play for position here was met by a counter-thrust in another place.
German inventions were out-matched and outnumbered by those coming from
the Allied side.

Trench warfare became the daily life of the men. They learned to fight
and live in the open. The power of human adaptation to abnormal
conditions was never better exemplified than in those weary, dreary
years on the western front.

[Illustration: SCENE OF THE BLOODY BATTLES OF THE SOMME

The tide of war swept over this terrain with terrific violence. Peronne
was taken by the British in their great offensive of 1916-17; in the
last desperate effort of the Germans in 1918 they plunged through
Peronne, advancing 35 miles, only to be hurled back with awful losses by
Marshal Foch.]

The fighting-lines consisted generally of one, two, or three lines of
shelter-trenches lying parallel, measuring twenty or twenty-five inches
in width, and varying in length according to the number they hold; the
trenches were joined together by zigzag approaches and by a line of
reinforced trenches (armed with machine guns), which were almost
completely proof against rifle, machine gun, or gun fire. The ordinary
German trenches were almost invisible from 350 yards away, a distance
which permitted a very deadly fire. It is easy to realize that if the
enemy occupied three successive lines and a line of reinforced
intrenchments, the attacking line was likely, at the lowest estimate, to
be decimated during an advance of 350 yards--by rifle fire at a range of
350 yards' distance, and by the extremely quick fire of the machine
guns, each of which delivered from 300 to 600 bullets a minute with