All the same, the tanks--or rather these tell-tale marks beside this
front trench of the Hindenburg line, together with that labyrinth of
trenches, cut by the Canal du Nord, which fills the whole eastern
scene to the horizon--remain in my mind as somehow representative of
the two main facts which, according to all one can read and all one
can gather from the living voices of those who know, dominated the
last stage of the war.

For what are those facts?

First, the combination in battle after battle, on the British front,
of the strategical genius, at once subtle and simple, of Marshal Foch,
with the supreme tactical skill of the British Commander-in-Chief.

Secondly, the decisive importance to the ultimate issue, of this great
fortified zone of country lying before my eyes in the winter twilight;
which stretches, as my map tells me, right across Northern France,
from the Ypres salient, in front of Lille and Douai, through this
point south-west of Cambrai where I am standing, and again over those
distant slopes to the south-west over which the shades are gathering,
to St. Quentin and St. Gobain. These miles of half-effaced and
abandoned trenches, with all those scores of other miles to the
north-west and the south-east which the horizon covers, represent, as
I have said, the culminating effort of the war; the last effective
stand of the German brought to bay; the last moment when Ares,
according to Greek imagination, "the money changer of war," who weighs
in his vast balance the lives of men, still held the balance of this
mighty struggle in some degree uncertain. But the fortress fell; the
balance came down on the side of the Allies, and from that moment,