With this last valiant attempt to take the Hill 196 ended the Winter battle of the Champagne. After months of frantic fighting, after paying a frightful toll in blood, the French were forced to abandon their effort to break through our lines. Their finest troops, the very flower of their army, who had fought persistently with all the dare-devil gallantry for which the French are famous, had, in the end, not only failed to win a victory, but had sustained a crushing defeat. For the fact must not be overlooked that their failure to force their way through our lines was tantamount to a very serious defeat.
VIII--WHAT THE GERMAN PRINCE CLAIMS FOR HIS ARMY
The battle of the Champagne is over. The unexampled heroism, the superhuman endurance of our troops have already become things of the past. But we, the great German nation, will do well to heed the warning that was sounded in the bitter days when the frenzied battle raged in the Champagne.
What lesson shall we extract from this titanic struggle? What moral is pointed by Hill 196, whose every inch of ground was ploughed by bullets and soaked with our dearest blood? What were the underlying causes that contributed to our victory? What was it that made every beardless boy a hero, made the oldest man in the "Landwehr" forget his age and the privations he was enduring?
Let us briefly review the principal factors that made for success.
The value of iron discipline was overwhelmingly demonstrated. It is safe to assert that the most highly disciplined regiment will be the most successful in action. Youthful enthusiasm may be undermined, patriotism may be forced into temporary abeyance by hours of continual, cruel shelling; worse than that, the very power to think becomes inhibited in the witches' cauldron of "drum-fire." It is then that discipline asserts itself. Nothing else gives the same moral stamina, and in difficult positions discipline is bound to be the determining factor.
Before the war began the voices of many people were raised who, from false sentimentality, from undue softness, from ill-will or from sheer stupidity, were eager to have an end put for all time to the unconditional obedience and rigid drill of our army; in brief, to our entire military training, the value of which has been tested and proven throughout centuries. Many of our so-called comic papers made it their chief business to ridicule military training and discipline, to spatter with mud the very foundation and bulwark of our military efficiency. I think the battle of the Champagne must have taught them to amend their way of thinking.
