The year 1917 had drawn to its close leaving unfulfilled most of the high hopes that had buoyed men's spirits in the opening months. Some, at least, of the causes of their downfall were far away from the Western Front, and beyond the control of Generals Nivelle, Pétain, and Sir Douglas Haig. Russia, that strong-armed but weak-headed and weak-legged giant, had collapsed, leaving Roumania to its fate--complete overthrow. At Carporetto the Italians had been heavily defeated by the Austro-German armies, and France and England had been forced to send divisions to Italy to act as rallying points of resistance. In France the Champagne offensive had left a legacy of doubt and exasperation among soldiers as well as civilians, and it had taken all the fostering skill and care of General Pétain to restore his troops to the standard at which they had begun the year. The Flanders offensive, vitally necessary, crippling to Ludendorff, as he has admitted in his book, had been unduly prolonged in conditions far more dreadful even than when the 36th Division had taken part in it. Not men only but horses were drowned in the shell-holes ere it was over, and by the time Poelcappelle and Passchendaele had been reached the evacuation of wounded had become all but impossible. The heights were won, indeed, on the southern flank, though at Westroosebeke the enemy still had the best ground, but, broadly speaking, the strategical value of the advance was _nil_. Passchendaele, indeed, had resolved itself into a terrible object-lesson. Here was the point to which a mechanical conception of warfare had led us. Was there not, the keenest minds in every army were asking, was there not some outlet? Were men to be forever at the mercy of the munition factory and the mud of its making, the roll of barbed wire, the slab of reinforced concrete? Was the real genius of the soldier never to have the chance to display itself outside this war of fortifications? Often one heard the question, academic enough, but of extraordinary interest: "Could supreme genius, could the greatest captain that ever lived, could Napoleon have freed his hands from the deadlock?" The greatest soldier of this war has revealed, in the incomparable language that is his gift, that he also had asked himself that question, and answered it unhesitatingly in the affirmative.[43] As affairs were now marching, it did indeed appear as though we were reverting to the mere tactics of the battering-ram, as though, metaphorically speaking, "Elephants And barbèd horses might as well prevail As the most subtle stratagems of war." And a way out from mechanism was found, as might have been expected, in mechanism.