THE EVE OF YPRES
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, and the military principles favoured by the
German Staff, both quite well known, and what they would do and how
they would try to do it, was a conclusion that a general much less
sagacious than Joffre might safely draw. The exact extent and
character, however, of the German preparations, and the degree to
which those preparations had been advanced was definite information of
a valuable kind.
It is apposite here to note its effect. On September 9 the Belgians
made a sortie in force from Antwerp, and on the following day
recaptured Malines and Termonde. In consequence of this part of the
German reinforcements, three army corps, which were on the march from
Liège and had already reached the French frontier, had to be recalled.
That army became engaged in the first attack upon Antwerp. The object,
their diversion, had been gained. When, after discovering that an
attack upon Antwerp was hopeless without heavy siege guns, they
finally reached the front in France, the purpose for which they had
been dispatched, that of attempting to outflank the Allies to the west
of Noyon, had become impracticable.
We know now that the German Government had determined to avenge this
disappointment by the capture of Antwerp. That, however, for the
reasons already stated was fully expected. The siege employed another
German army from September 25 to October 9. True, the Germans had the
satisfaction of occupying the city, and of such political effects and
impressions as that occupation produced. On the other hand there can
be no sort of doubt that had those troops, thrown through the gap
which then existed between Ghent and Bethune, seized Calais, and been
able hold to the line from the coast to Bethune, the military effect
would have been twenty times more serious. Instead of doing that the
German Government swallowed the bait of Antwerp, only to discover when
too late, and when they had let the critical days pass, that the hook
was the British army at Ypres, which during a month's furious fighting
in the effort to retrieve their error cost the Germans over 300,000
casualties, and what was worse, the wreckage of their Western
campaign.
Before entering on a description of the operations which, in fact,
during the later weeks of October and the first two weeks of November
decided the future course of the war, it is advisable to have in mind
a clear picture of the terrain of this mighty and memorable conflict.
If the reader looks at a map of France he will see that from the
outlet of the Somme, the coast of the English Channel takes a sudden
bend to the north, and that not far from Calais it swerves sharply
round again to the east. If from near the mouth of the Somme we draw a
line running north-east, that line, roughly parallel to the line of
the coast from the point at which the shore bends round near Calais,
will mark approximately the boundary of a difference in the height of
the country above sea level. South-east of this line the country is
considerably higher. North-west of it the country is as a whole
low-lying and flat. In fact the line may be called an inland coast
divided from the sea by a stretch of flats having an average breadth
of some twenty-five miles. The eastern area of these flats is the Pas
de Calais; the western area Flanders.
This inland coast line, geographically the northern edge of the
plateau whose central and highest part is the chalk downs of
Champagne, presents numerous sinuosities. Its course, that is to say,
is a succession of capes and bays. In far-off times when in fact it
was the sea coast, it must have presented a contour not unlike that of
the present coast of Devonshire.
Formed of alluvial deposits and reclaimed little by little, the flats
lying between this inland coastline and the sea are a very fertile
tract. They gradually became the seat of a numerous population; and
then, owing alike to proximity to the sea and to the number of the
navigable waterways, the earliest and most important seat of industry
and commerce on the Continent of Europe. The ancient capital of this
country, the centre of its trade and the seat of its government when
it formed an independent Dukedom, was Ypres. In the eighteenth century
was made the discovery that underlying or contiguous to this area was
one of the largest of the European coalfields. That discovery changed
large parts of the flats by degrees into modern industrial districts.
The point to be kept in mind for present purposes is that
geographically Flanders is one area, though now situated politically
partly in France and partly in Belgium. Its two chief centres of
population and industry are Ghent and Lille, both seats of the cotton
trade, for like Lancashire in England, this Lancashire of the
Continent is engaged mainly in the textile industry and in
coal-mining. Lille is close to and in fact situated in one of the
larger bays of the inland coastline already spoken of.
Nearly midway between Lille and the coast at Dunkirk there is a
feature it is important to notice. The otherwise uniform flatness of
the country is here broken by a range of low hills shaped like a
crescent moon. This range of hills lies to the south of Ypres. From
Kleine Zillebeke on the east to the Mont de Cats on the west the ridge
is not more than ten miles in length. Ypres is situated within the
crescent.
The feature is important to notice because of the streams which here
take their rise. From the higher level of inland country there flow
north-east the Scheldt, and north-west the Somme, and the lower
courses of those rivers mark what may be called the natural outer
boundaries of this flat area. From the hills south of Ypres again rise
the Aa, the Yser, and the Lys. The first two flow outward towards the
coast; the Lys bending first round to the south and then to the east,
falls into the Scheldt at Ghent.
From Dunkirk eastward the country is protected against inroads of the
sea by dykes. This part of it is below sea level. At Nieuport, the
outlet of the Yser, there are locks which permit the outflow of the
river at low tide, but bar the inflow of the sea at high tide. For a
thousand years Flanders, owing to its natural fertility, has been the
scene of a developed agriculture. Characteristic of it are the great
substantial old farmhouses usually built round a square courtyard,
places marked by the proverbial Flemish cleanliness and by the equally
proverbial Flemish plenty. Practically every acre of the country was
under cultivation. The only exceptions were the woods situated round
the old châteaux and country houses, evidences of the general wealth.
