THE BATTLE ON THE YSER AND OF
YPRES IN THE AUTUMN 1914
(DIE SCHLACHT AN DER YSER UND
BEI YPERN IM HERBST 1914)
FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES
PUBLISHED
BY ORDER OF THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF
OLDENBURG, 1918, GERHARD STALLING
[PREFACE]
By German Great Headquarters
The gigantic scale of the present war defies comparison with those of the past, and battles which formerly held the world in suspense are now almost forgotten. The German people have been kept informed of the progress of events on all fronts since the 4th August 1914, by the daily official reports of the German General Staff, but the general public will have been unable to gather from these a coherent and continuous story of the operations.
For this reason the General Staff of the German Field Army has decided to permit the publication of a series of monographs which will give the German people a general knowledge of the course of the most important operations in this colossal struggle of nations.
These monographs cannot be called histories of the war; years, even decades, must pass before all the true inwardness and connection of events will be completely revealed. This can only be done when the archives of our opponents have been opened to the world as well as our own and those of the General Staffs of our Allies. In the meantime the German people will be given descriptions of the most important of the battles, written by men who took part in them, and have had the official records at their disposal.