As soon as I had washed and fed I went to the British Mission to demand explanations. The head of the Mission was not there, I was told, but I saw again Commander Smithies, to whom I strongly denounced the whole proceeding, and from whom I had again a practical confession of what had already been told me by the prison officer and the adjutant. He told me in addition that Admiral Cowan, who is the chief officer in the Baltic, offered as an act of courtesy' a destroyer to take me to Helsingfors, since I had lost my passage through my imprisonment. This offer I could not accept as I had much to do, but promised to consider it for the morrow if it were repeated. I then returned to the hotel, and packing together all my papers, the results of my month's work in Moscow, the documents I had brought with me, photographs, letters of prisoners of war, and all the notes, drafts, and copies of my work in Finland and the Baltic provinces, into one large parcel I took it to the Esthonian Foreign Ministry and had it sealed with the diplomatic seal of Esthonia and left it in charge of the Foreign Minister with instructions concerning its disposal.

On the morrow, the sixth of September, I kept my word and went down to the destroyer Venturous, in which I proceeded, as I thought, to Helsingfors. An hour after lunch, knowing that we should then be getting near to Sveaborg, I went on deck, when Commander Smithies came to me and told me the ship was going to Björkö. To my remark that this was sheer kidnapping, he replied that a wireless message had been received from the admiral during lunch saying that he wished to see me. As there was nothing to be done I had perforce to bear the matter with what grace I could. We arrived at Björkö about

seven o'clock in the evening, when I was given a cabin on the hospital ship.

It was not until after service on Sunday that I was taken to the flagship, the Delhi, to see the admiral, and on seeing him I asked him, before any further steps were taken, in what capacity I was present, whether as his guest or as his prisoner. He seemed a little disconcerted, but remarked that he had wished to see me, to which I replied that I had received no invitation but had been carried off on the open sea. He then said I certainly was his guest, on which we sat down and conversed. He asked me many questions, some of which I answered, others I declined to answer. At the close of the interview I was removed from the hospital ship to the light cruiser Danæ, on which I remained until I landed at Sheerness on Monday, September 29. During the whole of the period of three weeks, during which I was detained, I was not allowed once to set foot on shore. My only visit was made to the admiral again after I had learned that stories of my supposed killing by Bolsheviki were circulating in the English press, and I wanted to have a telegram sent home, in order to relieve the minds of my people. I further sent to him, on September 15, a formal protest against my detention without any reason assigned, and calling on him to fulfill the promise made on his behalf to land me at Helsingfors as an 'act of courtesy.' This produced no result. I remained on the Danæ for another fourteen days, and was then brought straight back to England and refused any communication with the shore at Reval, Helsingfors, or Copenhagen. Of the fate of my papers I am yet in doubt, though from the libelous statements which have appeared in the Times it is clear that the seal must have been broken and the

fatal results.' That belongs to what I shall have to allude to again in this brief notice the nonsense in the book. It is nonsense to say that the Germans, with their vast numerical superiority, were defeated because of this 3 per cent or, at most, 4 per cent difference in their acting battle-line strength. It is nonsense to say that the extreme right wing ought to have been reinforced by a corps from AlsaceLorraine. There was not time for a tithe of such a movement. (b) A statement on the top of page 70 "The order to retreat from the Marne was issued, whether on good grounds or not I have never been able to decide.' But, great heavens! the whole point is when that order to retreat was given. We all know that the order was given; it is not worth writing down the mere fact that it was given. The whole view of the history of modern Europe turns upon the hour in which it was given, and the anxious reader, who is really interested in history and not in private affairs, seeing such a sentence reads on and finds no more than that: 'It was obvious the war would now be a long one and require enormous sacrifices.'

so to

(2) The second critical point which I take for my example is the breaking of the Russian lines in Galicia. Here was one of the critical moments of the war. Here it was that there appeared that prime new factor of industrial effort which was mark the war. The breaking of the Russian lines at the end of April and beginning of May, 1915, was an historical event of the very first magnitude. It might be compared to the introduction of firearms as against bows and arrows. It was a turning point in military history. It showed that the civilian industrial effort behind an army would in future be a determining factor. We all know

that, but what we want to know is exactly how that factor proved determinant; for we must attribute the prolongation of the war, the break up of Russia, the ultimate entry of America, and all the vast consequence thereof to this one fatal date in the Spring of 1915. Military history asks exactly what happened; in what way; why the Russian line was broken by instruments which, though novel in their degree, had failed to break the line of the Western Allies. Military history wants to know why the vast superiority-at that moment - of Prussia and her Allies in matériel, which was still just as pronounced in the West as in the East, succeeded in the East while it failed in the West.

Well, I turn to this definite technical question, and I learn (on page 140) that Mackensen had 'instructions early in May' to attack and crush the flank of the Russian armies. That is nonsense, for the attack was delivered before the end of April. I learn that Mackensen was a 'distinguished man of great accomplishments, and a brilliant soldier,' which is so much hot air, and that his 'deeds will live in history for all time,' which they will not. I learn that he had ‘a keen intellect and a clear judgment,' which is true but not informing. But on the only points of real interest to a military historian-how and why the lines broke I learn nothing. All I get is (on page 145), 'In the early hours of May 2, General von Mackensen, in a well-prepared attack' (my italics), 'brilliantly carried out by the troops, broke through the Russian front on the middle Dunajec.' You might just as well tell me that Wellington and Blücher won the Battle of Waterloo. What military history desires to understand is the nature of that capital success which might very

well have won the war for the enemy. And again we have nothing.

