There is one thing, however, about which even now we all are agreed. This is that, however long the war may last, Britain and her Allies will never give up the fight until victory is assured.
This great war has been full of surprises, which soldiers and historians will go on discussing for many years to come. Never before, as I have already explained, had such vast masses of men been engaged, never before had battle fronts extended for two hundred, and even three hundred, miles. Not so very long ago, battles never took more than a week or ten days at the most before what soldiers call a “decision” was reached. By “decision,” soldiers mean the complete defeat of one army or the other, so that it is unable to gather itself together and fight again. Even the Battle of the Aisne, which was really a row of battles on a line as long as from London to Carlisle, did not produce a decision of that kind.
Without going into a long explanation which you might not be able to understand, I will try to show how the Battle of the Aisne simply did not end at all, but gradually melted, so to speak, into what we may call the Battle of the Dykes.
One great reason for this singular result, or absence of result, is to be found in the use of aircraft. In the Italian War in Tripoli, and in the Balkan War, aeroplanes had done good service, but this was the first occasion on which they had been employed on a great scale, and the effect of their employment was that neither side could prepare those surprises for the enemy which, in old days, brought about decisive victories.
Napoleon used always to feel by means of scouts for the point at which his enemy was weakest, and against that point he would throw his whole strength. But if Napoleon were alive now, he could not wage war in that way. It is true that his aeroplanes would find out the enemy’s weak point quickly, but the enemy, in his turn, would quickly find out where Napoleon was bringing up fresh men, and would make arrangements to meet them.
This is the sort of thing that happened on the Aisne. Both sides pushed hard, and there was terrible loss of life in numerous battles along the whole front. Villages were taken and retaken, sometimes five or six times over, and on the whole the Allies gained a good deal of ground, and to that extent they defeated the enemy, to whom it was very important to get on quickly.
England and France were not in such a hurry. They could afford to wait because fresh troops were constantly coming up, not only French, but also British, including the magnificent Indian regiments, while the New Army enlisted on the appeal of Lord Kitchener, and the Canadian and the Australian forces, were steadily forming and training, ready to be thrown into the battle. It was quite enough for the Allies simply to hold the Germans, and prevent them from getting to Paris.
There is reason to believe that the German generals, and the Kaiser in particular, determined at this crisis to make a great dash for the coast. If you look at the map you will see that on the Belgian coast, going westwards beyond Ostend, we come to Dunkirk, in France; and then, still further on, to Calais.
Calais has had such a long and romantic history that I cannot help being glad that it has played a part in this great war. The people of Calais are as brave now as they were in the days when the burghers, themselves behaving nobly, gave, as the doing of a noble action nearly always does, the opportunity for the performance of another. Long before the Kaiser set his heart on occupying the nearest port to England, mighty warriors had fought for Calais.
“A thousand knights have reined their steeds