"The decision to retreat," he says,
"was not reached without a painful struggle. It implied a confession
of weakness that was bound to raise the morale of the enemy and to
lower our own. But as it was necessary for military reasons we had no
choice. It had to be carried out. . . The whole movement was a
brilliant performance. . . The retirement proved in a high degree
remunerative."
I saw the brilliant performance in its operation. I went into
beautiful little towns like Peronne, where the houses were being
gutted by smoldering fire, and into hundreds of villages where the
enemy had just gone out of them after touching off explosive charges
which had made all their cottages collapse like card houses, their
roofs spread flat upon their ruins, and their churches, after
centuries of worship in them, fall into chaotic heaps of masonry. I
wandered through the ruins of old French chateaux, once very stately
in their terraced gardens, now a litter of brickwork, broken statuary,
and twisted iron--work above open vaults where not even the dead had
been left to lie in peace.
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