Army, as the leading unit in a combination of armies brilliantly led
by a French Generalissimo whom all trusted, brought down the military
power of Germany. There were some six weeks of fighting after the
capture of the Hindenburg line; but it was that capture--"the essential
part" of the whole campaign, to use Marshal Haig's words--to which
everything else was subordinate, which, in truth, decided the struggle.
And the tanks are the symbol at once of the general strategy and the
new tactics, by which Marshal Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, working
together as only great men can, brought about this result, bettered all
that they had learned from Germany, and proved themselves the master
minds of the war. For the tanks mean _surprise_--_mobility_--the power
to break off any action when it has done its part, and rapidly to
transfer the attack somewhere else. Behind them, indeed, stood all the
immense resources of the British artillery--guns of all calibres, so
numerous that in many a great attack they stood wheel to wheel in a
continuous arc of fire. But it was the tanks which cleared the way,
which flattened the wire, and beat down the skill and courage of the
German machine gunners, who have taken such deadly toll of British life
during the war. And behind the tanks, protected also by that creeping
barrage of the great guns, which was the actual invention of that
famous Army Commander with whom I had spent an evening at Valenciennes,
came the infantry lines, those now seasoned and victorious troops, for
whose "stubborn greatness in defence," no less than their "persistent
vigour" and "relentless determination" in attack, General Haig finds
words that every now and then, though very rarely, betray the emotion
of the great leader who knows that he has been well and loyally served.
There is even a certain jealousy of the tanks, I notice, among the men
who form the High Command of the Army, lest they should in any way
detract from the credit of the men. "Oh, the tanks--yes--very useful,
of course--but the _men_!--it was the quality of the infantry did it."