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Updated: May 7, 2025
On the 21st of March, the Germans attacked in overwhelming force the southern extremity of the British lines, near where they joined the French, and disastrously defeated General Gough's army. The break-through was clean and the advance made by the endless waves of German shock-troops appalling.
First came our terrible defeat in Italy, then the Entente break-through on the Western front, and finally the Bulgarian secession, which had gradually been approaching since the summer of 1917. As is the case in all countries, among the Entente during the war there were many and varied currents of thought.
I still hoped to be able to prop the trembling foundations of the Alliance policy, and either to secure a general peace in the East, where the military opposition was giving way, or to see it draw nearer through the anticipated German break-through on the Western front.
Strong Belgian forces operating from the westward were driving the enemy towards the advancing British, while across the Rovuma Portuguese troops, well supplied with light field-artillery, were considered a bar to any attempted "break-through" on the southern frontier.
William B. Hale, Karl von Wiegand, Cyril Brown and Karl W. Ackerman have exerted a particularly favorable influence for us, especially at the critical moments of the break-through in southern Galicia and the battles of the Somme, when, without the special news service via Nauen, the American Press would have been completely misled by the mass of reports that were flowing in from London.
G. H. Q. had been shocked by the disaster on the left and the failure of all the big hopes they had held for a break-through on both sides of the German positions. Rumors came to us that the Commander-in-Chief had decided to restrict future operations to minor actions for strengthening the line and to abandon the great offensive.
We were always preparing for a "break-through" for cavalry pursuit, and the cavalry were always being massed behind the lines and then turned back again, after futile waiting, encumbering the roads.
On 19 October Sir John French was still hoping that Haig could outflank the Germans at Ghent, and the presence of the Kaiser on the coast a few days later suggests that his generals still cherished the idea of an outmarch rather than a break-through. It was the British Navy that put the final check on that design, and accident played its part.
Pol through Chocques and Lillers to Steenbecque is stamped on the memory by its more than many halts, the occasional glare of mines and munition factories which, in anticipation of another break-through, seemed to be working at tensest pressure to evacuate coal and manufactured stores from capture by the enemy; by the loud booming of artillery, to which the train seemed to draw specially near at Chocques and Isbergues; and the final sudden grinding of the brakes at Steenbecque, distracted railwaymen, and the small hut in which Bennett and the Brigade Staff were exhibiting a mixture of excitement, impatience and a sort of reckless familiarity with this apparent repetition of the Somme retreat.
Let us be proud that by our bold, new initiatives, and by our steadfastness for peace with honor, we have made a break-through toward creating in the world what the world has not known before a structure of peace that can last, not merely for our time, but for generations to come.
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