers. As a result of this remarkable victory General Alien- by 's forces captured nearly eighty thousand Turks, and five hundred guns. The remaining Turkish armies fled in small detachments into the mountains or the desert, and as an organized force ceased to exist. The German commander, Field-Marshal von Sanders, was severely criticized at home for allow- 296 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS ing his forces to be surrounded. He himself nar- rowly escaped capture. In explanation of his defeat he said, after the war, that owing to deser- tions, and the fact that many Turkish troops had been sent to occupy Russian territory in the Cau- casus, he had by the first of August lost all hope of offering any effective resistance to General Alien- by 's advance, and that he had so telegraphed Gen- eral von Ludendorff, informing the latter that he must have reinforcements. There were no rein- forcements available, however, von Ludendorff having his hands full in Belgium and France. Marshal von Sanders's explanation is weak. If he could not resist, he might at least have saved his armies. Nothing can detract from the fact that the Allies, under General Allenby, won a re- markable victory, distinguished as greatly by the skill with which it was planned as by the energy with which it was carried out. Without loss of time the Allied forces pushed on to Damascus. This historic and beautiful city, the capital of Syria, fell on October 1, the demoralized Turks offering but slight resistance, and the advance continued toward Aleppo, one hundred and eighty miles to the northeast. Progress was very rapid. Another Allied force (that under General Mar- shall) was advancing toward Aleppo through Mosul and Bagdad. With Constantinople threat- ened from both the south, at Aleppo, and from the north by the armies at Saloniki, the Turkish Gov- THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 297 ernment, on October 12, opened negotiations for peace by sending General Townshend (who, it will be remembered, had been taken prisoner with his forces at Kut-el-Amara, on the Tigris, in 1915) to the British admiral in command in the Medi- terranean, with offers of surrender. Four days before, Enver Bey, the Turkish leader and friend of the kaiser, fled, as well as his co-conspirator, Talaat Bey, the Turkish grand vizier. Turkey, like Bulgaria and later on Austria, was now out of the war. We have referred in the last paragraph to the advance on Aleppo of the British-Indian forces under General Marshall, coming up the Tigris through Bagdad. The plan of joining these forces and those of General Allenby at Aleppo was now approaching its completion. The Turks on the right flank of the British armies advancing north of Bagdad, who had been operating in northern Persia, began a quick retreat from their positions, and the forces of General Marshall advanced to Mosul. From here an advance toward Aleppo was in progress when the war came to an end. With Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine in the hands of the Allies, with Arabia free and Ar- menia crying for independence, there was little left of the once powerful Turkish Empire except the territory immediately surrounding Constan- tinople. In Russia a terrible state of affairs existed. 298 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS Anarchy was universal. The Bolsheviki, from murdering the nobility and plundering their cas- tles and estates, had turned upon the middle classes. Lenine and Trotzky, now known to have been German agents, exercised only a nominal control. Out of all this misrule the Germans expected to derive great profit, by placing upon the thrones of the various states into which Rus- sia was breaking up rulers who would be favor- able to the plans of the kaiser. The German lead- ers thought that when the great mass of the popu- lation had had enough of Bolshevism, they would welcome even German domination rather than live in a state of anarchy. Thus, despite the unfavorable turn of affairs in the West, Ger- many thought that if she could bring the vast areas of Russia, extending to the Pacific, under her control, she would have compensation for all that she might lose elsewhere. There were no organized forces in Russia to fight this scheme of German domination, and the Allies began to see that such forces would have to be provided. A nucleus already existed in the form of a body of Czecho-Slovak prisoners, who had fought in the armies of Austria, and been cap- tured by the Russians. These prisoners, liber- ated after the peace of Brest Litovsk, instead of returning to Austria, determined to go to the front in France by way of Vladivostok, the Pacific Ocean, America, and the Atlantic, a journey which, THE GREAT BATTLE OP 1918 299 had they completed it, would have taken them nearly around the world. Securing arms and equipment from the disorganized Russians, they began to make their way toward Siberia. The Bolsheviki, under orders from Lenine, who in turn acted under instructions from Berlin, at- tempted to stop the Czecho-Slovaks and disarm them. The latter resisted, and seized parts of the great Trans-Siberian Railroad. In this way some of them reached Vladivostok, while others remained in Central Russia, unable to get out be- cause of the opposition of the Bolsheviki between them and the coast. At this juncture the Allies determined to send troops into Siberia to aid them, and joint forces, including both Americans and Japanese, were landed at Vladivostok. Japanese forces also operated northward from the Chinese border, as- sisted by Chinese troops and Cossacks who had retreated across the frontier. Another Allied force, in which Americans were included, was sent into Russia by way of Arch- angel, and an advance was begun toward the south, against the opposition of the Bolshevist forces, but with the support of the intelligent and more conservative elements of the population. These expeditions to restore peace and a stable government to the Russian people were still under way when the great war terminated, and while military domination by Germany of that country's 300 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS vast territory was prevented, the future of Russia was very far from being settled. With this brief review of the operations on out- lying fronts, let us now return to the crucial phase of the great battle, in France. CHAPTER XXIX THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 The Allied Counter -Offensive — Final Phase WHEN we left the western front, the British had cut the Hindenburg Line in the north, while the Americans, by removing the trouble- some St.