Ever since the middle of November last there has been on the West front in the present war what many have called and considered a "deadlock." In the account which follows of that part of the campaign represented by the battles in Flanders the true character of the great and brilliant military scheme by means of which, and against apparently impossible odds, the Allied commanders succeeded in reducing the main fighting forces of Germany to impotence, and in defeating the purposes of the invasion,

At the beginning of October there had arisen in the Western campaign a crisis with which it needed the utmost skill and resource of the Allied generals to grapple. Both the nature of this crisis, and the necessity of reticence concerning it at the time, ought to be made clear if we are to appreciate either the momentous character of the Battle of Ypres, or the profound effect which that glorious feat of the Allied arms has had upon the fortunes of this War. Into France at the beginning of the Wa

General Joffre is a great man. So much is known now to all the world. But this war was not a month old before every military man was aware that the head of the French Staff, a galaxy of brilliant men, was a star of the first magnitude. The greatness of Joffre as a general lies not so much in his simplicity, about which many stories are told, nor yet in his strength of character, his incorruptible honesty, or his unshakable fortitude. It lies in the force of his intellect which, joined to his cha

The plan of the Allied commanders, at once original and bold, was decided upon at that conference at the British head-quarters on the Aisne. From the first in this war the French Intelligence Service has shown itself excellent. The French Head-quarters Staff has not only been well and reliably informed of the enemy's preparations and movements, but promptly informed. In this instance the prospective movements were a matter of almost certain inference. Given the motives of the German Government,

The main body of the British forces arrived in French Flanders on October 11. It will be recalled that in his dispatch Sir John French states that the movement from the Aisne began on October 3. Why, it may be asked, were eight days taken to complete this transfer if it was so urgent? 3 Well, in the first place the withdrawal of the British forces from the Aisne had to be carried out in detail. To have effected the withdrawal in mass would at once have aroused the observation and suspicion of th

It is true that no line of demarcation divides the operations which resulted in the advance of the British army from St. Omer to Lille, and the operations which followed. Technically they are all one, for the fighting was continuous. At the same time it is advisable for the sake of clearness to consider those operations rather in the nature of a prelude, and the main Battle of Ypres as extending from October 17 to November 15, when the defeat of the Germans was complete. On October 17 the Allied

The critical phase of the great battle began on October 29. Its feature is that not only was the mass of the German force now at its maximum, but that the weight of the attack shifted from the part of the British front between La Bassee and Armentières to the centre of the British line to the south and east of Ypres. It is this phase which has been commonly called the Battle of Ypres. Except, however, as a phase, it is in no sense distinguished from the earlier fighting. On the third day (Octobe

In its final phase the great battle lasted for another eleven days. Holding now the main ridge of hills from Zandvoorde to near Wytscheate on the Ypres-Lille road, a distance of five miles, and in possession of the village of Hollebeke, or rather of its site, the Germans appear to have decided that the effective direction for their attack was through Wytscheate and the sector of the Allied front following the Lille road from near Wytscheate through the village of Messines to Armentières. And thi

As we have seen, the gigantic Battle of Ypres presented four phases. During the first phase, from October 11 to October 17, the British Army, pivoting upon Givenchy, drove the Germans from Hazebrouck to Lille. During the second phase, from October 18 to October 24, the Germans, resuming the offensive, hurled the weight of their attack against the sector of the British front to the west of Lille. The British positions had meanwhile been extended round Ypres to the south and east, and the line of

The first purpose of the Allies' scheme of military envelopment was to arrest and eventually to break the German offensive. Even after their losses in the battle of Ypres and the concurrent Battle on the Yser, the Germans still had on the West a superiority in numbers. The shock of those defeats was bitter. That is sufficiently proved by the proclamation which soon afterwards the Emperor of Germany issued to his troops. A cruel hour, he told them, had struck for them and for the Fatherland. He e

All through the winter campaign the enemy had been incessantly trying to sap and mine forward, and not only at La Bassee but right across the valley of the Lys to the hills south of Ypres. He was anxious to make this gap secure. It was the key of his position along the line from Noyon to the sea. The construction of the Allies' entrenchment barrier was but the first stage of their great plan. At once after that barrier had been made the second stage was entered upon. The second stage was that of