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A Short History of the Great War

A >> A.F. Pollard >> A Short History of the Great War




The French and Americans had a sterner task in the Argonne and on the
Meuse, for here was the pivot of the Germans' whole position in the
conquered territory. A possible retirement to the Meuse had been
contemplated in 1917, and in September 1918 the Germans would have
been glad to surrender everything west of it in return for safety on
that line; hence their withdrawals and feeble resistance in Flanders.
But the Meuse from Verdun to Mezières was an indispensable flank for
any German front in Belgium; it had now become more to the Germans
than even that, for it was the only shield behind which their armies
could escape disaster and get back to Germany at all. Whatever else
might have to go, this flank must hold; if it gave, the Germans would
have to capitulate or suffer the wholesale destruction of their
forces. Hence the stubbornness of the defence the Americans
encountered; the terrain gave it every advantage with which art could
supplement nature; and a singular and serious breakdown of their
commissariat added to the difficulties under which American troops
fought with intrepid skill.

The attack was launched on 26 September. The American front ran for
seventeen miles from Forges on the Meuse, eight miles north of Verdun,
to the centre of the Argonne, whence the French extended it to
Auberive on the Suippe. Pershing's First Army advanced an average
depth of seven miles and captured Varennes, Montfaucon,--for long the
Crown Prince's headquarters,--Nantillois, and Dannevoux. Gouraud's
progress was less rapid but better sustained. His greatest advance was
only three miles, but it extended along a wider front and developed
during the following days, while the Americans were held up by
defective organization. Somme-Py and Manre were taken on the 28th,
while on Gouraud's left Berthelot began to move from Reims, and
farther west Mangin pursued the Germans across the Aisne. Progress
along the whole French front continued in October; Gouraud's right
pressed on to a level with, and then in advance of, the American left
towards Challerange and Grandpré; his centre advanced towards
Machault, and on his left Berthelot took Loivre, Brimont, and forced
the passages of the Suippe at Bertricourt and Bazancourt, and of the
Aisne at Berry-au-Bac. The Moronvillers massif was thus outflanked,
and by the middle of the month the Germans were evacuating the whole
of their ground south of the Aisne. This retreat, coupled with the
French advance east of St. Quentin, endangered the great apex of the
German front in the St. Gobain forest, and by the 10th its abandonment
was begun. On the 11th the Chemin des Dames was relinquished, on the
13th the French were in La Fère and Laon, and the Germans were
retreating to the line of the Serre.

Nevertheless, the advance of the right wing of the Allied front had
not quite come up to expectations. The prolonged maintenance of the
German bastion in the Argonne and on the Meuse enabled their centre to
withdraw more or less at its leisure and thus avoid the colossal Sedan
with which it was threatened; and, the French centre having been cast
for a part subsidiary to those of the two wings, the brunt of the
fighting fell upon the British, whose advance was not so fatal as
similar progress would have been on the other wing. They were greatly
assisted by American divisions serving with the Third and Fourth
armies, by the Belgians and French on their left, and by the French on
their right; but the check to the American advance enabled the
Germans--unfortunately for them, as it turned out--to transfer
reinforcements from the Meuse to Cambrai and Valenciennes.

Cambrai did not therefore fall until another series of actions had
been fought in the first nine days of October. The Scheldt canal to
the north of it had proved a formidable obstacle, and Haig determined
to press the attack from the south, where the Fourth Army had prepared
the way on 29 September by destroying the Hindenburg line at
Bellicourt and Bellenglise. On 3 October Rawlinson attacked again
between Le Catelet and Sequehart and captured those villages, Gouy,
Ramicourt, and the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme line. On the 4th and 5th
further progress was made by the taking of Beaurevoir and Montbrehain,
while north of Le Catelet the Germans were driven from their positions
east of the canal, which were occupied by the Third Army. On the 8th
the final phase in the battle for Cambrai began. The chief fighting
was on the line secured on the 3rd. An American division captured
Brancourt and Prémont, and British divisions Serain, Villers-Outreaux,
and Malincourt north-east of Le Catelet. New Zealanders south of
Cambrai look Lesdain and Esnes, and three British divisions
Serainvillers, Forenville, and Niergnies, penetrating the southern
outskirts of Cambrai, while to the north of it Canadians captured
Ramillies, crossed the canal at Point d'Aire and entered the city on
that side. During the night the whole of it fell into our hands; the
Germans were driven back in disorder to within two miles of Le Cateau;
and Bohain was reached ten miles east of Bellicourt and a similar
distance south-west of Le Cateau. By the 10th the advance had been
carried to the line of the Selle river, on which the Germans made
another stand, while farther south the French pushing east of St.
Quentin, cleared the Oise-Sambre canal as far north as Bernot. On the
10th Le Cateau fell, and by the 13th the British had gained the west
bank of the Selle as far north as Haspres.

