t impossible to see more than fifty yards in any
direction, so that the machine guns and forward field-guns which had
been disposed so as to cover this zone with their fire were robbed
almost entirely of their effect--and the masses of German infantry
advanced comparatively unharassed, so closely supporting each other
that loss of direction was impossible." Hence the rapidity of the
German advance through the front lines on March 21st, and the alarming
break-through south of St. Quentin, where our recently extended line
was weakest and newest. A second accident was the drying up of the
Oise Marshes at a time when in a normal year they might have been
reckoned on to stop the enemy's advance. A third piece of ill-luck was
the fact that in the newest section of the British line, where the
enemy attack broke at its hottest, there had been no time, since it
had been given over to us by the French--who had held it lightly, as a
quiet sector, during the winter--to strengthen its defences, and to do
the endless digging, the railway construction, and the repair of
roads, which might have made a very great difference. And, finally,
there was the most dangerous accident of all--the break through of
the Portuguese line at Richebourg St. Vaast, just as the tired
division holding it was about to be relieved. Of that accident, as we
all remember, the enemy, hungry for the Channel ports, made his very
worst and most; till the French and British fought him to a final
stand before Hazebrouck and Ypres.

[Illustration: _British Official Photograph_
The St. Quentin Canal which was crossed by the 46th in life-belts.]

Meanwhile, the strategic insight of Marshal Foch, who assumed complete
control of the Allied Armies in France and Belgium on March 26th,
combined with the experienced and cool-headed leadership of the
British Commander-in-Chief, refused to dissipate the French reserves,
so important to the future course of the war, in any small or
piecemeal reinforcement of the British lines. The risks of the great
moment had to be taken, and both the French and British Commanders had
complete faith in the capacity of the British Army to meet them. And
when all is said, when our grave losses in casualties, prisoners, and
guns are fully admitted, what was the general result? The Germans had
failed to gain either of their real objectives:--either the Channel
ports, or the division of the British Armies from the French. They
wore themselves out