September 27, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
It is wooded and marshy. The artificial water of what . 
was once the Herciithage chateau has spread under the . 
shell fire (and probably also through the artificial work of 
the enemy) into big sheets of shallow nuid and water, 
which the army has called the " Dumbarton Lakes,' and the 
clay soil of the^ woods has been puddled into an impossible 
sort of putty. This mere surface difficulty applies to, all this 
region, far to the north and far to the south, but when it is 
coupled with the obstacle of wood, the complexity of local 
contours and the marshy ponds formed by the artificial 
water of the Herenthage chateau, it forms the strongest 
defensive^part by far upon the line. 
Everything that was done to the north and to the south of 
this point upon the Menin-Ypres road was done in order to 
make the capture of the southern portibn certain, and that 
capture was completely effected. It was the work of 
troops from the North of England, among whom are 
quoted particularly the Durham men. and was concluded 
in the four hours between the dawn and the mid-morning of 
Thursday last, September 20th. 
The weather was, as usual, adverse; after a period 
of drv air. and fairly good visibility (but high wind) came 
rain in the night before the attack, beginning at about nine 
o'clock in the evening. But the rain lifted before dawn, 
and though the going was very muddy and difhcult 
the plan was fulfilled" in all its details and with perfect 
success. All the southern pillar of the German line 
fell into the hands of the advancing British, every objective 
upon, which they had fixed was held, the ruins of X'elsthoek 
were held and the straggling hamlet along the road marked by 
the rubbish of the Kntintje inn was reached. This lump of 
high land terminates in a 55 ft. contour which makes a fairly 
clearly defined though slight escarpment upon the eastern 
extremitv of the woods and overlooking the ruins of Gheluvelf.' 
This ridge the British troops have christened ," Tower Hamlets."" 
Onc,> that eastern escarpment of the low h.nght was in British 
hands the southern pillar of the ultimate Passchendaele position 
was won. ' 
It is no wonder that the most, violent efforts were made to 
recover the lost ground in this region. Of those efforts we 
have had from various correspondents detailed accounts. 
The late afternoon of the day was full of these counter- 
attacks, as was the whole of Friday, the 21st, and the chief 
of them would seem to^iave been that directed against the heart 
ofthe captured position — that is along theMenin road — by the 
ifith Bavarian Divi.sion. But the counter-attacks were so 
well nourished and succeeded each other so rapidly far to the 
north and south of this decisive point that we are not certain 
whether the attempt , of ^the i6th Bavarian Division was 
really the chief effort or no. In any case the destruction of 
this covmter-attack, like that of so many others, was very 
largely caused by the superiority enjoyed by the British in the 
W-_ r,h£-atWf^ 
Xktatted TTUxp showiM^ contimrs ofthe 
■Southern TcUar axmecC by BriUsh 
on iO°'Jiptcmber 1917 . 
Approxima.U mw tuit aftirtht vtcOiy aj 
detadtd bv BriCisli CarresponcUnti' - 
air. T^e massing of troops for the counter-attack was 
stoppecl.'they were bombed from the air while they were still 
in column and were already shaken before they came under the 
field artillery' and rifle fire of their opponents. 
It -is iremarked by the correspondents that the counter- 
attacks of the enemy were necessarily delayed by the with- 
drawal of his re-action troops (as of his guns) further behind the 
front line than was the case in the past, and this in its turn 
is due to the increasing superiority of the British artillery. 
It is an obvious method to meet an increasing superiority 
of bombardment by holding your front line as thinly as possible, 
but everything in tactics, as in engineering, 'is a com- 
promise of forces, and what you gain in the sparing of men 
immediately under the worst strain, you lose in the ability 
for prompt re-action. So far as the accounts afforded us go 
not one of , the counter-attacks'along all the eight miles achieved 
its object, and certainly those directed against the principal 
point upon the Menin road were thoroughly broken and proved 
futile. , 
If we consider the larger aspects of the affair, and ask 
ourselves what it means for the future, we note first and 
particularly, that point with which I began, that the 
southern pillar of the main ultimate defensive position, 
the Passchendaele Ridge, is gone. That position is now 
threatened in flank. It is not practically overlooked. 
The whole ridge, as will be seen by turning to Map 
I, continues for more than five miles upon ' the 50 
metre, contour, and even the. highest points of the 
group of woods and hummocks seized by the British last 
Thursday, do not dominate its general line by as much as 30 
feet. But the point is that the fixed area upon which the 
southern end of this defensive position reposed has been lost 
to the enemy. Any considerable fiu"ther progress down to- 
wards. the plain at this southern end — as, for instance, the 
occup"ation of the ruins of Gheluvelt and the lower ground 
beyahd, turns the whole ridge. It was with, this object that 
the attack was launched, and that object, the foundation of 
the future success itself, achieved. Apart from this general 
consideration of ground we must consider another aspect of 
the action, which is the proof it affords that the last tactical 
device, adopted by the defensive ,has been mastered. Isolated 
concrete armaments of machine gun positions — what are 
called by the British army " pill boxes " and by the 
Germans, from the initials of their description in German, the 
mabii's — have gone down before new methods designed against 
them. 
What- those methods are we must not know, but it is 
clea'r''that they have proved once more the universal truth 
running through all warfare that the mere defensive, however 
ingenious or novel, is a prelude to defeat. The offensive 
will always ultimately, have the better of it if it is 
indefinitely prolonged. In this war it is a matter of 
days or weeks to discover the jiew offensive device which, 
destroys the value of the new defensive device. In earlier 
wars It has been a matter of months or years. But the rule 
is "always the same, and will necessarily always be the same. 
He that is permanently and necessarily upon the defensive is 
defeated. In other words, the defensive in war means nothing 
. save .time for preparation of a further orjensive or, if a further 
offensive be impossible, the gaining of time for some political 
transaction. 
The just use of defensive devices with this object is half 
the story~ of successful war ; but the defensive art without 
any prospect of comparative accession of force, political or 
military, is the acknowledgment of defeat. That statement 
is an absolute in all military history, admitting of no qualifi- 
cations whatsoever. 
Jsow in the present circumstances the prolongation of the 
Gerrhan defensive does not aim at a comparative accession 
of force. The Allied force has far more in reserve than the 
Central Empires. The German defensive is therefore 
clearly based upon some hope that political aid will come where 
military aid is no longer available. It is clearly based upon 
the gamble- a gamble unfortunately legitimate from time 
to time when a wave of depression runs over the Allied 
countries, or when one of their Governments weakly permits 
the advocacy of negotiation — that if the defence of the besieged 
is sutticiently prolonged, the determination of the besiegers 
to make good will fail : that the political structure behind the 
Allied armies will break down either by a quarrel between 
their ^component governing powers, or by the domestic and 
internal disintegration of their social forces. That is the 
chief danger before us. On the military side the problem is 
already solved, and this last action proves this theme in its 
own way more clearly even than did the preceding, though 
complete, successes of \"imy and of Messines. 
NVith regard to the " Pill Boxes," we should do ill to regard 
thefh, even now that they are. mastered; as anything new in 
principle and therefore baffling. 
.„i\s,the defensive grows weaker iamen there invariably comes 