A great wedge had thus been thrust into the German line, leaving
pronounced salients to the north of it round Lille and Douai, and to
the south-east of it between the Oise and the Aisne. It was the policy
of the Entente to eschew the destruction which fighting in cities
involved, and it was particularly desirable to compel the Germans to
retreat from Lille and its industrial neighbourhood by threats of
encirclement rather than by frontal attack. To complete the process
begun on the south, the advance in the north was now resumed; and on
14 October Belgian forces with a French army under Dégoutte and the
British Second Army under Plumer attacked the whole front in Flanders
between Dixmude and the Lys at Comines. Their success was even more
striking than it had been on 28 September; the Belgians and French
carried Courtemarck, Roulers, and Iseghem, while the British pushed
along the north bank of the Lys until on the 16th they held it as far
as Harlebeke, farther east than Ostend and even than Bruges. On the
15th the Belgians captured Thourout and the British Menin, crossing
the Lys at various points and taking Comines on the 16th. The effect
of this advance was to precipitate a comprehensive German retreat both
north and south. The coveted Belgian coast had at last to be
abandoned: Ostend fell on the 17th, Zeebrugge and Bruges on the 19th,
and by the 21st the Germans were twenty miles from the sea, striving
to stand on the Lys canal in front of Ghent. To the south the
withdrawal was no less complete: both Lille and Douai were entered on
the 17th; Tourcoing and Roubaix soon followed; and by the 21st our
Second and Fifth armies had advanced to the Scheldt on a front of
twenty miles, forming nearly a straight line with the First, Third,
and Fourth on the Selle.

There the battle had been renewed on the 17th, as soon as our
advancing lines of communication had been sufficiently repaired to
bear the strain. The attack was made south of Le Cateau by the Fourth
Army, employing British and American troops in co-operation with
Débeney's French armies on our right. The country was difficult and
the fighting stiff, but by nightfall on the 19th the Germans had been
driven across the Oise and Sambre canal at all points south of
Catillon, and on the 20th the Third and part of the First armies took
up the struggle on the Selle north of Le Cateau. Here again it was
severe, especially at Neuvilly, Solesmes, and Haspres, but the whole
of the Selle positions on both banks were secured, while north-east of
its junction with the Scheldt the First Army had occupied Denain. On
the 23rd a combined attack was made by the Fourth and Third armies,
though progress was limited to the front north of the bend of the
Sambre at Ors. Between that point and a few miles south of
Valenciennes our troops advanced six miles up to the outskirts of the
forest of Mormal and Le Quesnoy in spite of the intervening streams
which had been swollen by rain, of the wooded country, and of the
stubborn resistance of the Germans. These battles of the Selle between
17-25 October yielded to British armies alone 21,000 prisoners and 450
guns, and on the 26th Ludendorff resigned. Meanwhile the French were
gradually squeezing the Germans out of their salient between the Oise
and the Aisne back upon the Serre. Chalandry and Grandlup, near that
river, were occupied on the 22nd, and east of the Aisne some progress
was made in the Argonne by the capture of Olizy and Termes on the
15th; but till nearly the end of October the Americans west of the
Meuse were held up by their commissariat difficulties, though east of
it they had captured Brabant and Consenvoye and pushed forward their
line to a level with that on the western bank.

