June 14, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
its name to what height it reached. WTiitesheet Village (at 
"2 ") is the highst point— -85 metres above- the sea-; Messirtes' 
Village (at " i ") is 65. 
The W'hitesheet Ridge is again somewhat confused as an 
isolated hill by the high ground which joins it, as by a bridge, 
to the much higher Mount Kemmel ; and the opposing line 
of trenches, as they stood for 2| years before this recent- 
success, crossed this neck of high ground just under \\'hite- 
sheet Village. ■ 
In spite of this apparently confused character, the 
simplicity of the advantage given to the enemy by the 
possession of the ridge ana the still greater advantage now 
gained b\ the British from their conquest of it. will be easily 
apparent if we grasp tlic fact that it forms a series of perfect 
observation points, giving to those holding them a complete 
view over the approaches to Ypres on the one hand, and over 
the great plain of Lille upon the other. This essential line 
of observation was covered on the west for two and a half 
years by the German trench system which swung out in front 
of it hke a wall securing its possession to our enemy. Since 
last Thursday it is covered on the east by the new British 
trench system which seciu-es its possession to the A41ies. 
To appreciate this let us draw an imaginary line like that of 
the crosses upon Sketch I., following the highest points every- 
where. Such a line starts from beyond Hill 60, crosses the 
summit of that little elevation, runs south-westward over the 
saddle immediately below Hill 60 (where the railway and the 
canal used to cross the hills), and then goes up a long spur to 
the height of VVhitesheet at " 2." Thence it turns south- 
easterly again, nearly coincident with the main road from 
Armentiereh to Ypres, reaches the ruins of Messines at "i," and 
falls sharply down to the valley and the brook called the Douve. 
So distinguishing the crest we see how, during all these 30 
months and more, the enemy has held trenches which every- 
where covered this line of the highest points upon the ridge, 
and he was possessed, through his hold upon those highest 
l)oints, of a complete series ot observation posts commanding 
the whole of the Ypres salient and of the British trenches 
south of it. " He not only had the advantage (by the trace of 
his trenches) of lying to the south, upon the flank of the 
Ypres salient, and therefore of holding it under a converging 
hre, but he had direct and complete observation of all that 
passed within that salient and of all movement to and from it. 
If the \\'hitcsheet Ridge, however, had only had this local 
importance— that it made tiie liold of the Y'pres salient 
expensive and difficult-^its capture would have been of only 
local interest. It would riot have been the very considerable 
landmark in the offensive of 1917, which it will, as a fact, 
certainly prove. The great value of this successful opcra^ 
tion is not that it relieves the salient of Ypres (though this 
fact should not be neglected), but that it gives complete 
observation over tiie plain of the Tys, that is. over all the 
country which flanks Lille to the north. It is not conceivable 
tiiat an enemy retirement in the future could pivot upon any 
otlier point than Lille. Therefoie, to hold LUle to the last 
is essential to him ; but the flank guard of LUle, ori the north, 
so far as observation is concerned, was the VVhitesheet Ridge. 
Tlie inset on Sketch I. will show what I mean. With 
W'hitesheet Ridge in British hands, all the comparatively flat 
country north of Lille was for the hrst time under direct 
ubservation in the direction of' the. arrows in the inset. 
This plain, which the observers upon the ridge can now 
completely command, should be more famous in British 
history than it is. It is the sceite of another great action in 
which the discipline and tradition of the British Army 
played a great part, though the battle as a whole was lost. 
It is the field of Tourcoing, the first of the dgt^mining actions 
of 170)4. All the points famous in that conflict, Warneton 
and \Vervicq, where the Austrians crossed t^ie river top late; 
Meiiin, where the French General Staff came so near to 
capture, and twenty other sites, lie-spread out before the eyes 
of one who watches from Whitcsheet Hill, from Messines, or 
from anywhere from the lineof Sle l^eiglus up to Hill 60. 
The plain of the Lys, which is a sort of gateway into the 
low countries, is far, of course, frorh being a perfect level. 
The 40-metre contour— Everywhere in this country, the 
beginning of such elevations as catch the eye — is reached in 
several isolated points scattered over the view ; and the 
height just to the south of Wervicq (one of the most sharply 
contested positions in the battle of Tourcoing), as also that 
soutii of Menin, are rivals to the low summits of the ridge 
itself. But there is no Continuous interruption — no cover 
from the eye ; and the genefjii^cffect is that of a great flat 
over which one gazes almost" liuinterruptedly, though the 
It vation from which one cotnnia rids it is insignificant. 
