To All Who Endured
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CHAPTER XIX
THE SURPRISE OF THE CHEMIN DES DAMES
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The misfortunes of the Battle of the Chemin des Dames had the remarkable effect of improving the relations between the British and French armies. After a surprise so glaring and a retreat of twenty kilometres in a single day—the record for all battles on the Western Front—the French were in no position to maintain the airs of superiority which they had been unable to conceal from the Italians after Caporetto or altogether from the British after the 21st of March. Up till the moment when they in their turn felt the force of a Ludendorff offensive, they had complacently assumed that the French Army contained the only troops who could really hold a front under modern conditions. These illusions had been swept away by the German scythe. The intensity of their common tribulations united the Allies more closely than ever.
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