Picardy, where the great battle of the Somme was staged in the summer of 1916, is a typical French farming region of peasant cultivators, a rolling table-land, seldom rising more than a few hundred feet, and intersected by myriad shallow, lazy-flowing streams. Detached farms are few, the farmers congregating in and around the little villages that stand in the midst of hedgeless corn and beet fields stretching far and wide. Here the Somme flows with many crooked turns, now broadening into a lake, now flowing between bluffs and through swamps. There is, or rather was, an inviting, peaceful look about this country. Untouched, remote from the scene of battle it seemed, yet here in the spring of 1916 preparations were already going forward for what was to prove one of the fiercest struggles of the Great War. In July, 1915, the British had taken over most of the line from Arras to the Somme, and had passed a quiet winter in the trenches. The long pause had been occupied by the active Germans in transforming the chalk hills they occupied into fortified positions which they believed would prove impregnable. The motives for the Allies' projected offensive on the Somme were to weaken the German pressure on Verdun, which had become severe in June, and to prevent the transference of large bodies of troops from the west to the eastern front where they might endanger the plans of General Brussilov. The British had been receiving reenforcements steadily, and were at the beginning of 1916 in a position to lengthen their line sensibly. In the neighborhood of Arras they were able to relieve an entire French army, the Tenth. The French on their side had by no means exhausted their reserves at Verdun, but it would prove a welcome relief to them if by strong pressure the long strain were lifted in Picardy. Sir Douglas Haig, it was stated, would have preferred to delay the Somme offensive a little longer, for while his forces were rapidly increasing, the new levies were not as yet completely trained. In view, however, of the general situation of the Allies in the west it was imperative that the blow should be delivered not later than midsummer of 1916.