The dispatch of Sir Douglas Haig describing the actions of March and April last year was so headed in the _Times_, though nothing of the kind appears in the official publication.

And we can all remember in England the gnawing anxiety of every day and every hour from March 21st up to the end of April, when the German offensive had beaten itself out, on the British front at least, and the rushing over of the British reinforcements, together with the rapid incoming of the Americans, had given the British Army the breathing space of which three months later it made the use we know.
"But why," asks one of the men best qualified to speak in our Army--"why use the words 'retreat' and 'disaster' at all ?" They were indeed commonly used at the time both in England and abroad, and have been often used since about the fighting of the British Army last March and April.

Strictly speaking, my interlocutor suggests, neither word is applicable.

The British Army indeed fell back some thirty-five miles on its southern front, till the German attack was finally stayed before Amiens.

The British centre stood firm from Arras to Bethune.
But in the north we had to yield almost all the ground gained in the Salient the year before, and some that had never yet been in German hands.