Fields of Victory

Fields of Victory, by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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Title: Fields of Victory
Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #13827]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FIELDS OF VICTORY
By
Mrs. Humphry Ward

With Illustrations, Colored Map and Folding Statistical Chart

1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons New York
Published September, 1919
1919, by The Evening Mail Syndicate

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
A
WORD OF INTRODUCTION vii
I. FRANCE UNDER THE ARMISTICE 3
II. THE DEFENSIVE BATTLE OF LAST SPRING 27
III. TANKS AND THE HINDENBURG LINE 57
IV. GENERAL GOURAUD AT STRASBOURG 92
V. ALSACE-LORRAINE--THE GLORY OF VERDUN 111
VI. AMERICA IN FRANCE 134
VII. AMERICA IN FRANCE (continued) 166
VIII. "FEATURES OF THE WAR" 184
IX. TANKS AND AEROPLANES--THE STAFF WORK OF THE WAR 213
EPILOGUE 258
APPENDIX--EXPLANATION OF CHART 269

A WORD OF INTRODUCTION
May 26th.
It is a bold thing, I fear, to offer the public yet more letters based on a journey through the battle-fields of France--especially at a moment when impressions are changing so fast, when the old forms of writing about the war seem naturally out of date, or even distasteful, and the new are not yet born. Yet perhaps in this intermediate period, the impressions of one who made two journeys over some of the same ground in 1916 and 1917, while the great struggle was at its height, and on this third occasion found herself on the Western front just two months after the Armistice, may not be unwelcome to those who, like myself, feel the need of detaching as soon as possible some general and consistent ideas from the infinite complexity, the tragic and bewildering detail, of the past four years. The motive which sent me to France three months ago was the wish to make clear to myself if I could, and thereby to others, the true measure of the part played by the British Empire and the British Armies in the concluding campaigns of the war. I knew that if it could be done at all at the present moment--and by myself--it could only be done in a very broad and summary way; and also that its only claim to value would lie in its being a faithful report, within the limits I had set myself, of the opinions of those who were actually at the heart of things, i.e., of the British Higher Command, and of individual officers who had taken an active part in the war. For the view taken in these pages of last year's campaigns, I have had, of course, the three great despatches of the British Commander-in-Chief on which to base the general sketch I had in mind; but in addition I have had much kind help from the British Headquarters in France, where officers of the General Staff were still working when I paid a wintry visit to the famous Ecole Militaire at the end of January; supplemented since my return to London by assistance from other distinguished soldiers now at the War Office, who have taken trouble to help me, for which I can never thank them enough.[1] It was, naturally, the aim of the little book which won it sympathy; the fact that it was an attempt to carry to its natural end, in brief compass, the story which, at Mr. Roosevelt's suggestion, I first tried to tell in England's Effort, published in 1916. England's Effort was a bird's-eye view of the first two years of the war, of the gathering of the new Armies, of the passing into law, and the results--up to the Battle of the Somme--of the Munitions Act of 1915. In this book, which I have again thrown into the form of letters--(it was, in fact, written week by week for transmission to America after my return home from France)--I have confined myself to the events of last year, and with the special object of determining what ultimate effect upon the war was produced by that vast military development of Great Britain and the Empire, in which Lord Kitchener took the first memorable steps. It seemed to me, at the end of last year, as to many others, that owing, perhaps, to the prominence of certain startling or picturesque episodes in the history of 1918, the overwhelming and decisive influence of the British Armies on the last stage of the struggle had been to some extent obscured and misunderstood even amongst ourselves--still more, and very naturally, amongst our Allies. Not, of course, by any of those in close contact with the