however, were the Germans able to stay the advance, except near the Château, where the terrific fire of their machineguns momentarily forced the British to give ground. Later, the troops re-alined and the successful push continued.

One of the most startling operations of the war was this attack. Coming so quickly after another major attack, with an artillery preparation of only brief duration, and following a heavy rainfall which left all the ground over which the advance was made a heavy bog, heavily dotted with miniature lakes formed by shell-craters, it was entirely unlooked for and unusually successful. The operation was a brilliant success. The French, with probably not more than two divisions and possibly only one, held a small section of the line from Draibank to Wydendreft, on the British left. The French and British struck together, the French moving north toward the forest of Houthulst, the British, between Wydendreft and Roudel, moving east toward what little of the Passchendaele Ridge remained to be conquered. The French, fighting their way through mud and water, managed to cross several small streams which lay between Houthulst and the Yser Canal, and to reach the southern edge of the forest. The British, pushing ahead on the French left, bit even deeper into the German positions and moved up along the railroad from Ypres to Staden. The village of Poelcappelle was occupied and passed. To the south the British action was directed against the Passchendaele Ridge. the success was almost complete, a new line being established within a stone's throw of Passchendaele. Further south the British already held the ridge. North of Gheluvelt and east of Broodseinde the British pushed down the eastern slopes of the ridge to the plain, driving the Germans from all positions of vantage. The first step in the battle of Flanders, the occupation of the entire Messines-Passchendaele Ridge, was now practically completed. The second step was to drive the Germans across the plain. On effecting the latter hung the completion of British success in Flanders.

On the twelfth of October, for the first time since he started his Flanders offensive, Haig had for a time to cease operations. It was not German guns that stopt him, but a more than usually heavy rainfall, which turned an already

swampy region, over which men were supposed to pass, into a veritable quagmire from which they could not untrack themselves. In the early hours of the morning of October 12, a drive had been started which extended from near the Houtholst Wood, to below the Ypres-Menin road, where at several points the British gained ground over fronts ranging up to a thousand yards, but here rain intervened and fighting ceased. During the forward movement over a six-mile front, the British had captured in the aggregate about six hundred prisoners, the struggle being particularly bitter to the north of Poelcappelle and around Passchendaele. In the latter region the Germans apparently massed their strongest forces, hopeful of being able to check a further press forward by the British toward the Ostend-Lille railroad.

The capture on November 5 of Passchendaele, dominating Roulers, gave the Allied forces a firm footing on a series of great spurs extending from Gheluvelt, on the south, and marked a triumph in the long struggle to secure higher ground. The Allies had the advantage of position in the salient and relegated the enemy to lower levels. For days. the enemy had been rushing up guns and new formations of troops to insure his hold on this position. British forces advanced well beyond the ruined village, overcoming fortified enemy shell-holes and concrete strong points in advance and capturing machine-gun positions. The advance placed the apex of the salient in dangerous proximity to Roulers, the fall of which would have cut Germany's communication from her submarine-bases at Ostend and Zeebrugge with the south.

The last stages of this new battle of Ypres were probably the muddiest combats ever known in the history of war. It rained incessantly-sometimes clearing to a drizzle or a Scotch mist, but relapsing into a downpour on any day fixt for British attack. The great struggle, at least strategically, was a British failure; the British did not come within measurable distance of their major purpose, and that owing to no fault of generalship or fighting virtue, but through the inclemency of the weather in a terrain where weather was all in all. They had looked for a normal August but did not get it. The sea of mud which lapped around the salient was the true

defense of the enemy. Consequently the battle, which might have had a profound strategic significance, became merely an episode in the war of attrition, a repetition of the Somme tactics, altho conspicuously less successful and considerably more costly than the fighting of 1916. Since July 31 the British had taken 24,965 prisoners, 74 guns, 941 machineguns, and 138 trench-mortars. They had drawn in seventyeight German divisions, of which eighteen had been engaged a second or third time. But, to set against this, their own losses had been severe, and the enemy had now a big reservoir for reinforcements. Already forty fresh divisions had been transferred from the Russian Front, apart from drafts of men to replace losses in other units.11

11 Principal Sources: The Berlin Vossische Zeitung; The World, The Tribune, The Times, New York; Associated Press and United Press dispatches, The New York Times' "Current History Magazine," "Nelson's History of the War" by John Buchan.

BYNG'S

IV

THWARTED THRUST AT CAMBRAI

HELP FROM AMERICAN ENGINEERS

November 21, 1917-December 13, 1917

N November 21, when the Entente world had by turns

Ridge, only to be dejected by anarchy in Russia and severe defeat for the Italians on their northeastern frontier, with Venice in real peril, word suddenly came that the great Hindenburg defense line east of Arras, upon which the German commander-in-chief had built hopes of holding the British from making inroads into the open territory beyond had been smashed, and that the task to all appearances had been an easy one. Attacking over a front of thirty-two miles, extending from the Scarpe River to St. Quentin, Haig, with English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh troops, had made one of the most rapid and spectacular drives of the war. catching the Germans by surprize, capturing numerous positions which were considered impregnable and taking in addition some thousands of prisoners and numerous guns.

The apex of the offensive was centered on Cambrai, an important railway junction, between Arras and St. Quentin, and when Marcoing, Anneux, Graincourt and Noyelles were taken the victorious troops found themselves only about four miles from Cambrai, or well within gun range of the city, whence railroad lines and roadways branch out toward all points of the compass. The drive was begun without the usual artillery prelude, but with tanks, which made their way through wire-entanglements and pushed into German first positions followed by infantry and cavalry, the surprized enemy sending up myriads of signal rockets calling for assistance. Germans fled in disorder, leaving all kinds. of equipment behind. In most cases they did not take time to apply the torch to the villages they evacuated. The

British casualties were extremely light, while German dead. covered the ground as the British advanced. The depth of the first penetration exceeded five miles; next day it was eight miles.

This offensive was under direct command of General Sir Julian Byng. General Pershing, commander-in-chief of the American forces in France, was an interested observer

of it. Cavalry were used and not since the famous retreat of the Germans along the Ancre and the Somme in the spring of 1917 had horsemen been engaged in battle on this front. Without any warning, without sign of any unusual strength in men and guns behind the British front, without a single shot fired before the attack, and with great belts of wire still intact, British troops led by great great numbers of tanks suddenly assaulted at dawn, smashed through wire, passed to the trenches, and penetrated in many places the main Hindenburg line. Philip Gibbs thought it was "the most sensational and dramatic episode of this year's fighting, brilliantly imagined and carried through with the greatest secrecy." Not a whisper of it had reached men like himself. It was probably "the best kept secret of the war." At a moment when the world was saying that surprize-attacks were no longer possible, when the Prussians were thinking the same thing while sleeping soundly in their comfortable dugouts, without the faintest suspicion that anything was brewing, British tanks leading British infantry, rose up from the ground like magic and swung forward with their attack.

UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD. N. Y.

GENERAL SIR JULIAN BYNG

There had been no artillery preparation. The lumbering tanks pulverized a way through, their ponderous movements