Partly, then, the confusion arises from the distribution of the Troops to outside Commands. But the mere fact of this distribution is itself evidence to the difficulty of responsible leadership in those days; and, before we attempt to draw a table of the activities of the Division in place and time during the period covered by that Order, a brief survey may be made from a more general point of view. ‘Every part earned high praise from Commanders outside the Division’: we are concerned, then, with outside Commands and with a wider outlook than the 49th Division’s. We are concerned with Ludendorff’s point of view, so far as we are at liberty to re-construct it. On a previous page we tried to show how the German mind in March was divided between two strategic plans, one of which pointed to Paris and the other to the Channel ports. Both were pursued in turn, and even to some extent simultaneously, and either, if successful, would have inflicted an almost irreparable blow on the Allied forces of France and Britain. The point is, that neither quite succeeded: the union of those Forces under Foch and the response of the British Armies to Haig’s summons on April 13th, ‘WITH OUR BACKS TO THE WALL, AND BELIEVING IN THE JUSTICE OF OUR CAUSE, EACH OF US MUST FIGHT TO THE END,’ were to prove incalculably more effective than all the odds combined against them. But the initiative in April was with the Germans. So soon as one plan miscarried, or was left standing, or was conveniently broken off, they were able to call the other plan, and to make a new push with fresh Troops. The initiative was theirs, and the superiority was theirs, in numbers and (by the offensive) in surprise. ‘The possibility of a German attack North of the La Bassée Canal had been brought to my notice,’ wrote Sir Douglas Haig, ‘prior to the 21st March. Indications that preparations for a hostile attack in this sector were nearing completion had been observed in the first days of April.’[112] But no observations, however accurate, and no prevision, however acute, could organize fifty-eight Divisions to fight battles in two sectors at one time. Forty of the fifty-eight Divisions had been engaged in the Second Battle of the Somme, and ‘the steps which I could take,’ he continued, ‘to meet a danger which I could foresee were limited by the fact that, though the enemy’s progress on the Somme had for the time being been stayed, ... [he] was in a position to take immediate advantage of any weakening of my forces in that area.’[113] And to initiative, numbers and surprise was added the fortune of the weather. The early spring had been ‘unseasonably fine,’ and the low-lying ground in the Lys Valley dried up in time for the Germans to anticipate a relief of the Portuguese, who were holding the front to the South of Armentières, and who had been in the line for several months. A shattering German assault fell suddenly (April 9th) on this thin-spread Portuguese Division, already overdue