In character the operation was of a sort with tiie two 
similar actions round Vrrdun in October and December of 
last \ear. There was the -.j)rolonged /Tcheai'sal, the usq of~ 
models, the concentration (it buniburdiiient upon a 'crrtit-' 
\)aratively narrow front, thu Cunsidciahlc taU; ul prisoners 
and the astonishingly light casualty list. 
"Indeed, the parallel may be carried further, for the two 
French actions were fought, as this one was fought in the 
main, for observation. 
The action has other characters which it is still worth our 
while to note in this phase of the w'ar. 
Everj'one has noted, for instance, the delaj' that the ^nemy 
was compelled to suffer between his loss of the positions and 
his counter-attack. More than 24 hours — more like 30 hours 
if we put the various accounts together — were allowed to 
pass between the German loss of the salient and the launchiiig 
of the first strong reaction. It is further noteworthy that 
this reaction completely failed. The enemy claims some few 
yards of sucress on the extreme north near Kleine Zillebecke, 
but it means nothing, for the note of the succeeding days has 
been the power of tlie British, while they consohdated their 
new positions, to thrust out forward yet" further to the east 
wherever they desired to cover some important point. They 
have done this just beyond Oostaverne and east and south-east 
of Messines. But the longer an exhausted enemy is com- 
pelled to delay his counter-attack, the more thoroughly the 
original assailants can dig themselves in, and the more 
costly and probably the more unsuccessful the counter- 
attack when it comes. The enemy did not thus delay (to his 
grievious disadvantage) of choice. He had no alternative. 
He had been hit too hard. 
A further character in the action which meets the eye at 
once is the way in which the attack everywhere reached the 
objectives assigned to it. This comes out most vividly upon 
the map, where one may see' the new British line stretched 
with almost mathematical exactitude, as the chord to thu 
arc which the old salient formed. 
Phase of Limited Objective 
But indeed we should always remember in this phase of th e 
war that a limited objective — the striking of successive powerful 
blows intended to shake more and more the front opposing to 
us and not the older, prolonged and (when it failed) highly 
expensive action (aiming at an immediate rupture in the 
wnole line) — is the character of all these new efforts. Tl ev 
succeed each other and they wll continue to succeed each 
other with the object of grinding down at once the numerical 
and the moral power of the increasingly-strained forces opposed 
to them. Wnen they are very successful, as was the case 
with this stroke between Y'pres and Armentieres, the contrast, 
between the superior offensive power and the sorely tried defen 
sive, bettt een the AlUed poWer to strike and the German power 
to parry, is startling. Tiie total of valid prisoners in British 
hands is not very much less than the total of all British 
casualties. The one is now given at somewhat over 7,000, 
and. the other at more than eignt and less than ten thousand, 
of whom some three-quarters were light casualties. The 
correspondents have, upon official information, told us that 
the enemy total losses are estimated at some 30,000. We 
know that he opposed to us six divisions upon this sector ; 
his. front was broken and the estimate is reasonable. 
'It ouglit to be generally appreciated that, as the result of 
this and former actions in the .\rtois and Champagne, the 
Allies have accounted in some eight weeks for about one- 
third of a million in enemy casualties ; that of these not far 
short of 70,000 are prisoners, and that in no single case during 
the successive phase of the Western offensive, has the enemy's 
counter-effort permanently succeeded. 
Opinion unhappily tends to fluctuate during what are 
called the " lulls." But if the public would see the, things as a 
whole and would always keep in mind the large lines of the 
problem, there would be no danger of such fluctuation. Upon 
the conclusion of this last exceedingly successful affair, we were 
still at a point in the year three weeks earlier than the be- 
ginning of the great oftensive of 1916. Of what the enemy 
had ready for his so-called strategic reserve at the beginning of 
the year (in January), much the greater part have disappeared 
in the casualty hsts cif the last eight weeks. His use of that 
strategic reserve for action elsewhere has been forbidden. The 
whole of his class 1918 has been drawn into the mill. There 
remains to him, for filling up gaps in aU the fighting that is 
to come this year, only Class iqig (which, in France, has not 
yet been touched) and his hospital returns. 
The situation with regard to the German Class 1919 (in 
all sonte half million boys of 18 and under) is known pretty 
accurately. About 70 per cent, of it have been under training 
in the depots now for some weeks, and it is intended to call 
the remaining 30 per cent, during the summer. It is hoped 
that the calling of them may be postponed as far as August. 
In general, then, we know the limits of the strain to which 
the enemy can be subjected upon the West, and those limits are 
tts nearly calculable as anything can be in which the vari- 
able factors of human will and human tenacity appear. Un- 
forlunateh-, as we all know, there is an element of uncertainty 
