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There were two converging attacks, one on the twenty-six miles of front which Gouraud held east of Reims between Prunay and Massiges, and the other on a twenty-two mile line south-west of Reims between Vrigny and Fossoy on the Marne above Château-Thierry. For each attack Ludendorff used fifteen divisions, with others in reserve.
They trust him absolutely, and we would be fools to spoil their confidence. Only, if we can find out Moxon's methods, we can arrange to use them ourselves and send noos in his name which isn't quite so genooine. Every word he dispatches goes straight to the Grand High Secret General Staff, and old Hindenburg and Ludendorff put towels round their heads and cipher it out.
The military spirit flourished on the Spree as it is doing now on the Seine and the Thames. Lloyd George and Unter den Linden in Berlin. The only difference between Foch and Ludendorff is that the one is a Frenchman and the other a German; as men they are as like as two peas. The Entente is victorious, and many millions are delighted and declare that the policy of Might is justified.
One of the most important admissions in history is made by Ludendorff when he writes: "Looking back, I say our decline began clearly with the outbreak of the revolution in Russia.
Now, of course, I have no longer any doubt that the views which General Ludendorff expressed against me before the Examination Committee of the National Assembly, simply as his personal opinion and without proof, constituted more or less what was suggested to the Kaiser at this time.
They both wished to be victorious and to enforce a peace of violence on the defeated adversary. The leading men in Germany Ludendorff above all never had a genuine intention of releasing Belgium in an economic and political sense; neither would they agree to any sacrifices.
Yet with that enormous risk visible ahead, Ludendorff continued to play the grand jeu, the great game, and did not advise any surrender of imperial ambitions in order to obtain a peace for his people, and was furious with the Majority party in the Reichstag for preparing a peace resolution.
Some units were said to have been entirely dispersed. The Germans apparently considered these attacks very serious, for it was announced officially that Field Marshal von Hindenburg and General von Ludendorff, quartermaster general, had arrived at headquarters of the Austro-Hungarian army to visit the Austrian field marshal, Artur Arz von Straussenburg.
The Chemin des Dames would have been impregnable if properly held, but Ludendorff s information was not at fault, and the possession of the interior lines gave him the same advantage as in March of striking either right against the British or left against the French. He struck early on 27 May and achieved the most rapid advance of the war on the Western front.
Then at the end of April the attack died down, brought up against the British and French reserves which Ludendorff had immensely underrated, and strategically it had failed. A month later came the "violent surprise attack" on the Aisne, which, as we all know, carried the enemy to the Marne and across it, and on the 7th of June the French were again attacked between Noyon and Montdidier.
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