It was about this time that the warrior War Lord, flushed with momentary success, saw fit to dispatch what was probably destined to be the final of his many "victory" telegrams. "My victorious troops," so he wired to the Empress at Berlin (cp. the _Times_, March 26th, 1918), "are pressing forward from Bapaume westwards.... The spirit of the troops is as fresh as on the first day. Over 45,000 prisoners, over 60 guns, 1000 machine-guns, and enormous quantities of ammunition and provisions, have been taken. May God be with us!" (signed Wilhelm).
Whether this royal and auspicious message, when published officially, had the desired effect upon a war-weary and demoralised people, it is hard to say; but even Wilhelm, the would-be Conqueror, must surely have begun to realise at long last that even if "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
Getting down to solid facts then, the battle, in Ludendorff's opinion, "was over by April 4th," and although "thereafter there was bitter fighting ... our (the German) war machine was no longer efficient" [cp. page 684, Vol. II.].... "The Entente began the great offensive, the final battle of the world war, and carried it through with increasing vigour as our decline became more apparent."
It is not uninteresting to note the second-in-command, or, as some believe him to have been, the actual commander-in-chief, of the great German fighting machine paying a tribute to the energy of the foe, the one foe hated and feared of all others by the entire German people, namely England; and this energy was at the time in question very properly brought to the notice of a representative gathering of Colonial, American, and English journalists by Mr. Winston Churchill, who, speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions (cp. the _Times_, March 27th, 1918), told these gentlemen of the Press that they must "recognise that the strength of the British armies rests not only on the superb courage of the soldiers, but on the gigantic output which their countrymen at home are contributing from week to week, and from hour to hour, after all these years of strain, never at such a pitch of efficiency and energy as at the present time."