Having chosen their position,
which they were able to do in the operations after the Marne as the two
armies, swaying back and forth in the battle for positions northward,
came to rest, the Germans had set out, as the result of experience, to
build impregnable works in the days when forts had become less important
and the trench had become supreme. As holding the line required little
fighting, the industrious Germans under the stiff bonds of discipline
had plenty of time for sinking deep dugouts and connecting galleries
under their first line and for elaborating their communication trenches
and second line, until what had once been peaceful farming land now
consisted of irregular welts of white chalk crossing fields without
hedges or fences, whose sweep had been broken only by an occasional
group of farm buildings of a large proprietor, a plot of woods, or the
village communities where the farmers lived and went to and from their
farms which were demarked to the eye only by the crop lines.

One can never make the mistake of too much simplification in the
complicated detail of modern tactics where the difficulty is always to
see the forest for the trees. Strategy has not changed since prehistoric
days. It must always remain the same: feint and surprise. The first
primitive man who looked at the breast of his opponent and struck
suddenly at his face was a strategist; so, too, the anthropoid at the
Zoo who leads another to make a leap for a trapeze and draws it out from
under him; so, too, the thug who waits to catch his victim coming
unawares out of an alley. Anybody facing more than one opponent will try
to protect his back by a wall, which is also strategy--strategy being
the veritable instinct of self-preservation which aims at an advantage
in the disposition of forces.

Place two lines of fifty men facing each other in the open without
officers, and some fellow with initiative on the right or the left end
will instinctively give the word and lead a rush for cover somewhere on
the flank which will permit an enfilade of the enemy's ranks.
Practically all of the great battles of the world have been won by
turning an enemy's flank, which compelled him to retreat if it did not
result in rout or capture.

The swift march of a division or a brigade from reserve to the flank at
the critical moment has often turned the fortune of a day. All
manoeuvering has this object in view. Superior numbers facilitate the
operation, an