CHAPTER IV.
CONCLUSION.
We are still too close to events to attempt an estimate of the Battle of the Somme as a whole. It will be the task of later historians to present it in its true perspective. But one thing is clear. Before July 1st Verdun had been the greatest continuous battle fought in the world’s history; but the Somme surpassed it both in numbers of men engaged, in the tactical difficulty of the objectives, and in its importance in the strategical scheme of the campaign. Calculations of the forces employed would for the present be indiscreet, and estimates of casualties untrustworthy, but some idea of its significance may be gathered from the way in which it preoccupied the enemy High Command. It was the fashion in Germany to describe it as a futile attack upon an unshakeable fortress, an attack which might be disregarded by her public opinion while she continued her true business of conquest in the East. But the fact remained that the great bulk of the German troops—and by far the best of them—were kept congregated in this area. In November Germany had 127 Divisions on the Western front, and no more than 75 in the East. Though Brussilov’s attack and von Falkenhayn’s Rumanian expedition compelled her to send fresh troops eastward, she did not diminish, but increased, her strength in the West. In June she had 14 Divisions on the Somme; in November she had in line—or just out of it—well over 40.
Let it be freely granted that Germany met the strain in a soldierly fashion. As von Annin’s Report showed, she set herself at once to learn the lessons of the battle and revise her methods where revision was needed. She made drastic changes in her High Commands. She endeavoured still further to exploit her already much-exploited man-power; she decreed a levée en masse, and combed out—even from vital industries—every man who was capable of taking the field. She swept the young and old into her ranks, and, as was said of Lee’s army in its last campaign, she robbed the cradle and the grave. Her effort was magnificent —and it was war. She had created since July 1st some thirty odd new Divisions, formed partly by converting garrison units into field troops and partly by regrouping units from existing formations—taking a regiment away from a four-regiment Division and a battalion from a four-battalion regiment and withdrawing the Jaeger battalions. But these changes, though they increased the number of her units, did not add proportionately to the aggregate of her numerical strength, and we may take 100,000 men as a fair estimate of the total gain in field troops from this readjustment. Moreover, she had to provide artillery and staffs for each of the new Divisions, which involved a heavy strain upon services already taxed to the full. We know that her commissioned classes had been badly depleted. “The shortage,” so ran an order of von Hindenburg’s in September, “due to our heavy casualties, of experienced, energetic, and well-trained junior officers is sorely felt at the present time.”
The Battle of the Somme had, therefore, fulfilled the Allied purpose in taxing to the uttermost the German war machine. It tried the [Command, it tried the nation at home, and it tried to the last limit of endurance the men in the line. The place became a name of terror. Though belittled in communiques and rarely mentioned in the Press, it was a word of ill-omen to the whole German people—that “blood-bath” to which many journeyed and from which few returned. Of what avail were easy conquests on the Danube when this deadly cancer in the West was eating into the vitals of the nation? Winter might give a short respite—though the Battle of the Ancre had been fought in winter weather—but spring would come and the evil would grow malignant again. Germany gathered herself for a great effort, marshalling for compulsory war-work the whole male population between seventeen and sixty, sending every man to the trenches who could walk on sound feet, doling out her food supplies on the minimum scale for the support of life, and making desperate efforts with submarine warfare to cripple the enemy’s strength. But what if the enemy followed her example? The Allies lagged far behind her in their adoption of drastic remedies, and even so had won to an equality and more than an equality in battle-power. What if they also took the final step? They had shown that they had no thought of peace except at their own dictation. They had willed the end; what if they also willed the ultimate means?
In November, behind the rodomontade of German journalists over Rumanian victories and the stout words of German statesmen, it was easy to discern a profound and abiding anxiety. Let us take two quotations. The Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten wrote: “We realise now that England is our real enemy, and that she is prepared to do everything in her power to conquer us. She has gone so far as to introduce compulsory service to attain her aims. Let us recognise her strength of purpose, and take the necessary precautions. It is more than probable that, if lack of war material and supplies does not put a stop to the Battle of the Somme, she will not abandon her plan; on the contrary, she will make use of the winter to accumulate immense reserves of ammunition. There is no doubt as to her having the money necessary, and it would be foolish optimism on our part to imagine that the terrible fighting on the Western front will not start again next spring.” And this from the Berliner Lokalanzeiger: “We recognise that the whole war to-day is, in the main, a question of labour resources, and England has taken the lead in welding together all such resources. Thanks to her immense achievement in this sphere our most dangerous enemy has arrived at a position in which she is able to set enormous weapons against us. It is the Battle of the Somme above all that teaches us this.”
In every great action there is a major purpose—a reasoned and calculated purpose which takes no account of the accidents of fortune. But in most actions there come sudden strokes of luck which turn the scale. For such strokes a General has a right to hope, but on them he dare not build. Marengo, Waterloo, Chancellorsville—most of the great battles of older times—showed these good gifts of destiny. But in the elaborate and mechanical warfare of to-day they come rarely, and in the Battle of the Somme they did not fall to the lot of the British Commander-in-Chief. We did what we set out to do; step by step we drove our way through the German defences; but it was all done by hard and stubborn fighting, without any bounty from capricious fortune. The Germans had claimed that their line was impregnable; we broke it again and again. They had counted on their artillery machine; we crippled and outmatched it. They had decried the fighting stuff of our New Army; we showed that it was more than a match for their Guards and Brandenburgers. All these things we did—soberly and patiently in the British fashion. Our major purpose was attained. We had applied a steady, continuous, and unrelenting pressure to a large section of the German front. It was not the recapture of territory that we sought, but the weakening of the numbers, matériel, and moral of the enemy.
The fall of winter, with its storms and sodden ground and short days, marked the close of a stage, but not of the battle. Advances might be fewer, the territory gained might be less, but the offensive did not slacken. Still, on a front of nearly forty miles, the Allied pressure was continuously maintained by means of their artillery and other services, and the sapping of the enemy’s strength went on without ceasing. The hardships of winter would be felt more acutely by forces which had been outmatched in the long five months’ battle. Those who judged of success