Ludendorff writes of the broken morale of the German troops, and of how his men surrendered to single troopers of ours, while whole detachments gave themselves up to tanks. “Retiring troops,” he wrote, “greeted one particular division (the cavalry) that was going up fresh and gallantly to the attack, with shouts of ‘Blacklegs!’ and ‘War-prolongers!’ ” That is true. When the Germans left Bohain they shouted out to the French girls: “The English are coming. Bravo! The war will soon be over!” On a day in September, when British troops broke the Drocourt⁠–⁠Quéant line, I saw the Second German Guards coming along in batches, like companies, and after they had been put in barbed-wire enclosures they laughed and clapped at the sight of other crowds of comrades coming down as prisoners. I thought then, “Something has broken in the German spirit.” For the first time the end seemed very near.

Yet the German rearguards fought stubbornly in many places, especially in the last battles round Cambrai, where, on the north, the Canadian corps had to fight desperately, and suffered heavy and bitter losses under machine-gun fire, while on the south our naval division and others were badly cut up.