It was only on the Meuse and on the Lys that the enemy front showed
the last vestiges of stability at the end of October. The surrender of
Bulgaria had been followed by that of Turkey, and Austria was on the
verge of collapse. Her hold on the Balkans had gone, her southern
provinces were rising in sympathy with the Serbian and Jugo-Slav
advance, in the north the Czecho-Slovaks were preparing to join, and
even Hungary was refusing to supply the starving capital with food.
Unless Italy struck quickly, Fiume and Trieste and the whole
north-eastern Adriatic coast would pass into the hands of the
insurgents. The moment had come to forestall the Jugo-Slavs and
deliver a blow which might overthrow the Hapsburg Empire before it
collapsed of itself. Since the repulse of the Austrian offensive on
the Piave in June, the Italian front had remained quiescent during the
critical months of the war, though picked Italian divisions had done
good fighting with the French at Reims, and the Italians in Albania
had pursued the Austrian forces after they had been beaten by the
Serbs and French and abandoned by the Bulgars. On the night of 23-24
October the Tenth Italian Army, consisting of two British and two
Italian divisions commanded by Lord Cavan, attacked the island of
Grave di Papadopoli in the Piave and completed its conquest on the
25th and 26th. Simultaneously Giardino's Italians with a French
division attacked in the region of Mt. Grappa, but retired to their
original position after taking a number of prisoners. On the 25th they
were more successful, capturing Mt. Pertica and repulsing Austrian
counter-attacks on the 26th. On the 27th the decisive movement began
with Cavan's crossing of the Piave, and on the same day the Austrian
Government requested Sweden to transmit to President Wilson an offer
which was equivalent to surrender. At the front the Austrians
continued to counter-attack very heavily at Mt. Pertica; but on the
Piave they completely collapsed, and the breach of their line on the
27th was followed by a disorderly flight. The booty was colossal, the
heterogeneous troops of the moribund Hapsburg Empire surrendered
wholesale, and on 3 November their dying government submitted to the
terms of an armistice imposed by General Diaz. On that day Italians
landed at Trieste, where insurgents had taken over the government on
31 October; but an Austrian Dreadnought at Pola which had hoisted the
Croat revolutionary flag was sunk by the daring act of two Italian
officers.

Germany now stood alone, and any defence she might otherwise have made
on her frontiers was hopelessly compromised by the position of her
armies on their far-flung line in France and Belgium. Nemesis for the
invasion of Belgium had at last overtaken the invader. The problem of
withdrawing in safety was rendered insoluble by the battles of the
first week in November and the consequent convergence of the Allies on
Germany's remaining lines of communication. The decisive blows were
delivered right and left by the American and British wings. Towards
the end of October the Americans had surmounted their difficulties of
transport and organization, and were breaking down the German
resistance, which had been weakened by the transfer of troops to the
British front, between Grandpré and the Meuse. On 1 November the
German line was broken and the Americans advanced three or four miles.
On the 2nd they doubled that distance and were in Buzancy; on the 3rd
they repeated their success, while the French on their left cleared
the Argonne and reached Le Chesne. German resistance also broke down
on the east bank of the Meuse, and the Americans made for Montmédy.
But their advance was most rapid on the west bank, where on the 7th
they leapt forward to Sedan. The Germans were thus deprived of their
great lateral line connecting the eastern and western sectors of their
front, and were driven back against the barrier of the Ardennes; and a
great French offensive into Lorraine was being prepared under Mangin.
This provision somewhat weakened the less essential advance of the
French in the centre between the Aisne and the Oise, but the progress
of the American wing left the Germans no option but retreat in the
centre, and three French armies under Débeney, Mangin, and Guillaumat
were rapidly converging upon Hirson. The remains of the Hunding
position were taken on 5 November, and Marle and Guise were captured
farther north-west. Vervins, Montcornet, and Réthel fell on the 6th.
Hirson and Mezières were reached and the Belgian frontier crossed on
the 9th. On the 10th the Italians entered Rocroi, and on the morning
of the 11th the Allies were converging on Namur.

