We must now turn to the long stretch from Monchy in the north to La Fère in the south, a front of fifty miles, upon which the great German blow was about to fall. It is said that after a tour of the whole line General Ludendorff determined upon this as being the most favourable region for a grand attack. Granting that for general motives of policy the assault should be on the British rather than on the French army, it is clear that he could have come to no other decision since Flanders at that time of year might have been a morass, and the rest of the line was to a large extent upon commanding ground. On the other hand the desolate country which had been already occupied and abandoned by the Germans was in front of their new advance, and it was likely that this would act as a shock-absorber and take the momentum off a victorious advance before it could reach any point of vital strategic importance. The German Staff seems, however, to have placed great confidence upon their secrecy, their numbers, and their new methods. Their ambitious plan was to break right through to Amiens, to seize the line of the Somme so as to divide the Allied armies, and then to throw their weight to right or to left as might seem best, the one movement threatening the Channel ports and the other Paris. Their actual success, though it was considerable, fell so far short of their real intentions that disappointment rather than triumph must have been their prevailing emotion. Looking first upon their side of the line one can {9} appreciate in a general way the efficient methods which they took to ensure success. The troops had been exercised in the back areas during the whole winter in the new arts of attack, which will be more fully indicated when the battle opens. They were then assembled at various railway junctions, such as Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Wassigny, and Vervins, sufficiently far from the front to escape direct observation. Then for seven nights in successive marches the troops were brought forward, finally reaching the front lines on the night before the attack, while the guns, the mine-throwers, and the munition dumps had already been prepared. The whole affair was upon a gigantic scale, for sixty divisions, or half a million of infantry, were thrown into the battle upon the first day, with half as many in immediate reserve. Secrecy was preserved by every possible precaution, though the British aeroplanes, casting down their flare lights upon crowded roads, gave few hopes that it could be sustained. Three of the most famous generals in the German service were in immediate charge of the operations. General Otto von Below, the victor of the Italian disaster, with the Seventeenth Army in the north; General von Marwitz, who had distinguished himself at Cambrai, with the Second Army in the centre; and General von Hutier, the conqueror of Riga and the inventor of the new tactics, with the Eighteenth Army in the south.