To inspire the German troops with a spirit of martial fervor (not easily aroused to fever pitch after the bloody losses before Verdun) Orders of the Day were issued to the battalions counseling them to hold fast against the hated English, who stood foremost in the way of peace (that was the gist of a manifesto by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, which I found in a dugout at Montauban), and promising them a speedy ending to the war.

Great stores of material and munitions were concentrated at railheads and dumps ready to be sent up to the firing-lines, and the perfection of German organization may well have seemed flawless⁠—before the attack began.

When they began they found that in “heavies” and in expenditure of high explosives they were outclassed.