considerable; not to speak of the major loss of all, that of the strongly fortified line on which two years of the most arduous and ingenious labour that even Germany can give had been lavished.  “And almost everywhere,” writes an eye-witness, “he was hustled and harried much more than is generally known.”  As you go eastward, for instance, across the evacuated ground you notice everywhere signs of increasing haste and flurry, such as the less complete felling of trees and telegraph posts.  It was really a fine performance for our infantry and our cavalry patrols, necessarily unsupported by anything like our full artillery strength, to keep up the constant pressure they did on an enemy who enjoyed almost the full protection of his.  It was dreadful country to live and fight in after the Germans had gone back over it, much worse than anything that troops have to face after any ordinary capture of an enemy line.

The fact is that old axioms are being everywhere revised in the light of this war.  In former wars the extreme difficulty of a retreat in the face of the enemy was taken for granted.  But this war—­I am trying to summarise some first-hand opinion as it has reached me—­has modified this point of view considerably.

We know now that for any serious attack on an enemy who has plenty of machine-guns and plenty of successive well-wired positions a great mass of heavy and other artillery is absolutely indispensable.  And over ground deliberately wrecked and obstructed such artillery must take time to bring up.  And yet—­to repeat—­how rapidly, how “persistently” all difficulties considered, to use the King’s adjective, has the British Army pressed on the heels of the retreating enemy!

None of the officers with whom I talked believed that anything more could have been done by us than was done.  “If it had been we who were retreating,” writes one of them, “and the Germans who were pursuing, I do not believe they would have pushed us so hard or caused us as much loss, for all their pride in their staff work.”

And it is, of course, evident from what has happened since I parted from my hosts at the Chateau, that we have now amply succeeded during the last few weeks in bringing the retreating enemy to bay.  No more masked withdrawals, no more skilful evasions, for either Hindenburg or his armies!  The victories of Easter week on and beyond the Vimy Ridge, and the renewed British attack of the last few days—­I am writing on May 1st—­together with the magnificent French advance towards Laon and to the east of Reims, have been so many fresh and crushing testimonies to the vitality and gathering force of the Allied armies.

What is to be the issue we wait to see.  But at least, after the winter lull, it is once more joined; and with such an army as the War Office and the nation together, during these three years, have fashioned to his hand—­so trained, so equipped, so fired with a common and inflexible spirit—­Sir Douglas Haig and his lieutenants will not fail the hopes of Great Britain, of France—­and of America!