WAR OF THE NATIONS 



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WAR OF THE NATIONS 



principles of international action and honor; 

 which chose its own time for the war ; delivered 

 its blow fiercely and suddenly ; stopped at no bar- 

 rier either of law or of mercy ; swept a whole con- 

 tinent within the tide of blood not the blood of 

 soldiers only but the blood of innocent women and 

 children ; also of the helpless poor ; and now 

 stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of 

 four-fifths of the world. 



In the West. The Battle of Verdun practi- 

 cally ended in September, 1916, but each side 

 resolutely held its ground, and each sought for 

 weak points at which to thrust. Nothing vital 

 was accomplished by either side until August, 

 when the French attacked on both sides of the 

 Meuse and took territory along a front of 

 eleven miles; they won back in three days 

 what the crown prince's army had taken from 

 them in the great six-months' battle the year 

 before. On December 1 the battle still raged, 

 with daily assaults and counterattacks. 



The most important military operations in 

 the west during the year were in the northeast 

 corner of France and in Belgium. The British, 

 Canadians, French and Belgians joined in of- 

 fensives which threatened to destroy the Ger- 

 man morale in that section. In June the 



t Mechlin 



^Brussels 



nes .Waterloo^ 



Battle Line before Allied Advance-Juh/1916 



Battle Line -April, 1917 



. +++1 Recent British Advance in Flanders 

 +++2 Gen. Sir Douglas Haig's Advance on Lens- 



Nov.,1917 



+++3 French Advance beyond the Chemin-des- 



Dames-Oct.,1917 



BRITISH GAINS LATE IN 1917 

 The most spectacular advance was that of Gen- 

 eral Byng, in section marked 2, under the chief 

 command of Field Marshal Haig. 



British exploded a series of mines on a ten- 

 mile front in Messines, Belgium, the most gi- 

 gantic operation of the kind ever known; this 

 feat and the operations which followed during 



the next few days drove the Germans back on 

 a five-mile front to the depth of three miles. 



A little to the south a vast movement to- 

 wards Lens was largely in charge of the Cana- 

 dians. Little by little they fought their way 

 into the outskirts of the coal city, and so domi- 

 nated the situation that the value of Lens as 

 a producer for the enemy was destroyed. 



Late in November British Major-General 

 Byng planned and executed a surprise attack 

 against Cambrai. Over a front of thirty miles 

 the Germans under Crown Prince Rupprecht 

 were pushed back more than five miles; posi- 

 tions deemed impregnable were taken from 

 them, and they were driven to a desperate 

 defense of Cambrai, with the British only two 

 miles distant. Byng lost almost all of his gains 

 through a desperate German counterattack. 

 Cambria had been for three years a very impor- 

 tant German base. Its six railroads penetrated 

 Germany and extended to the North Sea. A 

 very important element in Byng's attack was 

 the vital assistance rendered by scores of ar- 

 mored cars, called "tanks," which no power of 

 the enemy, except their heavy guns within close 

 range, could destroy. They advanced over all 

 obstacles barbed wire, stone fences, small trees 

 and the like and passed over great shell holes 

 and trenches with ease. 



Russia's Catastrophe. On March 15, before 

 the spring campaign in the east could be under- 

 taken, the Russians overthrew their govern- 

 ment, imprisoned the czar in his palace and 

 declared to the world that Russia was free. 

 They took this course because of intrigue at 

 the royal palace and throughout the czar's 

 retinue which threatened an early peace with 

 Germany and treachery to the allies. The 

 world outside of the central empires hailed 

 Russia's emancipation with joy; the allies, par- 

 ticularly, were pleased, inasmuch as the czar's 

 desire for peace was known and the revolu- 

 tionists had at once announced that the war 

 would continue in conjunction with the' allies. 

 The Russian armies drove the Austrians back 

 in Galicia and threatened them in Poland ; then 

 almost in a day it was seen that liberty was too 

 new a possession, and that the Russians were in- 

 toxicated with it. The provisional government, 

 under Kerensky, a brilliant Socialist (see RUS- 

 SIA), fought desperately to control the rising 

 tide of anarchy which threatened to engulf 

 both the military and civil establishments. 

 German influence, wherever it could get a foot- 

 hold, seemed as insidious as when the czar 

 ruled. Fighting men laid down their arms in 



