section of it, and also a German report, made by a German
officer in the spring of 1917. The great fortified system, as it
subsequently became, was then incomplete. It was begun late in 1916,
when, after the battle of the Somme, the German High Command had
determined on the retreat which was carried out in February and March
of the following year. It was dug by Russian prisoners, and the forced
labour of French and Belgian peasants. The best engineering and
tactical brains of the German Army went to its planning; and both
officers and men believed it to be impregnable. The whole vast system
was from four miles to seven miles deep, one interlocked and
inter-communicating system of trenches, gun emplacements, machine-gun
positions, fortified villages, and the rest, running from north-west
to south-east across France, behind the German lines. In front of the
British forces, writes an officer of the First Army, before the
capture of the Drocourt-Queant portion of the line, ran "line upon
line, mile upon mile, of defences such as had never before been
imagined; system after complicated system of trenches, protected with
machine-gun positions, with trench mortars, manned by a highly-trained
infantry, and by machine-gunners unsurpassed for skill and courage.
The whole was supported by artillery of all calibres. The defences
were the result of long-trained thought and of huge work. They had
been there unbroken for years; and they had been constantly improved
and further organised." And the great canals--the Canal du Nord and
the Scheldt Canal, but especially the latter, were worked into the
system with great skill, and strongly fortified. It is evident indeed
that the mere existence of this fortified line gave a certain high
confidence to the German Army, and that when it was captured, that
confidence, already severely shaken, finally crumbled and broke.
Indeed, by the time the British Armies had captured the covering
portions of the line, and stood in front of the line itself, the
_morale_ of the German Army as a whole was no longer equal to holding
it. For our casualties in taking it, though severe, were far less than
we had suffered in the battle of the Scarpe; and one detects in some
of our reports, when the victory was won, a certain amazement that we
had been let off--comparatively--so lightly. Nevertheless, if there
had been any failure in attack, or preparation, or leadership, we
should have paid dearly for it; and a ral