lines, as I was able to piece
the tale together from German prisoners with whom I talked, German
letters which I found in their abandoned dugouts, and documents which
fell into the hands of our staff--officers.

Our men were at least inspirited by the knowledge that they were beating
their enemy back, in spite of their own bloody losses. The Germans had
not even that source of comfort, for whatever it might be worth under
barrage fire. The mistakes of our generalship, the inefficiency of our
staff-work, were not greater than the blunderings of the German High
Command, and their problem was more difficult than ours because of
the weakness of their reserves, owing to enormous preoccupation on the
Russian front. The agony of their men was greater than ours.

To understand the German situation it must be remembered that from
January to May, 1916, the German command on the western front was
concentrating all its energy and available strength in man-power and
gun--power upon the attack of Verdun. The Crown Prince had staked his
reputation upon that adventure, which he believed would end in the
capture of the strongest French fortress and the destruction of the
French armies. He demanded men and more men, until every unit that
could be spared from other fronts of the line had been thrown into
that furnace. Divisions were called in from other theaters of war, and
increased the strength on the western front to a total of about one
hundred and thirty divisions.

But the months passed and Verdun still held out above piles of German
corpses on its slopes, and in June Germany looked east and saw a great
menace. The Russian offensive was becoming violent. German generals on
the Russian fronts sent desperate messages for help. "Send us more
men," they said, and from the western front four divisions containing
thirty-nine battalions were sent to them.

They must have been sent grudgingly, for now another menace threatened
the enemy, and it was ours. The British armies were getting ready to
strike. In spite of Verdun, France still had men enough---withdrawn
from that part of the line in which they had been relieved by the
British---to co-operate in a new attack.

It was our offensive that the German command feared most, for they had
no exact knowledge of our strength or of the quality of our new troops.
They knew that our army had grown prodigiously since the assault on
Loos, nearly a year before.

They had heard of the Canadian