LAND & WATER 
October ii, 191 7 
Cjje Wlar 
Haig's Third Blow 
By Hilaire Belloc 
ON Thursday last, October 4th, Sir Douglas Haig 
delivered the third of those successful blows, each 
with its strictly limited objectives, which are at once 
mastering the Passchendaele Ridges and wearing 
down the (}erman forces opposed to them. Again we note 
the rapidity \vith which the preparation for the action was 
made. The first use of the new tactic was made upon Sep- 
temlier 26th. The interval between the first and the second 
blow was five davs, and the interval lietween the second 
and the third seven. Sui^h rapidity of preparation is a hew i 
thing in this war and is of very good augury for the future. 
Tiie line seized by the British forces at the end of the 
second blow, that delivered upon \\'ednesday, September 26th, 
and consolidated upon Thursday, September 27th, ran from 
well in front of J-angemarck through the middle of the rulni 
of Zonnebeke, covered the Polygon Wood on the eas-terr 
boundaries of which the new British posts were established 
and further south crossed the .Moniri Road along the 55 metrt 
Contour, including the whole of the Tower Hamlets Ridge 
That hne, it will be- remembered, eorresponded roughly, at 
its southern end, to the old third German trench line, no 
longer held as a trench line, but organised in a string or 
rather chequer of blockhouses— organised waters and ruins. 
As regards the Passchendaele Ridge, the seizing of which 
is the immediate object of these successive steps, what had 
already been accomplished was the complete capture of its 
southern pillar, the approach at Zonnebeke to a point about 
a thousand yards from the simmiit of the ridge (marked by 
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