Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FIFTH ARMY IN MARCH, 1918 CHAPTER I HOW TO BEGIN §1 THE second battle of the Somme may be called also the second battle of St. Quentin. It began on March 21, 1918. Its main phases lasted through eight days, and rolled over so many square miles of land that details gathered around them into limitless confusion. Is it possible to resolve this anarchy of items into a truthful whole ? Perhaps this labour may be impossible, but yet it is one which many a writer might well attack with unstinted patience. Too much detail is always a lie to those gifts of the mind that reduce a chaos into harmony, map out for us the accumulations of research, and reveal how their collective worth may be brought to bear on the same object. An immense battle has four united parts, into each of which details throng and jostle: I. Tlie pre-Battle Period of Difficulties and Preparations, when incessant contests of mind and will go on between those who have decided to attack and those who are obliged to settle down on a defensive policy. The whole fighting may be determined by these pre-battle affairs ; so they should be summed up and weighed with impartial carefulness. II. The Battle in its Main Aspects.—This part is beset with so many difficulties that no writer can hope to beat them all. He can do no more than offer his own epitome to that open and keen debate out of which, perhaps, as the generations pass, a complete one may come. The last word on all big subjects may be left to the last man—or maybo the last woman. IIL T/ie Battle in some Chosen Incidents and Episodes.—Every writer will make a different selection, following his own bent; but the general effect is likely to be the same, just as honest samples represent the mass. IV. The Battle's Aftermath, including Controver...