This is just one instance, such as we ignorant at home can more or less follow, of that concentration of British wit and British perseverance on the terrible business of war which carried us to our goal.  Germany prided herself, above all, on “scientific war.”  But the nation she despised as slow-witted and effete has met her again and again on her own boasted ground, and, brain for brain, has won.

With the ever-growing importance of artillery has gone, of course, a constant increase in artillery personnel, and in the proportion of gunners to infantry.  The Third Battle of Ypres in the autumn of 1917 was “one of intense struggle for artillery supremacy,” says the Field Marshal.  Germany had put out all her strength in guns, and was determined to beat down the British artillery.  The British Command met the attack and defeated it, in a long-drawn battle, in which, naturally, the proportion of artillery personnel to infantry was exceptionally high—­at one time eighty-five per cent.  Last spring, for a short time, owing to the transference of batteries from the Russian front, the enemy command succeeded in establishing “a definite local artillery superiority.”  But it was soon over.  Before the breakdown of the March offensive “our guns had regained the upper hand,” and in the later battles of the year the German artillery was finally mastered.

But immense as was the growth of the artillery factor, the ultimate problem was the old problem of co-operation and combination of all factors.  “Deep study of work other than one’s own,” “understanding of the other man’s job”—­for the highest success in any branch of the Army, these were and are indispensable.  Only so can the vast machine work satisfactorily; only so can the human intelligence embodied in it come to its own.

To the two subsidiary services most in the public eye—­tanks and aeroplanes—­I will return presently.  As to the Signal Service, the “nervous system” of the Army, on which “co-operation and combination” depend, it has grown, says the Field Marshal, “almost out of recognition.”  At the outbreak of war it consisted of 2,400 officers and men; by the end of the war it had risen to 42,000.  Cables, telegrams, wireless, carrier-pigeons and dog messengers—­every kind of device was used for keeping up the communications, which mean everything in battle.  The signal officer and his men creeping out over No Man’s Land to mend a wire, or lay down a new one, in the very heart of the fighting, have carried the lives of thousands in their hands, and have risked their own without a thought.  Sir Douglas Haig, from his Headquarters, spoke not only to every unit in the British Army, but to the Headquarters of our Allies—­to London, Paris, and Marseilles.  An Army Headquarters was prepared to deal with 10,000 telegrams and 5,000 letters in twenty-four hours; and wherever an army went, its cables and telephones went with it.  As many as 6,500 miles of field cable have been issued in a single week, and the weekly average over the whole of 1918 was 3,000.