Then came the crash of the German offensive in March of 1918: against the British line first. They had 114 Divisions, many fresh from Russia, against 48 under British command, tired after Flanders, and thinly scattered over a big front. It was the last thrust of the German war machine, and marvellously organised, directed and fought. The German Army, in spite of many blunders in High Command, had shewn a dynamic energy, a driving force, a relentless will, and a marvellous valour which was wellnigh irresistible. The German soldiers were no less brave than the British or French, no less wonderful in self-sacrifice, no less enduring in agony. Their final effort, when they put in the last of their man power, was a supreme achievement to which we must render homage if we have any chivalry in our souls, in spite of a loathing of war which now makes all such retrospect a nauseous horror. The German sergeants and machine gunners who carried out the new tactics of “infiltration” were great soldiers and gallant men. The thin British line—after that struggle in Flanders and battles round Cambrai—was broken by the sheer weight of that terrific impact, and the British troops fell back fighting, until out of whole divisions only a few hundreds were left standing, and there was but a ragged line of exhausted men between Amiens and the sea. The heart of the English-speaking peoples—all of them now, for the United States was with us at this time—stopped beating for a while, or seemed to do, as the news of that German advance went over the wires of the world. After all the battles of the French and English, their struggles, their slaughter, their sacrifice, their endurance, it looked for a little while as though it had all been in vain, and that all was lost. That was not ten years ago. It was less than seven. Yet can we recall even those days, when we felt stone cold, with a sharp anxiety thrusting its knife into our brains as the Germans came across the fields of the Somme, retaking all that ground which had been fought for yard by yard—drew near to Amiens, turned on the French, smashed their line as the British line had been smashed, and drove down to the Marne as in the first month of the war? Truly it looked like defeat. How near we were to that was only known at the time, perhaps even now, to those of us who saw with our own eyes the wild and tragic chaos of our falling back, the exhaustion and weakness of the French and British troops who had fought down to their last few men in every battalion, and the old battle grounds in possession of the enemy. Frightful weeks; ghastly emotions; scenes to sear one’s imagination for ever. Yet now—hardly remembered, so strange and self-protective is the human mind!