turn over the captured trenches and organise themselves against any
counter attack that may face the barrage fire.

That is the formula of the present fighting, which the French have
developed. After an advance there is a pause, while the guns move up
nearer the Germans and fresh aeroplane reconnaissance goes on. Nowhere
on this present offensive has a German counter attack had more than the
most incidental success; and commonly they have had frightful losses.
Then after a few days of refreshment and accumulation, the Allied attack
resumes.

That is the perfected method of the French offensive. I had the pleasure
of learning its broad outlines in good company, in the company of M.
Joseph Reinach and Colonel Carence, the military writer. Their talk
together and with me in the various messes at which we lunched was for
the most part a keen discussion of every detail and every possibility
of the offensive machine; every French officer's mess seems a little
council upon the one supreme question in France, _how to do it best._
M. Reinach has made certain suggestions about the co-operation of the
French and British that I will discuss elsewhere, but one great theme
was the constitution of "the ideal battery." For years French military
thought has been acutely attentive to the best number of guns for
effective common action, and has tended rather to the small battery
theory. My two companies were playing with the idea that the ideal
battery was a battery of one big gun, with its own aeroplane and kite
balloon marking for it.

The British seem to be associated with the adventurous self-reliance
needed in the air. The British aeroplanes do not simply fight the
Germans out of the sky; they also make themselves an abominable nuisance