the forts of Antwerp were also destroyed by the huge guns of the enemy. On the day following the fall of Namur the French were beaten at Charleroi and the British were compelled to retire with them. The mammoth German army now made an attempt to encircle the Anglo-French army and destroy it. The long line of Germans was swinging with Verdun as a pivot. General von Kluck commanded the west wing of the German line. But the flanking or circling scheme of Von Kluck failed, because each time the English saved themselves by a retreat. At length the Germans entered the city of Lille, in France, for the British and French were outnumbered and had again fallen back. These were dark days for the French. The Germans were watching closely for a chance to outflank or encircle them or else to crash through BRITISH COURAGE and destroy them. No army can SAVES THE LINE stand when the line is broken. Soon the Germans thought they saw their chance. They hurled 200,000 men against the British end of the battle line and for six days the fate of the Allies hung in the balance. If the enemy should succeed in breaking through the line, the Allied armies would be destroyed. The crisis was reached on August 26th, when the British met the full force of the German assault. Two British corps met five German corps with supreme courage and worsted them. This gave the English an opportunity to retreat again in good order to St. Quentin. The failure of the French to send the aid the British had asked for almost resulted in a disaster that would have brought France to her knees. If the British had not checked the Germans here, there would have been no saving Paris. The Germans kept on trying to outflank the Anglo-French army, that is, to push around its wing, roll it back, and gradually destroy it. They next struck the French and English at St. Quentin and again the Germans were checked and the Allies fell back. The enemy was now within sixty miles of Paris and the second line of French defenses about that city had been taken. By September the left wing of the Anglo-French army had fallen back under the guns of the Paris forts. The Germans had thus far failed to encircle the Allies or to break through their lines. Now the Allies decided that they must make a stand with the Paris forts on one end of their 180-mile battle front and the Verdun fortress on the other. General Joffre, the leader of the French, thought that his supreme moment had arrived. He had yielded all of northern France to the enemy, but now he was ready to resist with all his might. The Germans decided that before they tried to take Paris they would make another attempt to BATTLE OF break through the Allied line and then THE MARNE take the Anglo-French army one section at a time. They attacked the Allied forces at their center on the Marne River to divide it into two sections. They wished to roll back one section on Paris and the other on Verdun, It was General von Kluck who had pursued the British to the south but had failed to get around their left or west flank. Now he was compelled to draw in and cross in front of Paris to help break the center. As he moved in front of the city, Joffre struck at his flank with the British army aiding a force of his own. Joffre had gathered together all the automobiles and trucks of Paris and, using the splendid wagon roads of France, had moved a large army with surprising rapidity. This attack on the flank surprised Von Kluck and he narrowly escaped capture. By hard fighting and yielding ground Von Kluck saved his army, and by September 10th he was retreating toward the Aisne River with all possible speed. The rest of the German army had to join him in the retreat. They continued to run until they reached the second line of the French defenses north of the Aisne. Here the Germans halted and entrenched themselves and the Allies failed to dislodge them. By September 18th, the Allied attacks ceased and the final stage of the first great German campaign was over. Neither the Germans nor the Allies have given out their losses in the Battle of the Marne, but there were two million men fighting with all the modern arms, and we may be sure the loss of life would be beyond our comprehension. The Germans had conquered nearly all of Belgium and a large part of northern France, but they had failed in their two great objects, which were to smash the Anglo-French army and to capture Paris. They had in their control, however, the factories and the coal and iron mines of Belgium and France, and this supply of coal and iron has helped Germany tremendously. Without them France has been greatly crippled, for all the coal for her industries and munitions plants has had to be shipped from England and protected from submarines in the shipment. Coal has already sold in Paris for sixty dollars a ton. After their defeat at the Marne the Germans tried to redeem themselves by breaking through the line BREAKING THE LINE on the Yser in Belgium in AT YSER AND YPRES October, 1914. Their object was to capture the French port of Calais. The Yser River rises in France and flows north and west through the southwest corner of Belgium. Along the Yser were stationed the remnant of the brave little army of the Belgians. The Germans succeeded in crossing the Yser and entered the city of Nieuport, but they suffered heavy losses. The brave Belgians cut their dikes and flooded the hosts of the enemy out. British warships came to the aid of the Belgians and bombarded some of the German positions. At the close of the month the Germans were forced back across the Yser, where they have been held ever since. The Germans again tried to break through the line at Ypres in Belgium. The British held the Allied line here with about 150,000 men. The Germans attacked the British with forces at least three times the number of the defenders. The British were driven back slowly until the enemy's guns began to reach Ypres. The city began to crumble under the German shells, but the British line held. It was re-enforced to some extent by the French and the fighting went on. At last the Emperor appeared on the scene and sent in his crack Prussian guards to give the final crushing blow to what he had called "the contemptible little army of England." But his troops were so badly beater that he was compelled to abandon his effort to reach Calais. The German losses were said to have been about 150,000 men in this first battle of Ypres. While the Germans were sweeping victoriously through Belgium and France the Russians underTHE EASTERN took to give some help by striking at Prussia This they thought would force Germany to shift some of her troops from FRONT the front before Paris, and in this way Russians might help to save that city. So the Russians invaded Prussia and were met by General von Hindenburg in the Battle of Tannenberg. This was one of the important battles of the early part of the war. The Russians suffered a great defeat. They lost 80,000 men in killed and wounded and prisoners, we are told, and were forced to retreat to their fortified line on the Russian border. But they did succeed in their plan of forcing the Germans to transfer many of their troops from the French front just before the Battle of the Marne and undoubtedly helped in this way to win the Battle of the Marne and to save Paris. The great fortress of Lodz was the "Verdun" of the Russian line, about 50 miles west of Warsaw. THE FALL That fortress had been built some ten OF LODZ years before, with money which Russia had borrowed from France. There were twenty-six forts in a semi-circle facing Prussia. In the course of the Russian retreat before the German army they were driven back toward the fortress of Lodz by the Germans who were attacking on both flanks. This battle began with all the signs of a great German victory. In fact, Berlin had already begun to celebrate the destruction of the Czar's army. Suddenly great masses of Russian troops hurried from Warsaw and swept down upon the Germans and caught them in the rear. This turned the tables so completely that the Russians surrounded the German army. But with great bravery the forces of Hindenberg cut their way through and freed themselves from the trap. Re-enforcements came to their aid from the western front, and although they suffered great losses, they finally escaped, except |