In addition to these there existed one or two not very extensive
tracts of ancient forest.
Round Ypres, more especially to the east and north, these woods and
pleasaunces formed an almost continuous ring. In the fourteenth
century Ypres was a great industrial city with something like 200,000
inhabitants. During the struggles against first Spanish and then
Austrian domination, and in the destructive wars of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, it steadily lost its importance. The
population dwindled. At the outbreak of the present war the number of
inhabitants was not more than 20,000. The old city offered
nevertheless many evidences of its former consequence and wealth.
There was the monumental and famous Cloth Hall, one of the finest
Gothic buildings in Europe. Erected by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and
adorned with statues of the forty-four Counts, it had a façade 462
feet in length, noble alike in design and in proportions. A
conspicuous feature of the building was its central and massive square
tower. In the Middle Ages Ypres was a fortress. From the top of the
tower the view extended on every side over a wide extent of country.
The sea and the coastline to the north, and the higher land across the
Lys to the south came equally within the prospect. Conversely from
outside Ypres the tower formed a notable landmark, seen rising above
the horizon many miles away.
In old days the Cloth Hall was a great mart where, to merchants from
every part of Europe, Flemish manufacturers displayed their fabrics,
the then unrivalled wonders of the loom. In modern times, trade having
departed save for an almost local industry in lace and linen, the
Cloth Hall had become a museum and gallery of art. Under the
public-spirited and careful government of the present Royal Family of
Belgium, the building, one of the cherished monuments of the country,
was in 1860 lovingly restored.[2]
[2] Mr. N. E. Monckton Jones, formerly tutor in Modern
History in the University of Liverpool, in a letter to the
_Observer_, thus describes the impression made by the
first sight of the building: "Turning perforce with the
street at right angles, we passed into a narrower, more
winding, one with more old gabled houses, and here and there
a fine sculptured moulding or portal. Then of a sudden we
were at the Place, and the Cloth Hall in all its full glory
before us. It was not the size of the building nor its
richness that halted us so abruptly and made us all eyes for
the moment. It was, I think, the arresting dignity of it, a
dignity built up of fine and simple lines and the mellow
contentment of age. Many buildings in other towns were
statelier, more ornate, more imposing, but from the pointed
arcade below to the long line of the great roof the Hall
told of a fine sense of proportion, of reserve. Its builders
did not aim at outdoing other men, but they knew what they
needed, and would have it seemly, and by sheer reiteration
of a simple plan well conceived they made homely simplicity
glorious. The Cloth Hall expressed the self-respect of
burghers who had won their rights two centuries before Magna
Carta."
Besides the Cloth Hall, however, and the fine cathedral dedicated to
St. Martin, the former importance of Ypres was shown in its wide and
elegant streets, bordered by antique Flemish mansions, abodes of an
old world tranquillity, and with interiors like pictures. The most
pleasantly situated perhaps of all the Flemish cities, Ypres was a
favourite place of residence, an urban cameo set amid woods and hills
of broad and sweeping yet softened outline, round about it a ring of
peaceful villages, and the private seats of old-time and settled
wealth.
If this was the ancient capital of Flanders, the scene on the farther
side of the crescent of hills across the valley of the Lys presented
the most striking of contrasts. In that direction the background of
the picture was a forest of tall chimneys--the great city of Lille
overhung by its cloud of smoke. The foreground was an apparent tangle
of railways, roads, canals, brickworks, industrial villages, mills,
dyeworks, machine shops, the multitudinous aspects in short of
industry as it exists to-day, superposed upon the ancient Flemish
features of the countryside--its spacious farms, its sluggish rivers,
and its everlasting flatness.
For with the growth of commerce the rivers had been linked up with a
network of canals, and over these, with joints represented by scores
of bridges, had been spun a webwork of railways branching in all
directions into sidings. Lille itself is but the centre of half a
hundred industrial villages and smaller towns, the heart of a huge
ganglion of commerce and manufacture.
Farther south we come to the coalfield. Of the discovery of the
coalfield all this modern activity is the outcome. There the industry
changes in character. Cotton mills give place to ironworks and blast
furnaces. The face of the country is dotted with great mounds of
"spoil." Its general aspect is grimier. In all directions it is cut up
by narrow, badly-paved and rutty lanes, tracks leading mostly from the
pits and works to the villages of the pitmen and ironworkers. To the
tangle of canals and railways and railway sidings there is added this
third tangle of foot and cart tracks, made for the most part as
haphazard and as convenience directed. Through this maze of ways and
byways the only guiding lines are the usually straight and excellent
French main roads which sweep across the country from town to town
with an imperial disregard of local obstacles. The plan and purpose of
the main roads is largely military, and has come down from the days of
the Roman occupation.
Such in brief are the main features of the country. As will be seen in
the following pages, their bearing upon the operations of the war is
of the first importance.