At that time the French still held Thiepval wood on the enemy slope
of the Ancre. Farther S., some fluctuations occurred on the plateau,
in the region of Chaulnes and Roye. But there was no great action
other than the Anglo-French general offensive, which developed
between July 1916 and March 1917.
All this leads to the conclusion that the last half of Oct. 1914 may be considered to mark the end of the " Race to the Sea," and the establishment of equilibrium, except for local fluctuations, along the whole length of the immense line of contact. (H. BE.)
II. TRENCH WARFARE, 1915-17
While weary British troops were handing over their lines in the salient to their French comrades at the close of the first battle of Ypres (see YPRES AND THE YSER, BATTLES OF) and they had time to think of other things than the grim struggle that had just ended, it dawned upon them that the war in the west had entered upon a new phase. The trench barrier had been completed from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, and a war of movement and manoeuvre, for which most of them had been trained, had become impossible. This was a development which had not been foreseen by the military world of Europe and it took it by surprise. For the Germans this surprise was less unpleasant in the winter of 1914-15 than for the French and the British. When their second great effort to win the war in the west had failed they had decided to adopt a defensive policy in France and Belgium while they attacked in the east. Therefore they could regard the difficulties of attack upon trench lines and the restrictions of manoeuvre with some complacency, while they were better pre- pared for the new type of warfare than were either of their opponents, more particularly the British. The fortifications of the French and Russian frontiers had compelled the Germans to study closely the art and science of siege warfare and to make preparations for such warfare. They had assimilated the expe- riences of the Russo-Japanese War and had learnt from them to their profit. Therefore trench mortars, hand and rifle grenades, searchlights and pistol lights, and the possibilities of mining, were to them no novelty; and having the plant ready for the man- ufacture of the material required for siege warfare, and consid- erable stocks of such material already in store, it was not difficult for them to meet quickly the demands made by their soldiers in the trenches on the western front.
The British army was in very different case. Its chiefs before the war believed that it would be employed only in a war of movement, and the study of siege warfare had been confined to a small body of engineers, amongst whom it was largely theoret- ical. All the money to be found for the Army Votes had been used in the training and equipment of the Expeditionary Force, and there was none left for the provision of the material re- quired for the attack of fortresses. The cost even of hand gre- nades, with which experiments had been made when the reports of British observers in Manchuria came home, was held to be prohibitive. For these reasons the winter of 1914-15 was for the British infantry in France and Flanders a period of unmiti- gated suffering. The ebb and flow of attack and defence had left the Germans almost everywhere along the. British front in possession of the higher and drier ground, while in the low-lands of Flanders water was found at a few feet and even sometimes a few inches below the surface; under incessant rain, parapets melted away unless held up by sand-bags constantly replaced, but the British army had not sand-bags in sufficient quantities. The construction of communication trenches was all but impos- sible, and material had to be brought up to the front lines by parties floundering through the mud at night. Lying in sodden trenches, before an enemy who possessed weapons which they had not, the British infantry endured at this time a longer and in many respects a severer test of their constancy than in some of the worst crises of the war. The strain upon the French was less severe because a small part only of the French army had to endure the incomparable mud of Flanders, and from the first it was better provided with H.E. shell, while the greater military resources of France made it possible to meet the new conditions more readily. Operations in 1915. While the soldiers in front were enduring
and slowly learning to mitigate the horrors of trench warfare, those behind were planning. There were not lacking active brains in Paris and in London who saw that the assaults upon the ever-widening barriers of barbed wire and the evermore serried lines of trenches must prove a slow and bloody business. These brains sought eagerly for a way round the barrier which would lead to a speedier and less costly victory, and so began the controversy between " Easterners " and " Westerners " which endured while the war lasted. There were signs 'early in 1915 of preparation for an Austro-German attack upon Serbia; and Mr. Lloyd George, inspired by his friends in France, pro- posed at once to save a weak Ally and to attack the weakest link in the opposing chain by transferring the bulk of the British army to the Balkans and reinforcing it with the New Armies as they became ready for the field. Both the French and the Brit- ish commanders-in-chief hotly opposed this proposal. The lines of communication through Serbia were long and difficult, and it was very doubtful whether they could be made to maintain. an adequate force. The transference of the British army to the Balkans must in any event have taken many months, during which it would have been condemned to an inactivity of which the enemy on the inside of the circle, with not only shorter but I better communications, would certainly have profited. Thei Balkan enterprise was therefore condemned, and the immediate, outcome of the controversy on the British side was the starting of the Dardanelles adventure.
Joffre's plan was simpler. He desired to attack on the western front at the earliest possible moment and with all possible force.) It was argued at the time, and has repeatedly been argued since, that it would have been better to have awaited the develop- 1 ment of the British army and the increase of the Allied artillery! and the improvement of their stock of munitions, and to havei employed the interval in gaining advantages over less for- midable foes in other theatres of war. To these arguments Joffre's answer was that the Germans were in occupation of a great part of France, that near Noyon they were only 50 miles from Paris, on the Somme they were barely 20 miles from Amiens, the main junction connecting the British and French in Flanders and Artois with the remainder of the French troops, while farther N. they were little more than 40 miles from Calais. At the beginning of 1915 he was assured of a definite numerical superiority over the Germans in the W., but the Germans hadi not nearly reached the limits of their man-power, and they might, at any time call a halt on the Russian front, and by reversing the process which they had carried out after the first battle of Ypresi bring back troops to France. A successful German attack at any one of a number of parts of the western front might gravely cripple the Allied armies, for German guns might be brought up to within range of Paris or of Calais, or the enemy might again, occupy Amiens. The French commander-in-chief maintained! that the security of the western front must be a paramount con-i sideration in Allied strategy, and that to secure the position in, the W. it was necessary to drive the Germans farther back.; Sir John French was in general agreement with Joffre's views. He at first desired a combined naval and military attack upon; the coast of Belgium, but on receiving representations fromj Lord Kitchener that neither the men nor the munitions required; for this operation could be made ready in time, he abandoned this proposal and set himself whole-heartedly to cooperate in Joffre's plans. These plans comprised a grand attack by the British army N. of the La Bassee canal and by the French northern group of armies under Foch on the front between the La Bassee canal and Arras. The hope was that this attack! would give the Allies the Vimy Ridge and compel the Germans toj evacuate Lille. In order that Foch might have the forces neces-! sary for such a battle it was agreed between the commanders-in-j chief that the British should relieve the French troops, who had occupied the Ypres salient when Haig's men had been with- drawn from it after the first battle of Ypres. Sir John French; had at the end of 1914 received one more regular British division, the 27th, made up by Kitchener from foreign garrisons, while another, the z8th, arrived early in January. The ist Canadian
