and was playing a vital part in the great victory of the Marne.
So last spring, the losses and withdrawals of a vaster defensive
action, coupled with the stubborn and tenacious hold of the British
Army, last March and April, were the inevitable and heroic prelude to
the victorious recoil of August, and the final battles of the war.
Inevitable, because no forethought or exertion on the British side
could have averted the German onslaught, determined as it was by the
breakdown of the whole Eastern front of the war, and the letting loose
upon the Western front of immense forces previously held by the
Russian armies. These forces, after the Russian _debacle_, were
released against us, week by week, till in March the balance of
numbers, which was almost even in January, had risen on the German
side to a superiority of 150,000 bayonets! The dispatch of divisions
to Italy; the recall of men to the shipyards and the mines to meet the
submarine danger; the heavy fighting in the Salient and at Cambrai in
the latter half of 1917; the lack of time for training new levies,
owing to our depleted line and reserves:--all these causes contributed
to sharpen the peril in which England stood.[5] But it is in such
straits as these that our race shows its quality.

[5] See the Chart at end of Book.

And in this fighting, for the first time in British history, and in
the history of Europe, Americans stood side by side in battle with
British and French. "In the battle of March and April," says Sir
Douglas Haig, "American and British troops have fought shoulder to
shoulder in the same trenches, and have shared together in the
satisfaction of beating off German attacks. All ranks of the British
Army look forward to the day when the rapidly growing strength of the
American Army will allow American and British soldiers _to co-operate
in offensive action_."

That day came without much delay. It carried the British Army to Mons,
and the young American Army to Sedan.

* * * * *

Looking out from the Vimy Ridge six weeks ago, and driving thence
through Arras across the Drocourt-Queant line to Douai and
Valenciennes, I was in the very heart of that triumphant stand of the
Third and First Armies round Arras which really determined the fate of
the German attack.

The Vimy Ridge from the west is a stiffish climb. On the east also it
drops steeply above Petit Vimy and Vimy, while on the south and
south-east it rise