In the same way they describe trench warfare as the “_Stellungskrieg_,” the _war of positions_. It was from a German prisoner that I first heard this expression, a big, fair Westphalian captured at Neuve Chapelle, with whom I had some conversation in the train that was taking him and some 500 of his comrades down to Havre to embark for England. I did not at first grasp what he meant by his continual references to the “_Stellungskrieg_,” and asked him what the phrase signified. “‘_Stellungskrieg_,’” he said, “you know, what followed the ‘_Bewegungskrieg_’” (_the war of movements_). The German mind again! “The war of movements!” What a priceless phrase to flash in the eyes of a blindly credulous people! The phrase has the inestimable advantage of being entirely vague. It does not say _which way the movements went_. I tested my prisoner on this point. He was quite positive that the Bewegungskrieg stopped and the _Stellungskrieg_ set in by virtue of the carefully laid plans and ripe decision of the Great General Staff, and not of military necessity imposed on the Fatherland by the Allies. “Everybody knows,” a German-Swiss paper “kept” by the German Government cried the other day, “everybody knows that there never was a battle of the Marne!” That is the conviction of all German soldiers who did not take part in that disastrous and unforgettable retreat. But this German phrase “_Stellungskrieg_” is a very accurate description of the great stalemate on the western front which we, more vaguely, term “trench warfare.” It is, indeed, a constant manœuvring for positions, a kind of great game of chess in which the Germans, generally speaking, are seeking to gain the advantage for the purposes of their defensive, whilst the Allies’ aim is to obtain the best positions for an offensive when the moment for this is ripe. It is a siege in which we are the besiegers, the Germans the besieged. I adhere to this view despite the great German thrusts against the Ypres salient. Both these were comparable to sorties _en masse_ from a fortress, and in both instances, although the besieged were able to push the besiegers a little farther away from them, they failed to achieve their object, which was to break the lines of investment, and, if possible, cut off and surround part of the besieging forces.