a particularly bad day in that vast defensive battle which, in General
Haig's phrase, "strained the resources of the Allies to the
uttermost." There had been difficulties and misunderstandings
also--perfectly natural in the circumstances--with the French Army on
the right of the British line. Yet never was a perfect co-ordination
of the whole Allied effort in face of the German attack so absolutely
essential.

Sir Douglas Haig took the lead. A year before this date he had refused
in other circumstances, as one supremely responsible for the British
Army, to agree to a unified command under a French general, and the
events had justified him. But now the hour had arrived, and the man.
The proposal that General Foch should take the supreme control of the
four Allied armies now fighting or gathering in France was made and
pressed by Sir Douglas Haig. There was anxious debate, some opposition
in unexpected quarters, and finally a unanimous decision. General
Foch, waiting in an adjoining room, was called in and accepted the
task with the simplicity of the great soldier who is also a man of
religious faith. For Foch, the devout Catholic and pupil of the
Jesuits, and Haig the Presbyterian, are alike in this: there rules in
both of them the conviction that this world is not an aimless scene of
chance, and that man has an Unseen Helper.

Such, at least, is the story as it runs; and, at any rate, from that
meeting at Doullens dates the transformation of the war. For five
weeks afterwards the German attack beat against the British front,
bending and denting but never breaking it. Then at the end of April the
attack died down, brought up against the British and French reserves
which Ludendorff had immensely underrated, and--strategically--it had
failed.