LAND AND iSE A T E R. 
March 20, 1915, 
9mtmmm'iaimetmmmimm'*mmi i t j u um ' ' ■ m m^m'mmBBratrKe' 
German rcsist^uice' 
. Kerc till noon. 
Port Arthur'' 
German Resistance 
BeretillS.30, 
\ 
To LaBassee 
both of these very superior numbers and of a 
threatened envelopment upon the Monday took 
place during the darkness. Before dawn the 
arrival of reinforcements permitted of a counter- 
attack, which was partially successful, and by 
daylight the w^hole of the village was recaptured 
and the greater part of the trenches in front of 
it, from which the British had been driven, were 
also reduced. 
Such is the mere recital of the event. St. 
Eloi, just south of Ypres, has been carried by the 
Wurtembergers and inunediately recovered by the 
iBritish. The line which ran in and re-entered 
behind Neuve Chapelle now bulges into a slight 
salient in front of it, and the ground gained at 
tlie maximum width of thisbelt (the fighting w\as 
against the Bavarians and the remnant of the 
Guard) is about 1,500 yards. 
But the character of the action is of much 
greater moment than its scale, and it is to an 
analysis of that character .we shall next turn. 
We note, in the first place, how mucli 
depended in it upon the. superiority in the air 
which the British forces have established for 
themselves. 
The deluging of tlie enemy trenches with 
heavy shell, which was the characteristic of the 
opening phase, and which was designed in exacE 
co-ordination with and upon the same general 
tactic as the plan adopted by the French a 
hundred miles further along the line, had only 
the value which it had because the positions 
of the enemy trenches had been exactly dis- 
covered and marked, and because at the begin- 
ning of such a deluge the machines in the air 
could send word of the first effects of the fire. 
Anyone who knows that foggj', ungrateful, 
marshy land of Flanders, Avhere every debate 
of Western Europe has been fought out for 
a thousand j'ears, knows what its sky and air 
commonly mean in the winter months and how an 
observation from above must, upon most days, be 
conducted with peculiar hardihood and with a 
peculiar sense of mastery over an enemy's power 
to reply whether from the ground or from the 
sky. 
But this superiority in air work which the 
British have now finallj', and for a long time past, 
achieved is further proved in another indirect 
and most interesting fashion. 
Before the successful and violent attack upon 
Neuve Chapelle was launched there was an enor- 
mous concentration of material. One does not pro- 
duce an. artillery hell of that sort from heavy pieces 
4* 
