The Second Army has been able to show the fighting soldiers
that the success of a battle depends greatly on efficient staff work,
and has inspired them with confidence in the preparations and
organization behind the lines."
Yet it seemed to me, in my pessimism, and seems to me still, in my
memory of all that ghastly fighting, that the fine mechanism of the
Second Army applied to those battles in Flanders was utterly misspent,
that after the first heavy rains had fallen the offensive ought to
have been abandoned, and that it was a frightful error of judgment to
ask masses of men to attack in conditions where they had not a dog's
chance of victory, except at a cost which made it of Pyrrhic irony.
Nevertheless, it was wearing the enemy out, as well as our own
strength in man-power. He could less afford to lose his one man than
we could our three, now that the United States had entered the war.
Ludendorff has described the German agony, and days of battle which he
calls "terrific," inflicting "enormous loss" upon his armies and
increasing his anxiety at the "reduction of our fighting strength.
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