It was not, however, at this point that the severest fighting of the battle occurred.  Across the great tunnel to the north of Bellicourt, where the Canal passes for nearly two miles underground, ran the main Hindenburg system, carrying it eastwards over the Canal itself, and it was here that the fiercest resistance was put up.  The two American divisions had the post of honour and led the advance.  It was a heavy task, largely owing to the fact that it had not been possible to master the German outpost line completely before the advance started, and numerous small bodies of the enemy, left behind in machine-gun posts, tunnels, and dug-outs, were able to harass it seriously for a time.  But the “Americans fought like lions”—­how often I heard that phrase from our own men in France!  The American losses were no doubt higher than would have been the case with more experienced troops, seasoned by long fighting,—­so I have understood from officers present at the battle.  It was perhaps partly because of “their eagerness to push on” without sufficiently clearing up the ground behind them that they lost so heavily, and that advanced elements of the two divisions were for a time cut off.  But nothing daunted these fresh and gallant men.  Their sacrifices, as Marshal Haig has recently said, addressing General O’Ryan, who commanded the 27th Division in this fight, were “made with a courage and devotion unsurpassed in all the dread story of this war.  The memory of our great attack on the Hindenburg line on September 29th, 1918, in which the 27th American division, with troops from all parts of the British Empire, took so gallant and glorious a part, will never die, and the service then rendered by American troops will be remembered with gratitude and admiration throughout the British Empire.”

That misty September day marks indeed a culminating moment in the history of the Empire and the war.  It took six more days of sharp fighting to capture the last remnants of the Hindenburg line, and six more weeks before Germany, beaten and demoralised by sea and land, accepted the Armistice terms imposed by the Allies.  But on September 29th, the war was for all practical purposes won.  General Gouraud at the time was making his brilliant advance in Champagne.  The Americans were pushing forward in the Argonne.  Both movements were indispensable; but it was the capture of this great fortified system which really decided the war.  “No attack in the history of the world, was ever better carried out,” said Marshal Foch to Mr. Ward Price, in Paris, on April 16th last—­“than the one made on the Hindenburg line near St. Quentin and Cambrai, by the Fourth, Third and First British Armies, on September 27th-29th.  The enemy positions were most formidable.  Nothing could stop the British.  They swept right over them.  It was a glorious day for British arms.”  It was also the climax of two months’ fighting in which French, British, and Americans had all played to the full the part laid down for them by the history of the preceding years, and in which it fell to the British Army to give the final and victorious blow.