World's War Events

Nineteen dispatches from the war's last two years, told by the people who were there — a destroyer officer's diary, Pershing's own report, the raid on Zeebrugge, the fighting Czecho-Slovaks — ending with the Armistice terms and the treaties that redrew the map.

HomeThe Battle of Picardy › The Battle of Picardy: British

The Battle of Picardy: British

An attack against the French had certain advantages. The French army was unmistakably the weaker of the two. In the early days of the war, while the British army was being formed, it was the French who had to stand the brunt of the fighting. At Verdun it was the French who from February to July beat back the German assaults along the Meuse time after time in the most tremendous duel of the war. In the Battle of the Somme it was the French who fought their way forward south of the river to the outskirts of Peronne and Chaulnes. The French losses had, therefore, been very much greater than the British. As the populations of France and of the United Kingdom are about the same, the French people had, therefore, suffered much more than had the British, and were correspondingly less able to stand such a blow as Germany was able to deliver. Much of French front is invulnerable.

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