The next step was to broaden the front of the Allied attacks, further confusing Ludendorff in his dispositions, and breaking through the Hindenburg line and all the old front-line positions which the Germans had held for four years, to force the offensive in the open, where rapid maneuvers could harass the effort of the Germans in withdrawing their forces and the material which they had accumulated through four years, and by repeated blows continue to weaken their morale until a positive decision was won. If Ludendorff were given leisure for a deliberate retreat to a shorter line which he could fortify during the winter while his army recovered its spirit, this shorter line would give him all the advantage which serves the defense in deeper concentrations of troops to the mile with less room for the offensive to maneuver for surprises. All the Allied offensives--Champagne, Loos, the Somme, Arras, and Passchendaele--had been made to the west of the Argonne Forest, because of the advantage of ground. To the east, facing the Rhine, the Germans had their great fortress of Metz, and the positions in Lorraine and the Vosges Mountains and the wedge of Saint Mihiel, which had seemed unconquerable. The Meuse River winds past Saint Mihiel through the town of Verdun, then northward where it turns westward toward Sedan. All the way from Saint Mihiel, including the hills of the forts of Verdun, which look out on the plain of the Woevre with the fortress of Metz in the distance, runs a rampart of heights clear to the great bastion of the Forest of Argonne, where the country becomes more rolling, and therefore better ground for military operations. The line of our second offensive was to be from the Meuse River just west of Verdun to the western edge of the Argonne Forest. Anyone who looks at the map of the old line of the western front and of the enemy's railroad communications would say at once that this was the obvious line for an offensive. The Metz-Lille railway line, two-track all the way, and in places four-track, runs through Sedan and Mézières, following the Meuse Valley where it turns westward. This was the most important southern transversal line that the Germans had for supplying their armies in eastern France and connecting them with the coal fields of northern France. Northeast of the Meuse-Argonne positions were the famous Briey iron fields on which the Germans were dependent for their supplies of ore for the Krupp works. A blow toward Mézières and toward Briey was a blow at the heart of German military power.