been greatly supplemented, and in subsequent weeks were developed to such an extent that behind the British lines there existed "a series of junctions, with broad gage and narrow gage trains, all as busy as a London terminus." At the same time roads and paths in the district were enlarged. Special precautions were taken to supply the infantry with water. Existing lakes were tapped, pits to catch rain-water were dug around Kemmel, and the water of the Lys was pumped into barges and then sterilized. From lakes, pits, and barges, pipe-lines were run forward and provision made for their rapid extension in the event of victory. On June 15 from 450,000 to 600,000 gallons of water daily were being supplied and arrangements had been made for the transport of water, rations, and stores by mules, horses, and men. During the attack water was delivered to troops within from 20 to 40 minutes of their taking new positions. In one case carrying parties arrived with water and rations four minutes after the capture of an objective. Following the explosion and under a curtain of fire, English, Irish, and Australian troops supported by tanks started from Messines across the open, dismayed Germans offering but slight resistance and being everywhere beaten back. Nine How many mines had gone up at once no one knew, but there were perhaps a score. Since a year before these mines had lain under German feet, undiscovered. great, leaping streams of flame shot up, each a huge volcano in itself, with as many more volcanoes going off at the same moment from points out of sight. The whole horizon gleamed with coruscating flame, with flash of guns, stabs of bursting shells, and streams of light-flares, the whole sky being ringed with lightning which flashed white, yellow, orange, red, and green. Overhead in the pale blue sky the moon floated serenely. While the clamor was at its height, the first flush of dawn crept rosy-red above Ypres, the sun invisible behind a bank of smoke, but flushing the sky with red, making a truly terrible dawn. Against the pink and opal sky the forms of kite-balloons, already far up, grew defined. Singly or in squadrons, airplanes went droning by. Overhead airplanes continued to circle, until the sky was dotted with puffs of black shrapnel smoke from enemy's anti-aircraft guns. After it had been broad daylight for two hours the guns had not yet ceased. No One might regard Messines as a separate battle, or as a development of the battle of Arras and Vimy Ridge which had ended about a month before. The importance of Messines was that it formed the final eminence in that immediate neighborhood before reaching the plain of Flanders. It dominated the southern ridge of the Ypres salient. troops, transports, guns, hardly any individuals, for two years had been able to move in the southern Ypres area without being under observation from this ridge. From Ypres downward there were several ridges opposed to the British front which had left them at the mercy of enemy observation-Albert Ridge, wrested from the enemy in the battle of the Somme; Vimy, taken in the battle of Arras, and Messines, which the British had now seized.' The number of prisoners taken was more than 6,000. Paschendaele Ridge, however, still remained to the north, altho it was sometimes referred to as virtually part of a long ridge of which it and Messines were the northern and southern eminences. "The earth opened and the German line disappeared," was one sententious description. Another correspondent said that the hill on which he stood "shook like jelly." Staff estimates showed the day's cost to the British as less than 10,000 men. Comparative failures in somewhat similar operations earlier in the war had cost them many times that figure. German prisoners put their own losses at 35,000. The victory encouraged a belief in this country, as exprest by American experts, that the war might be decided in the air because in this Messines fighting, airmen outweighed all factors after the big mine. British aircraft "ranged" the enemy for British guns and the two together smashed the German lines, leaving the infantry at the mercy of the British. Special British air-spies circled over the Prussian artillery lines, signaling back exact ranges, so that British shells might reach them and save British lives through silencing guns. In the misty dawn would appear swift, super-battleplanes, under orders to attack from the sky the German infantry 1 Perry Robinson in The New York Sun. on the ground. They then dipt low, disregarding the rattle of German rifle-fire, and raked the trenches with machineguns, speeding back to scatter upcoming infantry reinforce ments. The result of this operation at Messines was that the British line was almost completely straightened out between St. Julien and Armentières so that the Ypres salient, which had been such an important feature of fighting in this region could now be considered as wiped out. Haig's policy thus far developed was that of striking steady, heavy, alternating blows. He hammered first at one point and then at another. He had no present expectation of breaking through the German line. What he intended to do was to thin it out and depress its morale by a long succession of such blows as this, until it should be weakened enough to make it possible to break it. When Haig finished his blow at Arras and, instead of striking again, went ahead with preparations for a blow at Ypres, the Kaiser exprest joy over Haig's defeat"; but Haig, entirely undisturbed, methodically went along getting his next blow launched. This promised to be the history of the campaign through the rest of the year, as it was the history of Foch's great campaign in 1918 which ended the war. The bulk of the offensive work fell on the British. The French, apparently, intended to conserve their men. This was Joffre's policy and also Foch's, altho Nivelle's had been more aggressive. Nivelle's attacks seemed to have been more expensive in men than the policy of attrition warranted, and the French afterward stood more and more on the defensive. With Russia for the time out of the war, and Roumania waiting on Russia, the burden of the offensive had fallen on the British in the west and the Italians in the south, with such aid to the British as it might be expedient of the French to render. The taking of Messines Ridge robbed the Germans of the last commanding natural position they had so long occupied opposite the British line. Bapaume, Vimy, and Messines Ridges, as well as Monchy Plateau, five miles east of Arras, had all been captured by the British in three months. This materially changed the military situation on this front. There remained to the Germans the much-talked |