LAND AND WATER 
October 24, 1914 
II. 
THE WESTERN THEATRE OF WAR. 
In the Western Theatre of War the week has 
seen (up to the moment of writing) one fresh and 
one belated piece of news. 
Nothing noteworthy save in the extreme north 
and on the extreme south— near the North Sea and 
in the Vosges. 
Upon the old main front between the Oise and 
the Ai-gonne there have been but slight movements. 
It is obvious that the forces on both sides must have 
been very largely depleted for the sake of reinforcing 
the great effort the Allies have been making upon the 
west up to the Belgian frontier, and the violent 
counter-offensive attacks which the Germans have 
directed against that line. None the less, in some 
points there has been a rather noticeable flexion of the 
line. Thus, all the advanced trenches of the Gennans 
above the Aisne has been taken; half of the crest 
of the plateau north of Soissons is ab-eady reached 
by the Allies, but not Craonne nor the Noyon end 
of it. 
Below Craonne, again, between that high promon- 
tory hill and Rhcims, and in the neighbourhood of 
Berry-au-Bac, there has been some advance, and a part 
at least of the Nogent Hills to the east of Rheims ai-e 
held ; but whether the whole lump has been occupied 
by the French or not neither French nor German 
communiques indicated. 
But on the Belgian frontier near the North Sea 
and down in the Vosges there are two points of 
interest : One belated piece of news, as I have said, 
and one notable change. 
The notable change concerns the situation in the 
Franco-Belgian frontier. The belated news concerns 
the recapture by the French of the Southern Vosges 
overlooking Upper Alsace. I wiU take these in their 
order. 
A. — The Belgian Fkontier. 
It is important, if we are to understand the 
French and English official communiques which deal 
with the all-important left wing or northern extreme 
of the Allied line, and with the assault that is presum- 
ably to be delivered upon it by the enemy, that we 
should grasp the nature of the ground. The Allied 
line ran originally nearly north and south from the 
district just east of Arras to the sea near Ostend. We 
may note that the entire stretch of these two fronts, 
from the Arras district to the North Sea, is not far 
from eighty miles. Nearly the whole of this line 
traverses a plain, most of which is dead level. The 
exception is in a range of slight heights running in 
a dwindling crescent south of Ypres. From Lens 
northward to above Amientieres you are in the coal 
district — a mass of dirty lanes and a gridiron of rail- 
ways and canals. But from the north of this to the 
sea the complexity of such country ceases, and is 
replaced, especially as the sea-coast is approached, by 
numerous very slow watercourses, both canalised and 
natural. Almost every field has its wet ditch. Of 
communications it is not worth speaking, for both 
good, hard roads and railways are so numerous that 
transport is possible for almost any numbers that 
might be concentrated for the shock in this region. 
It is worth noting, however, that neither side has one 
long natural defensive line upon which to fall back in 
CISC it is pressed by the other. On the side of the 
Allies there is, if they were, unfortunately, compelled 
to pivot far round eastward, the line of heights all the 
way down south from Cape Gris-nez. Tliat is three 
days' march behind their present positions in the 
middle, and a week's march behind their extreme 
positions on the seacoast. There is no defensive 
position immediately behind the Allied line as it is 
now held. With the Germans this defect is 
still more strikingly apparent. There are no 
heights whatsoever behind them, and nearly all 
the watercourses run across their Une, and not 
parallel with it. Entrenchment, modern entrench- 
ment, is apparently an artifical line anywhere pro- 
ducible : we have yet to see whether it can " hold " an 
advance where no natural aid is given it and where 
time has been lacking. If it is against the Germans 
that the balance of pressure is felt this next week 
they must fall back thoroughly, uncovering LiUe, and 
depending at the best upon the line of the Scheldt, con- 
tinued perhaps by the canal which runs from the Scheldt 
to the neighbourhood of Eecloo ; but the prospect of 
any long stand across that line of country is not favoui-- 
abie. A retreat, if it were imposed upon them, would 
be a retreat which would uncover not only Lille but 
Douai, and would come perilously near to theii- main 
line of communications behind Valenciennes. 
This is as much as to say that the Gennans 
count upon certain advance. It is not an exaggeration 
to affirm that such a line as Lille-Ostend would not be 
held by any force that did not count upon an 
immediate advance. Difficult and cut up as the 
country is, there is no very great extent of wood. 
There is a group of detached woods both east and 
west of Ypres and one considerable forest noi-th of 
Ypres and in front of Eoullers, and there are numerous 
scattered woods south of Bruges for over a belt 
twenty miles by seven or eight miles. But there is 
nowhere continuous wood in such quantity as to check 
an advance upon either side, or to screen any large 
movements — so far as these can be screened fi'om 
aeroplanes. The only defiles — that is the only places 
where troops would be compelled to naiTOw issues 
during a retreat and where congestion of transport 
and all similar difficulties might happen, are, of course, 
in a country of this sort, through bi-idges. But these 
bridges are sp numerous, and the streams to be crossed 
so sluggish, for the most part so narrow, and aU so 
easily dealt with by pontoons or trestle work, that a 
retirement would not be anywhere subject upon either 
side to difficulties from this cause. 
As has necessarily been the case throughout the 
whole of this western campaign, taking place as it has 
over territory where the Germans and the French 
have in various aspects struggled against each other 
for two thousand years, this last extreme northern 
field which has been reached by the extension of the 
Allied line, and which bids fair to be the principal 
scene of the next heavy work, is filled with the 
historical memories of former actions. The British 
force stands right in the country traversed by the 
Duke of York on his march to the siege of Dunkirk 
in 1793. The Germans at Werwicq used and com- 
manded the bridge by which the Austrians, crossing 
too late, lost the Battle of Tourcoing in the next 
year. Fontenoy is but a few miles behind their 
positions at Lille ; Oudenarde but a few miles behind 
their positions at Courtrai. Immediately behind the 
Allied line Hondschoote marks the first considerable 
victory of the French Eevolution in its life-and-death 
struggle of the Terror. 
It is clearly evident (and this is of first-rate 
importance) that the Germans are here upon the 
Franco-Belgian frontier attempting a divided thing. 
I say that our knowledge of this diversion in 
their aims — which knowledge is now certainly acquired 
— is of capital importance. And for this reason. 
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