THE breakdown of the strategical offensive of the Entente in the spring of 1917 was almost complete. Russia had gone her own way to military insignificance, France had failed in her far-reaching design of crushing the German front on the Aisne, Haig's victory at the battle of Arras secured merely a tactical advantage, the offensive from Salonika never started, and that from Egypt was held up at the gates of Palestine. In the absence of a combined General Staff for the Entente, it required months of individual thought and interchange of views to elaborate any alternative scheme and to readjust national forces for its execution; and the campaigning season would assuredly close before effect could be given to a fresh plan of campaign. The new Governments in England and France showed no greater foresight than the old, and had made no further progress towards a single strategical mind. Indeed, for the rest of 1917 divergence seemed to grow, and there was no such combined operation as the Somme campaign of 1916. Activity travelled away from the point of liaison, and each ally concentrated its attention more and more on its own particular front. Italy as usual had eyes only for Trieste and Albania, France turned from the Somme and the Oise to the Aisne and Verdun, and England's effort came north towards the Belgian coast. This divergence resulted from the changed view of the military situation imposed upon the Entente by Nivelle's failure. He had believed that the time had come for ambitious objectives; Haig had demurred and clung to the idea of operations limited in their scope like that of the Somme; and Pétain accepted that view when he succeeded Nivelle. There might, of course, have been limited offensives on the upper Somme and the Oise where the two armies joined; but it was here that the Siegfried line most firmly barred the way, and when towards the end of the year a new tactic had been evolved to surmount that barrier, it was applied prematurely and without French co-operation. The unity of the Entente did not extend to community of ideas or simultaneous experiment; and novelties which might have been overwhelming if tried in unison all along the line only achieved a partial success when adopted by one of the Allies on a limited front.