Your old Papa

NEVER MIND VICTORY. No way out presented itself — not in any of the great theatres of war. In its absence, the instinct to go for broke proved irresistible.

German naval policy was a grandiose term to characterise its recent desperation and recklessness. Following the recent…

The British physique

AFTER NEARLY A year of expensive feints and inconclusive flurries, the war in the west now again exploded. On 25 September, a great Allied offensive opened in Loos and Champagne, although its name has passed down in history simply as the battle of Loos. It was the largest battle by some way…

Tinker and the Women

A LAYMAN MIGHT reasonably wonder how it was, week after week, that the Russians kept losing ground and yet still kept fighting. There are two answers, really. One was that the front in the east was vastly bigger than that in the west. There was more ground to win and, crucially, much more to…

Greater loyalties

THE BITTERNESS AND ATTRITION of trenches could pass almost unremarked. The Western Front went through extended periods when not much appeared to happen, but it was always a tableau for suffering and loss. The week witnessed a renewed German offensive in Argonne and much heavy, if indecisive…

An immense dignity

LOOS, THE GREATEST battle on the west in 1915 conferred an immense dignity on each of the armies who fought it.

To broach an offensive was a formidable act of imagination and daring by those architects of the battle. For those who fought in it — especially those in…