It seems rather contradictory that our own Government should be
praised for their persistence and clearness of vision at that time, as we remember only too painfully that after the Battle of the Somme the Prime Minister invited us to regard it as a kind of futile shambles, and urged us to think of other ways of winning the war. The Spectator always argued that Sir Douglas Haig could do nothing but fight the German armies where they were, and that• therefore the Somme fighting, bloody though it was, was the only way to win. We now learn that after that terrific fighting General Ludendorff would have been ready to give in had not fresh hopes been inspired in him by the collapse of Russia. He describes the great German offensive of the spring of 1918 as an undoubted defeat for the Germans. We are glad to have the authority of General Ludendorff for the view we took at the time, that the very fact that the German High Command decided upon this terrific gamble was in itself a sure sign of weakness. They had then arrived at the stage where not to win a battle in the most uncompromising way was to lose it.
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