fensive battery behind the trench. The
defenders, under the preliminary bombardment, get into the dug-outs
with their rifles and machine guns, and emerge as fresh as paint as
the attack comes up. Obviously there is much scope for invention and
contrivance in the dug-out as the reservoir of counter attacks. Its
possibilities have been very ably exploited by the Germans. Also the
defensive batteries behind, which have of course the exact range of the
captured trench, concentrate on it and destroy the attack at the moment
of victory. The trench falls back to its former holders under this fire
and a counter attack. Check again for the offensive. Even if it can
take, it cannot hold a position under these conditions. This we will
call Grade A2; a revised and improved A. What is the retort from
the opposite side? Obviously to enhance and extend the range of the
preliminary bombardment behind the actual trench line, to destroy
or block, if it can, the dug-outs and destroy or silence the counter
offensive artillery. If it can do that, it can go on; otherwise Bloch
wins.

If fighting went on only at ground level Bloch would win at this stage,
but here it is that the aeroplane comes in. From the ground it would
be practically impossible to locate the enemies' dug-outs, secondary
defences, and batteries. But the aeroplane takes us immediately into a
new grade of warfare, in which the location of the defender's secondary
trenches, guns, and even machine-gun positions becomes a matter of
extreme precision--provided only that the offensive has secured command
of the air and can send his aeroplanes freely over the defender lines.
Then the preliminary bombardment becomes of a much more extensive
character; the defender's batteries are tackled by the overpowering fire
of guns they are unable to locate and answer; the secondary dug-outs and
strong places are plastered down, a barrage fire shuts off support
from the doomed trenches, the men in these trenches are held down by a
concentrated artillery fire and the attack goes up at last to hunt
them out of the dug-outs and collect the survivors. Until the attack is
comfortably established in the captured trench, the fire upon the old
counter attack position goes on. This is the grade, Grade B2, to which
modern warfare has attained upon the Somme front. The appearance of
the Tank has only increased the offensive advantage. There at present
warfare rests.

There is, I believe, only one grade