poor old Tommy Atkins, unless he was cut off by shell-fire, and that
was his food. The motor-supply columns and ammunition-dumps were
organized to the last item. Our map department was magnificent, and
the admiration of the French. Our Intelligence branch became valuable
(apart from a frequent insanity of optimism) and was sometimes uncanny
in the accuracy of its information about the enemy's disposition and
plans. So that the Staff was not altogether hopeless in its effect, as
the young battalion officers, with sharp tongues and a sense of
injustice in their hearts, made out, with pardonable blasphemy, in
their dugouts.

Nevertheless the system was bad and British generalship made many
mistakes, some of them, no doubt, unavoidable, because it is human to
err, and some of them due to sheer, simple, impregnable stupidity.

In the early days the outstanding fault of our generals was their
desire to gain ground which was utterly worthless when gained. They
organized small attacks against strong positions, dreadfully costly to
take, and after the desperate valor of men had seized a few yards of
mangled earth, found that they had made another small salient, jutting
out from their front in a V-shaped wedge, so that it was a death-trap
for the men who had to hold it. This was done again and again, and I
remember one distinguished officer saying, with bitter irony,
remembering how many of his men had died, "Our generals must have
their little V's at any price, to justify themselves at G. H. Q."

In the battles of the Somme they attacked isolated objectives on
narrow fronts, so that the enemy swept our men with fire by artillery
concentrated from all points, instead of having to disperse his fire
during a general attack on a wide front. In the days of trench