It is beyond the scope of this volume to enter into details of the new great battle which, beginning with the arrival of the British troops, culminated in the heroic defence of Ypres. Justice could not be done to that great and memorable feat of arms in a brief summary.
Suffice it to say that here, on the great coalfield of northern France, in a labyrinth of railway sidings and canals, villages and lanes, pit heaps, and factories, the British troops, helped by the French cavalry, after furious fighting, drove back the Germans from the Aa and the Lys and took up a line continuing the outflanking positions from La Bassée to Ypres in Belgium.
A third effort of the Germans to outflank the outflanking line was directed across the Yser. This was the last attempt of the kind that could be made. Its success was consequently vital, and its failure equally disastrous. Again it illustrates the fact that the Germans sacrifice neither money nor lives without good cause. The fighting on the Yser was as deadly for the enemy as the fighting round Rheims.
Coincidently, however, with these movements were others of a different kind. The official communiqués, covering the two kinds of movements as the evidences of them appeared day by day, have naturally led to a certain amount of mystification—not intentional, but inevitable from the brevity and caution of these statements and the fact that they cover separately only the operations of a few hours.
The movements of a different kind were those designed at one point or another to drive a wedge or salient into the Allied front.
In the operations on the German flank between the Aisne and the Belgian coast there have been two main efforts of that character. The first was the attempt to split the Allied front at Roye and at Arras, and to break up the line between those places; the second was the effort on an even larger scale, and pursued with still greater determination, to split the front at La Bassée and at Ypres, and to break up the line intervening.
It is no mere accident that this latter attempt followed immediately on the failure to cross the Yser. The attempt arose out of the necessity of the situation.
On the Upper Meuse, by another great effort, the Germans had driven a wedge into the French fortified frontier at St. Mihiel, and that wedge appeared to some the prelude of a mysterious scheme. In fact, the intention and the effect of it was to hold off the French advance along the frontier of Lorraine and across the Vosges. Again it is the case of a desperate man clinging to a railing.
We have, therefore, three great efforts to break the Allied front by their wedge tactics, and three to outflank the Allied outflanking development. None of these efforts succeeded.
What was the consequence? The consequence was that the German armies in France and Belgium could neither advance nor retreat. They could not advance because they are not strong enough. They could not retreat, because retreat would mean their destruction.