his power--without
sufficient troops in reserve to follow up and support the
initial attack, to consolidate the ground, and resist inevitable
counter-attacks. What reserves the Commander-in-Chief had he held "in
his own hand" too long and too far back.

The Guards went in when the enemy was reorganized to meet them. The 28th
Division, afterward in support, was too late to be a decisive factor.

I do not blame Lord French. I have no right to blame him, as I am not
a soldier nor a military expert. He did his best, with the highest
motives. The blunders he made were due to ignorance of modern battles.
Many other generals made many other blunders, and our men paid with
their lives. Our High Command had to learn by mistakes, by ghastly
mistakes, repeated often, until they became visible to the military mind
and were paid for again by the slaughter of British youth. One does not
blame. A writing-man, who was an observer and recorder, like myself,
does not sit in judgment. He has no right to judge. He merely cries out,
"O God!... O God!" in remembrance of all that agony and that waste of
splendid boys who loved life, and died.

On Sunday, as I have told, the situation was full of danger. The Scots
of the 15th Division, weakened by many losses and exhausted by their
long fatigue, had been forced to abandon the important position of Puits
14--a mine-shaft half a mile north of Hill 70, linked up in defense with
the enemy's redoubt on the northeast side of Hill 70. The Germans had
been given time to bring up their reserves, to reorganize their broken
lines, and to get their batteries into action again.

There was a consultation of anxious brigadiers in Loos when no man could
find safe shelter owing to the heavy shelling which now ravaged among
the houses. Rations were running short, and rain fell through the
roofless ruins, and officers and men shivered in wet clothes. Dead
bodies blown into bits, headless trunks, pools of blood, made a ghastly
mess in the roadways and the houses. Badly wounded men were dragged down
into the cellars, and lay there in the filth of Friday's fighting. The
headquarters of one of the London brigades had put up in a roofless
barn, but were shelled out, and settled down on some heaps of brick in
the open. It was as cold as death in the night, and no fire could be
lighted, and iron rations were the only food, until two chaplains, "R.
C." and Church of England (no difference of dogma then), came up
as