This rapid pursuit of the German centre had been made possible by the
coup de grâce given to the German armies in the battle of the Sambre.
Haig regarded the capture of Valenciennes as an essential preliminary,
and on 1-2 November corps of the First and Third armies attacked a
six-mile front to the south of the town. The line of the Rhonelle was
forced and Valenciennes fell on the 2nd. The line of the Scheldt was
thus turned, and besides falling back in front towards the forest of
Mormal the Germans had to begin evacuating the Tournai bend of the
river. But the decisive blow was still to come. It was delivered on 4
November by the First, Third, and Fourth armies on a thirty-mile
front, between Valenciennes and Oisy on the Sambre, which was
continued by Débeney's army southwards to the neighbourhood of Guise.
In Haig's restrained language a great victory was won which definitely
broke the enemy's resistance. Nineteen thousand prisoners were taken
on the British front and 5000 on the French. On the first day
Landrecies and Le Quesnoy fell and half the forest of Mormal was
overrun; and the remaining operations consisted of a pursuit. On the
7th Bavai was captured, and Condé during the following night; on the
8th our troops were twelve miles east of Landrecies in Avesnes and on
the outskirts of Maubeuge, which fell on the 9th. On that day also
Tournai was occupied, and the Second Army crossing the Scheldt on a
wide fronting reached Renaix. On the 10th they were close to Ath and
to Grammont, and early on the 11th Canadians captured Mons.

Foch's Campaign

The British Army ended the war on the Western front where it had begun
to fight, and at 11 a.m. on that day the struggle ceased from end to
end of the fighting line in accordance with an armistice signed six
hours before. Its terms were severe, the immediate evacuation of all
the conquered territory and withdrawal behind the Rhine, leaving the
whole left bank and all the important bridgeheads open to Allied
occupation, and a neutral zone on the right bank; the repatriation of
all the transported inhabitants and Allied prisoners of war; the
quashing of the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bukarest, and the
withdrawal of all German troops from territories formerly belonging to
Russia, Rumania, and Turkey; the surrender of thousands of guns,
locomotives, aeroplanes, of all submarines fit for sea, and of the
better part of the German Navy. The Germans had no choice: their
armies were in flight along roads choked with transport towards an
ever narrowing exit, and they could only escape if given time, which
they could only obtain by surrender. They yielded to avoid a Sedan
which would have destroyed their armies as a fighting force. But they
gained one at least of the objects for which they had fought. The
Fatherland was saved from the abomination of desolation which the
Germans had spread far and wide in their enemies' homes; and except
for a corner in East Prussia and another in Alsace, German soil had
remained immune from invasion.

The surrender might have had the saving grace of common sense had it
not been delayed so long; but it required the imminence of military
destruction and an intimation from President Wilson that peace could
not be concluded with those who had made the war, to provoke that
revolution which competent observers had from the beginning declared
to be an inevitable result of a German defeat. It was precipitated by
an order to the German Fleet to go out and fight. That again had been
anticipated as a counsel of despair, but few foresaw that the order
would be disobeyed. The German genius for organization had tried the
strength of its human material beyond the limits of endurance. The
crews mutinied, and the spirit of revolt spread in the first week of
November to Kiel and other ports, and thence throughout the whole of
Germany. Every German throne, grand-ducal or royal, toppled into the
dust, and on the 9th the Kaiser abdicated, fleeing like the Crown
Prince to Holland, and leaving it to a government of Socialists to
sign the terms of surrender. With the imperial crown went that
imperial creation, the German Navy; and the crowning humiliation was
its peaceful transference to Scapa Flow on 21 November, to be scuttled
by its crews on 21 June 1919. Navies had gone in the past to the
bottom, beaten and wrecked like the Spanish Armada, or battered to
pieces and sunk as at Trafalgar; but never yet had Britain's sea-power
led home a captive fleet without a fight. The curtain rang down on a
fitting scene, a proof beyond all precedent of British command of the
sea, and a yet more solemn demonstration that the ultimate factor in
war consists in a people's spirit and not in its iron shards.


