From before the middle of January we had been perfectly aware that the enemy meant to strike and to strike hard. He held a wasting security. We were waxing and he was waning. He was still our superior, still had more men available, but by Midsummer he knew that the Allies would outnumber him.
He had troubles, we knew, at home too, troubles for which the only salve was victory.
We had besides long known that before the war ended, whenever and however that end might come, we must expect a last desperate struggle. It would be the last spring of the wounded beast in which he might still find our throats, the last staggering blast of the hurricane by which the ship might still be confounded and overwhelmed.
Every sign spoke of the coming storm, but none told from which quarter we must expect it. The Germans were concentrating in such a way—at the base of the great salient formed by their line—that they could plant their blow wherever it might at the last moment seem good to them.
For better or worse, it was decided that our available forces were to be impartially distributed all along the line. Not that we had very much choice, as with our limited resources a concentration at any one strategic point must imply virtual gaps in our defence elsewhere.
For we had in January taken over an additional forty miles of line, and the men for whom the High Command in France had so frequently pleaded had not been sent out to them.
We were in for a lean three months, and to hold the extended line was as much as we could hope to accomplish.
The British and French Spring Campaign must be a defensive one. There was no longer a Russian front, and till the Americans were ready—which could not be till Midsummer at earliest—the Germans would have a numerical preponderance of nearly a quarter of a million men. Besides this, their position on interior lines and their superior lateral railway communications could at any moment give them an overwhelming local superiority.
However, we had faced worse odds before. We could form a strong line and cunning schemes of defence against which the enemy would hammer in vain. Our first defence was a deep forward zone. It consisted first of an outpost line and second of a “line of resistance.”
The line of resistance was extremely carefully laid out. About every mile redoubts of special strength were so arranged that on this sector an attack would be entrapped into our wire and held exposed to a cross-fire from our machine-guns.