The Great German Enveloping Movement 133 remained a base for the British, now that the road to Boulogne was menaced by the progress of German advance. The Alhes then stood some seventy-five miles back on their first battle ground; over this distance they had been driven in five days of fighting, the details of which were still unknown. But they had not been destroyed as Berlin had asserted, as one British war correspondent at Amiens had despairingly an- nounced. Their position was a strong one, on the centre and right it was covered by the chain of fortresses from La Fere to Rheims. The second position was far better for a defensive fight than the first. In it the Allies were much nearer their base, while the Germans were correspondingly further away. Reenforcements were coming from England, from distant Alsace, where the ill-advised counter-offensive had been abandoned and the troops engaged in it recalled. By August 28, then, while the Germans had been successful in a number of serious conflicts and had rolled the French centre back and threatened to sur- round the English on the Allied left, they had still failed to envelop or destroy their enemy. So far and so far only the great German enveloping move- ment had failed. On the other hand the possibility, soon to be translated into fact, was that the retreat of the Allies had been so precipitate, particularly upon the battered left, that they would be unable to stand at the Somme and the Laon-La Fere bar-