September 27, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
It is wooded and marshy. The artificial water of what . 
was once the Herenthage chateau lias spread under the ; 
shell fire (and probably also through the artificial work of 
the enemy) into big sheets of shallow mud and water, 
which the army has called the " Dumbarton LalceK,'-' and the . 
clav soil of the woods has been puddled into an impossible 
sort of putty. This mere surface difificulty 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 tlie 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 portion 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 verj' muddy and difticult 
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 \'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 
extremity of the woods and overlooking the ruins of Gheluvelt. 
This ridge the British troops have christened " Tower Hamlets." 
Onc.^ that eastern escarpment of the low h.^ight was in British 
hands the southern pillar of the ultimate Passchendaela position 
was won. 
It is no wonder that the most violent efforts ^ere made to 
recover the lost ground in this region. Of those efforts we 
have bad 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 have been that directed against the heart 
of th" captured position--that is along theMenin road— by the 
ifith Bavarian Division. 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 i6tji Bavarian Division was 
reallv the chief effort or no. In any case the destruction of 
this "counter-attack, like that of so many others, was very 
largely caused by the superiority enjoyed by the British in the 
X>eCatUd map Jhtnvuiff cotUmov of the 
■Southern TiUar camecL df- Brituti 
on 20'^SpUnUxr 1917 
Approximate new Unt afttr the vwCitry oj 
detailtd bv Brttisii.Q'rrespondenti' 
air. The massing of troops for • the counter-attack was 
stopped; they were bombed from the air while they were still 
in column and were already sliaken before they came under the 
field artillery and rifle fire of their opponents. 
It: is. remarked by the correspondents that the counter- 
attacks of the enemy were necessarily delayed by the with- 
drawal of hisrc-actiontroops(asof 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 tlie ability 
for prompt re-aftion. So far as the accounts afforded us go 
not one of the counter- attacksalong all the eight miles achieved 
its object, and certainly tliose 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 Easschendaele 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 jirea upon which the 
southern end of this defensive position reposed has been lost 
to the enemy. Any considerable further progress down to- 
wards the plain at this southern end — as, for instance, the 
occupation of the ruins of Gheluvelt and the lower ground 
beyond,. turns the whole ridge. It was with this object that 
the -attack was launched, and that object, the foundation of 
theluture success itself, achieved. .Apart from this general 
consideration of ground we must consider another aspect of 
the action, which is the proof it aft'ords that the last tactical 
device adopted by the defensiv^o 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 
clear 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 new offensive device which 
destroys tKe 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 alwaj's be the same. 
He that ix permanently and necessarilv upon the defensive is 
dejealid. In other words, the defensive in war means nothing 
, save -time for preparation of a further offensive 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 
anv prospect of comparative accession of force, political or 
military, is the acknovvledgment of defeat. Th.at statement 
is an absolute in all military history, admitting of no qualifi- 
cations whatsoever. 
Now in the present circumstances the prolongation of the 
German 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 liope tliat 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 — tiiat if the defence of the besieged 
is sufficiently 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 th(>ir social ., forces. That is the 
chief danger before us. (3n the military side the problem is 
already solved, and this last action proves this theme in its 
own way more clearly even tlian did the preceding, though 
complete, successes of \'tmy and of Messines. 
WitTi regard to the " Pill Boxes," we should do ill to regard 
therti, even now that they are mastered, as, anything new in 
principle and therefore baffling. , 
As the defensive grows weaker in men there invariably comes 
