showed the
smallest hesitation, yet, to do them scant justice only, eager and
ready for the fight in the majority of cases, the shattered ranks of
the invader of France's soil re-formed under cover--under the shelter
of the evergreen trees, under a persistent deluge of shrapnel from the
75's--re-formed, and, shoulder to shoulder, having debouched again into
the open, set their faces once more uphill towards that shattered and
battered line where the French were awaiting them.

No need to detach smaller parties to go forward and reconnoitre the
ground, to tell them whether the enemy were still existing. It had
been the sanguine hope of the Crown Prince--who was conducting this
enormous manoeuvre--and his War Staff, that what had been done in
Russia might well be repeated on the Western Front. Guns--a
superiority of guns--guns and more guns, were the solution of the
difficult problem which had faced the Germans for so many months past.
That unbroken line on the west, those Frenchmen and soldiers of Britain
and Belgium, in spite of their courage and tenacity, in spite of their
trenches and redoubts and fortified positions which seemed impregnable,
might yet be driven before the hordes of the Kaiser, and that with
comparatively little loss; for, thanks to their gigantic preparations
before the war commenced, Germany and Austria had still a preponderance
of guns, and shells in amazing quantities. Here then was the
opportunity: mass the guns--bring every available piece to this
spot--and turn upon the enemy trenches such a torrent that trenches,
redoubts, and fortified positions would be blotted out of existence, a
way hewn through the Western line, with the expenditure of ammunition
alone and with the loss of but few German lives. It was theory--German
theory--which perhaps they were entitled to rely on, seeing what had
happened in Russia; and yet a theory destined on this occasion, and in
the weeks which followed, to prove utterly unreliable, utterly wrong, a
grievous disappointment. For see! Those scattered parties sent to
reconnoitre the battered ground had been killed or driven back; the
preparations for a massed attack had been broken up and set at naught
by the terrible 75's; and now, as the German infantry debouched again,
and, marching swiftly forward, came into full range of the slopes which
the guns would appear to have rendered absolutely untenable, such a
storm of bullets swept the ranks that the mass quive