That had always been the English way and that was our way in many
battles of the great war, which were won (unless they were lost) by
the sheer valor of men who at great cost smashed their way through all
obstructions.
The Germans, on the whole, showed more original genius in military
science, varying their methods of attack and defense according to
circumstances, building trenches and dugouts which we never equaled;
inventing the concrete blockhouse or "pill-box" for a forward
defensive zone thinly held in advance of the main battle zone, in
order to lessen their slaughter under the weight of our gun-fire (it
cost us dearly for a time); scattering their men in organized shell-
craters in order to distract our barrage fire; using the "elastic
system of defense" with frightful success against Nivelle's attack in
the Champagne; creating the system of assault of "infiltration" which
broke the Italian lines at Caporetto in 1917 and ours and the French
in 1918. Against all that we may set only our tanks, which in the end
led the way to victory, but the German High Command blundered
atrociously in all the larger calculations of war, so that they
brought about the doom of their empire by a series of acts which would
seem deliberate if we had not known that they were merely blind.
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