CHAPTER VIII.
"FEATURES OF THE WAR" _April 15th._ In these April days Sir Douglas Haig's latest Despatch, dated the 21st March, 1919--the first anniversary of those black days of last year!--has just been published in all the leading English newspapers.
It is divided into three parts: "The Advance into Germany," "Features of the War," and "My Thanks to Commanders and Staffs." It is on the second part in particular that public attention has eagerly fastened.
Nothing could well be more interesting or more important.

For it contains the considered judgment of the British Commander-in-Chief on the war as a whole, so far, at least, as Great Britain is concerned.
The strong and reticent man who is responsible for it broke through the limitations of official expression on two occasions only during the war: in the spring of 1917, in that famous and much criticised interview which he gave to certain French journalists, an incident, by the way, on which this Despatch throws a good deal of light; and in the impassioned Order of last April, when, like Joffre on the Marne, he told his country: that England had her back to the wall.
But here, for the first time, the mind on which for three and a half years depended the military fortunes, and therewith the future destiny of the British Empire, reveals itself with much fullness and freedom, so far as the moment permits.

The student of the war cannot read these paragraphs too closely, and we may be sure that every paragraph in them will be a text for comment and illustration in the history schools of the future.

The Despatch, moreover, is full of new information on points of detail, and gives figures and statistics which have never yet been made public.

There are not, however, many persons outside the Armies who will give themselves to the close study of a long military despatch.