Nevertheless, it was wearing the enemy out, as well as our own strength in manpower. 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.”

“Enormous masses of ammunition, the like of which no mortal mind before the war had conceived, were hurled against human beings who lay, eking out but a bare existence, scattered in shell-holes that were deep in slime. The terror of it surpassed even that of the shell-pitted field before Verdun. This was not life; it was agony unspeakable. And out of the universe of slime the attacker wallowed forward, slowly but continually, and in dense masses. Time and again the enemy, struck by the hail of our projectiles in the fore field, collapsed, and our lonely men in the shell-holes breathed again. Then the mass came on. Rifle and machine-gun were beslimed. The struggle was man to man, and⁠—only too often⁠—it was the mass that won.