CHAPTER XX

THE FOUNDATIONS OF PEACE

Destruction is easier and more rapid than construction, and it needs a
wiser man and a longer labour to make peace than war. War begins with
the first blow, but peace is not made when the fighting stops; and
months were to pass in the troubled twilight between the two, with
millions of men under arms, with budgets more suggestive of war than
peace and men's thoughts more attuned to a contentious past than
prepared for a peaceful future. The first act of the British
Government was, indeed, to transfer hostilities from its foes abroad
to those at home, and to rout its domestic enemies at a general
election. The Parliament elected in 1910 had, after limiting its
existence to five years, extended it during the war to eight; and the
argument for an election and a fresh mandate for the Peace Conference
would have been irresistible had any Ally followed our example, had
the Government during the contest given any indication of the terms of
peace it contemplated, and had the British delegates not been hampered
rather than helped by the foolish concessions which ministers made to
popular clamour for the Kaiser's execution and for Germany's payment
of the total cost of the war. There could, indeed, be little
discussion on the platform, because on principles all parties were
substantially agreed, and details were matters for the Conference; and
the election was fought to defeat opposition, not to the Government's
policy, but to its personnel. In this the Coalition was triumphantly
successful: three-quarters of the new members had accepted its coupon,
and of the remainder the largest party consisted of seventy Sinn
Feiners who were in prison or at least pledged not to attend the
House. The Labour group returned some fifty strong, but Mr. Asquith's
followers were reduced to thirty. This result was, however, a triumph
of political strategy manipulating a very transient emotion, the
evanescence of which was shown in a series of bye-elections before the
Conference reached its critical points. It was well for British
influence in the councils of the Allies that it did not depend upon
the vagaries of popular votes, and it would have been well for the
repute of British statesmen if they had not had the occasion or the
temptation to indulge in the hectic misrepresentation and profligate
promises of which their electioneering speeches were full.

The weight which the various Allies exerted at the Conference depended
upon the services they had rendered to the common cause and the force
they had at their disposal. At the conclusion of the armistice the
British Empire, in addition to its overwhelming naval preponderance,
had over half a million men in arms more than any other belligerent.
Its total military forces, including Dominion and Indian troops and
garrisons abroad, amounted to 5,680,247 men; France had 5,075,000; the
United States, 3,707,000; Italy, 3,420,000; Germany about 4,500,000;
Austria, 2,230,000; while Bulgaria had had at the end of September
half a million, and Turkey at the end of October some 400,000. Great
Britain and France had also been fighting since the beginning of the
war, while Italy had joined in May 1915, and the United States in
April 1917. On the other hand, all the European Powers had reached, if
not passed, their meridian of strength, whereas the United States
could with a corresponding effort raise her forces to over ten
millions. Potentially she was the most powerful of the associated
nations, and only the existence of the British fleet brought any rival
up to anything like equality. Together the United States and the
British Empire were irresistible; and so long as they were agreed, any
concessions they might make to others would be due, not to fear, but
to their sense of justice, desire for peace, and consideration for the
susceptibilities of others. The responsibility for the issue of the
Conference rested therefore upon them to a very special degree; and in
spite of unspeakably foolish and ignorant chatter in reactionary
quarters, it was an inestimable advantage that the British Empire
could look to the United States and President Wilson to bear most of
the odium of insisting upon sound principles and telling unpalatable
truths. America was in the better position to play the part of the
candid friend, because she had no territorial ambitions to serve and
no axe to grind save that of peaceful competition in the arts of
industry and commerce; and if European allies occasionally grumbled at
American interference, the reply was obvious that they should have won
the war without waiting for or depending on American intervention.

In spite of a somewhat weak pretence to public diplomacy, the secret
history of the Conference is not likely to be known to this
generation; but its decisions were promptly published, and the
attitude of the various Powers to the principal problems with which
they had to deal was easily discerned. President Wilson had made a
personal survey of the ground by a visit to Europe, unprecedented in
the history of the Presidential office, in December, before the
Conference opened at Versailles on 18 January 1919. It was largely
owing to his presence and prestige that in the forefront of the
programme and performance of the Conference stood a plan for an
international organization for the future avoidance of war, settlement
of disputes, and regulation of labour conditions. The idea of a League
of Nations had made rapid progress as the war increased in extent,
intensity, and horror. At Christmas 1917 the British Government, at
the instigation of Lord Robert Cecil and General Smuts, had appointed
a committee to explore the subject, and it had reported in the
following summer in favour of a scheme in which the main stress was
laid upon the avoidance of war. The French Government had also
appointed a commission which likewise reported favourably in the
summer of 1918: the principal difference between the two was that the
French commission advocated the establishment of an organized standing
international army. President Wilson preferred to proceed by means of
more informal discussions with committees not appointed by his
government; and the American stress was laid rather on the
organization of an international council and tribunal. The fruitful
idea of a mandatory system was first publicly advocated by General
Smuts.

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