Page:Breaking the Hindenburg Line.djvu/99

Rh stage in the history of the war, for it opened the way to a war of movement which could only end in one way. The 46th Division had done its share. Next day we were to learn that, simultaneously, the line had been broken along the whole front on which it had been attacked by the First, Third, and Fourth British Armies; with it was broken the backbone of German resistance and the faith of the German people in the power of the German Army. In this connection a quotation from the column “Through German Eyes” in The Times of December 11th is significant, and emphasizes, as nothing else has done, the importance of the action in which the 46th Division played a conspicuous part. There Professor Hans Delbrück—a German of the Germans—writes:—

"“The turn in our fortunes began with the collapse of our attack on Rheims and the successful advance of the French north of the Marne. According to certain observations which had been communicated to me, Ludendorff had then already become very uncertain at heart. Nevertheless he and Herr von Hintze during the next nine weeks did nothing to ease our position politically—until on September the 29th Ludendorff collapsed and completed our defeat by the offer of an armistice.”"

The 46th Division, in spite of many changes since it had arrived in France in 1915, was still essentially a “Territorial” Division in the fullest and greatest sense of the word. Nothing could exceed the wave of feeling and pride which swept across the North Midland Counties on the receipt of news of this—one of the greatest achievements of the war—for which their own Division was responsible.