-Mihiel salient, were about to undertake a similar operation in the south. Marshal Foch was about to strike again at the German center. Very significant advances had been made daily at several points along the center of the line, in which American troops had taken an increasingly important part. The advance north of Soissons, as we have seen, was made for the double purpose of encircling the powerful St.-Gobain position and forest on the south, and at the same time of getting behind the high ridge of the Chemin des Dames along the river Aisne. West and north of Soissons the Al- lied forces were now north of the Aisne, toward which the troops of the crown-prince in the Marne salient, still resisting along the river Vesle, must retreat. Marshal Foch determined that when the Germans in their movement northward reached 301 302 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS their lines on the Aisne, these lines should already be outflanked. American troops, in this operation, distin- guished themselves in the capture of the Juvigny Plateau, an area of high ground south of the river Ailette, which commanded the approaches to Laon. The attack began on August 28, the Americans being brought up under cover of darkness, in motor-trucks, from another part of the front. Early in the morning they went into battle accom- panied by French shock troops, and within fifteen minutes prisoners began to stream back toward the rear. The plateau was heavily fortified, and its defenders resisted desperately, employing their usual machine-gun tactics, but the Allied advance, aided by light French tanks and airplanes, made steady progress. After five days of the most bit- ter and stubborn fighting, the plateau was cleared, and important positions on the highway running from Soissons northward to St.-Quentin taken. The French commanders everywhere expressed their admiration for the work done by the Ameri- cans, and declared that they were proud to com- mand such troops. No soldiers could have fought with greater bravery and spirit. Further north, the French armies operating south of the Somme advanced rapidly through Roye and Chaulnes toward St.-Quentin and La Fere, thus threatening the St.-Gobain position from the north as it was already being threatened THE GREAT BATTLE OF 1918 303 from the south. Early in September they reached Ham, and were close to the main Hindenburg Line. North of the Somme the British also were press- ing closely upon the heels of the retreating Ger- man armies. The troops operating through the break in the Hindenburg Line opposite Arras were close to Douai and the large French city of Lille, both important points on the railway which formed the German main line of retreat on this part of the front. Now came the shattering blow delivered by Mar- shal Foch at the German center. On September 18 British forces under General Eawlinson, which included two divisions of Americans, and French forces under General Dcbeney, attacked the outer defenses of the Hindenburg Line north of St.- Quentin, and carried them at two points. Intense German counter-attacks now held up the advance. At once Foch struck further north, using General Byng's army, with American divisions operating between Byng and Eawlinson. Moeuvres, only seven miles west of Cambrai, fell, and with Gen- eral Home's British army north of General Byng also attacking, the entire line crashed forward on a wide front opposite Cambrai. The fighting was of the most desperate and bloody nature. Within a few days the suburbs of Cambrai were reached, the Americans taking Bellecourt, Nauroy, and the key position of Guillemont Farm. The St.-Quen- 304 THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS tin Canal, which here formed one of the defenses of the Hindenburg Line, was crossed by General Rawlinson 's forces at Belle Eglise. The work of the American troops at this point— -representative of what they did at every other point at which they were engaged — has been described by General Rawlinson himself, in an interview given on the battle-field. "You American correspondents," said General Rawlinson, "should not pass by this place without hearing what your men did here, and what it meant. This is where two of your American divi- sions fought splendidly, and where many of them died. No troops ever fought more valiantly. In- experience cost them more men than they should have lost, but their courage and determination in the face of tremendous obstacles was magnificent. What they did here will make the name of Guille- mont Farm famous in American history. It was one of the vital spots of the war. As you see, this farm is higher than any of the surrounding ridges for miles. "Over there, five miles away, was the main Hindenburg line, running through the town of Bony, which was a regular rabbit warren of con- crete boche dugouts, trenches, and tunnels. For two and a half years the boche had been building and strengthening this line, and he firmly believed it proof against any army in the world. This place where we stand was the outpost of the main