(3) I turn to my third critical point, the nature of the German defeat on the sector of Verdun. The known factors are by this time commonplace: the enemy achieved something of a surprise. His object was to crush in the French lines against the river and so to produce chaos. It was a sort of Friedland on a large scale. It did not come off. The blow was parried on the fourth day at a sufficient distance from the very insufficiently bridged obstacle of the Meuse, and the great Verdun offensive from that moment was a failure. It turned into a mere business of attrition, and, therefore, the rapidly increasing industrial power of the Allies rightly regarded it as a defeat for their opponent. But what checked it? How was it checked? What went wrong? You will not find from Ludendorff's Memoirs any hint of what it was that happened before Verdun. True, he was not himself engaged in that action; but since that action determined, as a second step, the shape of the war, and, next after the Battle of the Marne, détermined its final issue, we might expect some view at least of the causes of the breakdown; but we do not get it.

The second volume of Ludendorff's Memoirs presents more points of interest than the first, partly because it deals with the period during which he was the Chief Commander (in reality) on the enemy's side; partly because it deals with certain critical events of which it is absolutely necessary to give some sort of military account, and which cannot be dealt with simply as a piece of politics.

Nevertheless, I find in this second volume, as I did in the first, a deplorable absence of matter for military history; and (for the purposes of military history at least) a much too con

siderable proportion of domestic critieism. The author would probably reply to such a judgment that he was not writing the book for the service of military history but for the service of his own society, the Prussian officer class, to which he is naturally attached, and in order to point morals for that society and give it a chance of recovery. It is for this reason, for instance, that he always belittles the Austrian Germans and talks artificially of the Prussianized Northern German Empire as a 'nation,' and it is for this reason that he speaks so strongly about the weakening of civilian morale by the Social Democrats tinual theme throughout his book.

a con

But I cannot help regarding this second volume, as I did the first, from the point of view of military history, and finding it therein exceedingly deficient. If you buy a railway guide you want to know at what time the trains start and arrive. It may have advertisements and even pictures, but they are not the main part of such a work; and I do think that in military memoirs the substance of military history is what the reader has a right to demand.

Everyone will agree that in the second period of the war (1917 and 1918) five points are of special importance to military history:

(1) What was the cause of the breakdown of the great French attack in the spring of 1917?

(2) What caused the enemy success at Caporetto — usually ascribed to the production of a new tactical instrument on the part of the Germans, who profited by the relief the Russian breakdown had given them?

(3) How did the great rupture of the Allied line on the front of the English fifth army in March, 1918, fail? Why was it held up before Amiens?

(4) Why was the subsequent attack

(5) Much the most important of all what happened on the German side to lead to the breakdown of their front between Soissons and Château Thierry on July 18, 1918, a breach which, as was clear from that moment onward, decided all the rest of the war and made defeat inevitable?

As to the first — the breakdown of Nivelle's attack in 1917 and the defeat of his armies we get sound general judgment, but no particulars. General Ludendorff describes quite justly (upon page 422) the strategic objects which the French had designed to reach, and which they failed to reach. He also says what is probably true in the nature of things (though we have as yet no official confirmation of it from the French or British side) — that the British effort on the Vimy Ridge was meant to be the containing effort, and the French effort to the south was meant to be the decisive or turning effort. He justly describes the nature of the French success at the Moronvilliers hills, but he does not (where he should, on page 426) explain exactly what the French failure was tactically.

To put the matter in concrete terms: I have myself known men who were present in this great action to ascribe its failure to things as different as bad formation, the improper use of armored offensive mobile weapons; lack of coördination between the right and left; finally (and this was said on all sides), it may have been due to gross interference by parliamentarians with the soldiers. On the last point Ludendorff could tell us nothing, but he could tell us a good deal about the others, and he does not. He has one sentence which is interesting but not sufficiently detailed —'Our losses in men and material were extraordinarily high.' I

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that proportionately to the efforts of the offensive the losses of the defensive in that great action were not so severe. If the author means by this sentence that the defensive very nearly came to a breaking point, and if further and more detailed evidence later bears this out, then the general impression now prevailing in France that Parliament was responsible for the defeat would be confirmed.

Upon the second point, that is, Caporetto, we are honestly told nothing at all! I mean nothing more than is common knowledge to the whole world. In the brief description of that tremendous victory the author of these memoirs seems chiefly concerned with running down the southern Germans commanded from Vienna in order to contrast them unfavorably with the northern Germans, to which he himself belongs. Caporetto was not decisive of the war, but it was very nearly decisive. I am confident that when the history of the war is recorded by posterity, Caporetto will stand out as the greatest individual achievement of the war, with the sole exception of Foch's decisive and final counter-blow of July 18, 1918, which won it.

The third point, the great German break through of March, 1918, against the Fifth British Army, is treated with more particularity, as might well be expected, for it was, until July of the same year, by far the chief event of the war. It is curious to note, by the way, that in this description the fog, which was regarded on our side as a great asset to the enemy, seems to have been regarded upon his side as a drawback but that is a minor point. The really interesting point, however, is to discover why the rush was checked before Amiens, and though Ludendorff tells us here more than he usually does of the enemy's aims and methods