winter—­to strengthen its defences, and to do the endless digging, the railway construction, and the repair of roads, which might have made a very great difference.  And, finally, there was the most dangerous accident of all—­the break through of the Portuguese line at Richebourg St. Vaast, just as the tired division holding it was about to be relieved.  Of that accident, as we all remember, the enemy, hungry for the Channel ports, made his very worst and most; till the French and British fought him to a final stand before Hazebrouck and Ypres.

[Illustration:  British Official Photograph The St. Quentin Canal which was crossed by the 46th in life-belts.]

Meanwhile, the strategic insight of Marshal Foch, who assumed complete control of the Allied Armies in France and Belgium on March 26th, combined with the experienced and cool-headed leadership of the British Commander-in-Chief, refused to dissipate the French reserves, so important to the future course of the war, in any small or piecemeal reinforcement of the British lines.  The risks of the great moment had to be taken, and both the French and British Commanders had complete faith in the capacity of the British Army to meet them.  And when all is said, when our grave losses in casualties, prisoners, and guns are fully admitted, what was the general result?  The Germans had failed to gain either of their real objectives:—­either the Channel ports, or the division of the British Armies from the French.  They wore themselves out against a line which recoiled indeed but never broke, and was all the time filling up and strengthening from behind.  The losses inflicted on their immense reserves reacted on all the subsequent fighting of the year, both on the Aisne and the Marne.  And when the British Armies had brought the huge attack to a standstill—­which for the centre and south of our line had been already attained ten days after the storm broke—­and knew the worst that had happened or could happen to them; when the Australians had recaptured Villers-Bretonneux; when the weeks passed and the offensive ceased; when all gaps in our ranks were filled by the rush of reinforcements from home, and the American Army poured steadily across the Atlantic, the tension and peril of the spring passed steadily into the confident strength and—­expectation of the summer.  The British Army had held against an attack which could never be repeated, and the future was with the Allies.

Let us remember that at no time in our fighting withdrawal, either on the Somme or on the Lys, was there “anything approaching a break-down of command, or a failure in morale.”  So the Field Marshal.  On the other hand, all over the vast battle-field—­in every part of the hard “waiting game” which for a time the British Armies were called to play, men did the most impossible and heroic things.  Gun detachments held their posts till every man was killed or wounded; infantry who had neither rest nor