There was to be a spring offensive, jointly British and French in Flanders and Artois, French alone in Champagne.21 Indeed, this first agreement was to set the pattern for much of the Allied effort on the Western Front throughout the war. The pattern was to be repeated in the coming autumn, during 1917 and, finally with success, in 1918. Only in 1916 would the Allies attempt something different, in the offensive against the centre of the great German salient to be known as the battle of the Somme.
