rs arrived they generally came too late or were dealt out 'from
the green table' without knowledge of the conditions in front, so that
to carry them out was impossible."

All this was a sign of demoralization, not only among the troops who
were doing the fighting and the suffering, but among the organizing
generals behind, who were directing the operations. The continual
hammer-strokes of the British and French armies on the Somme
battlefields strained the German war-machine on the western front almost
to breaking-point.

It seemed as though a real debacle might happen, and that they would be
forced to effect a general retreat--a withdrawal more or less at ease or
a retirement under pressure from the enemy....

But they had luck--astonishing luck. At the very time when the morale of
the German soldiers was lowest and when the strain on the High Command
was greatest the weather turned in their favor and gave them just the
breathing-space they desperately needed. Rain fell heavily in the middle
of October, autumn mists prevented airplane activity and artillery-work,
and the ground became a quagmire, so that the British troops found it
difficult to get up their supplies for a new advance.

The Germans were able in this respite to bring up new divisions, fresh
and strong enough to make heavy counter--attacks in the Stuff and
Schwaben and Regina trenches, and to hold the lines more securely for a
time, while great digging was done farther back at Bapaume and the next
line of defense. Successive weeks of bad weather and our own tragic
losses checked the impetus of the British and French driving power, and
the Germans were able to reorganize and reform.

As I have said, the shock of our offensive reached as far as Germany,
and caused a complete reorganization in the system of obtaining reserves
of man-power. The process of "combing out," as we call it, was pursued
with astounding ruthlessness, and German mothers, already stricken with
the loss of their elder sons, raised cries of despair when the youngest
born were also seized--boys of eighteen belonging to the 1918 class.

The whole of the 1917 class had joined the depots in March and May of
this year, receiving a three months' training before being transferred
to the field-recruit depots in June and July. About the middle of July
the first large drafts joined their units and made their appearance at
the front, and soon after the beginning of our offensive at least half