action of the 49th Division, when the first impetus of the units had been checked, developed exactly according to plan, in a military phrase rendered famous by another Army. Up to July 7th, the enemy’s forces north of La Boisselle ‘were kept constantly engaged, and our holding in the Leipsic Salient was gradually increased’; and, after July 7th, as the Commander-in-Chief wrote, ‘the enemy in and about Ovillers had been pressed relentlessly, and gradually driven back by incessant bombing attacks and local assaults,[61]’ among which, one among many, may be mentioned a very gallant night attack by the 8th West Yorks. Thus, Sir Douglas Haig’s view from Olympus informs the Battalion records, and we shall see in the further course of the Somme battle how fully his instructions were observed till the time came to swing round on Sir Hubert Gough’s pivot. CHAPTER VIII I.—OPERATIONS ON THE SOMME—(_Continued_). It is not seemly to be too modest about the Somme, nor to insist over-much upon the limitation of the Allied objective. We know that it was not intended to drive the Germans out of France; at least, not in 1916. As a fact, in the Spring of 1917 there was a big German retirement, which was only voluntary in the sense that the enemy bowed to necessity before necessity broke him, and again, in the Autumn of 1918, there was another big German retreat, which brought the war to an end. They take a short view who fail to see the direct and intimate connection between the campaign of 1916 and the decisive results in the following two years. The British Commander, while the future was still veiled, had no illusions on this point. Wielding, like the Castilian knight of old, ‘now the pen and now the sword,’ Sir Douglas Haig, when he indited his great Despatch on December 29th, 1916, stated without reserve, that: ‘Verdun had been relieved; the main German forces had been held on the Western front; and the enemy’s strength had been very considerably worn down. Any one of these results is in itself sufficient,’ he avowed, ‘to justify the Somme battle. The attainment of all three of them affords ample compensation for the splendid efforts of our troops and for the sacrifices made by ourselves and our Allies. They have brought us a long step forward towards the final victory of the Allied cause.[62]’