On that same day I commanded Field Marshal von Hindenburg by telephone to effect as soon as possible the retreat to the Antwerp-Meuse line. The falling back of the tired, but nowhere decisively beaten, army to this position merely signified occupying an essentially shorter line, possessing far greater natural advantages. It was not yet completed, to be sure, but the fact was to be borne in mind that we had engaged in battle on the Somme while occupying positions composed largely of shell craters. What we had to do was to regain operative freedom, which, to my way of thinking, was by no means impossible; in the course of the war, had we not often retreated in order to put ourselves in a situation that was more advantageous from the military point of view? The army, to be sure, was no longer the old army. The new 1918 troops particularly were badly tainted with revolutionary propaganda and often took advantage of the darkness at night to sneak away from the firing and vanish to the rear. But the majority of my divisions fought flawlessly to the very end and preserved their discipline and military spirit. To the very end they were always a match for the foe in morale; despite superiority in numbers, cannon, munitions, tanks, and airplanes, the foe invariably succumbed when he ran up against serious resistance. Therefore, the associations of our ex-fighters at the front are right in bearing upon their banners the motto: "Unbeaten on land and sea!" SAYS ARMY WAS STILL STRONG The achievements of the German fighters at the front and of the German Nation in arms, during four and a half years of war, are beyond all praise. One does not know what to admire most: the enthusiasm with which the magnificent youth of 1914, without waiting for our artillery fire to take effect, joyfully charged on the enemy, or the self-sacrificing fidelity to duty and tenacity with which our men in field gray, sparingly fed and seldom relieved, year in, year out, digging by night, living in dugouts and earthholes by day, or crouching in shell holes, defied the hail of steel from the enemy artillery, flyers, and tanks. And this army, which one might have expected was to be rated as utterly fought to a finish, was able, after nearly four years of war, to carry out successful offensive operations such as our foes could nowhere boast of, despite their colossal superiority. In spite of all this, it was not right to believe the German army capable of accomplishing the superhuman; it was necessary for us to fall back, in order to get breath. The Field Marshal balked at the order to retreat; the army, he thought, should stay where it was, for political reasons (peace negotiations and so on); he also pointed out, among other things, that it was necessary, first, to arrange for the withdrawal to the rear of war materials, etc.