A month later came the "violent surprise attack" on the Aisne, which,
as we all know, carried the enemy to the Marne and across it, and on
the 7th of June the French were again attacked between Noyon and
Montdidier. The strain was great. But Foch was making his plans; the
British Army was being steadily reorganised; the drafts from England
were being absorbed and trained under a Commander-in-Chief who, by the
consent of all his subordinates, is a supreme manipulator and trainer
of fighting men, while never forgetting the human reality which is the
foundation of it all. Soon the number of effective infantry divisions
on the British front had risen from forty-five to fifty-two. And
meanwhile American energy was pouring men across the Atlantic, and
everywhere along the Allied front and in the Allied countries, but
especially in ravaged, war-weary France, the news of the weekly
arrivals, 80,000, 100,000, 70,000 men, was exactly the stimulus that
the older armies needed.

It was a race between the German Army and the growing strength of the
Allies--and it was presently a duel between Ludendorff and Foch.
"Attack! attack!" was the German military cry, "or it will be too
late!" And on July 15th Ludendorff struck again to the east and
south-west of Rheims. General Gouraud, who was in command of the
Fourth French Army to the east of Rheims, told me at Strasbourg the
dramatic story of that attack and of its brilliant and overwhelming
repulse. I will return to it in a later letter. Meanwhile the German
Command in the Marne salient plunged blindly on, deepening the pocket
in which his forces were engaged--striking for Montmirail, Meaux, and
Paris.

But Foch's hour had come, and on July 18th he launched that