trench. "Digging in" completes the cycle of modern infantry fighting.
You may consider this the first or the last phase of an infantry
operation. It is probably at present the least worked-out part of the
entire cycle. Here lies the sole German superiority; they bunch and
crowd in the rush, they are inferior at the scrap, but they do dig like
moles. The weakness of the British is their failure to settle down. They
like the rush and the scrap; they press on too far, they get outflanked
and lost "in the blue"; they are not naturally clever at the excavating
part of the work, and they are not as yet well trained in making
dug-outs and shelter-pits rapidly and intelligently. They display most
of the faults that were supposed to be most distinctively French before
this war came to revolutionise all our conceptions of French character.


2

Now the operations of this modern infantry, which unlike any preceding
infantry in the history of war does not fight in disciplined formations
but as highly individualised specialists, are determined almost
completely by the artillery preparation. Artillery is now the most
essential instrument of war. You may still get along with rather bad
infantry; you may still hold out even after the loss of the aerial
ascendancy, but so soon as your guns fail you approach defeat.
The backbone process of the whole art of war is the manufacture in
overwhelming quantities, the carriage and delivery of shell upon the
vulnerable points of the enemy's positions. That is, so to speak,
the essential blow. Even the infantryman is now hardly more than the
residuary legatee after the guns have taken their toll.

I have now followed nearly every phase in the life history of a shell