October ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
the Broodse^•ndc cross road>), while between Passchendaele 
\-illage itself and the British line at its nearest point there was a 
distance of rather more than 3,000 yards. This last -action 
has changed the line as follows : 
On the southern end. upon the Menin Road, the British 
line has got right down the further slope to tlie outskirts of the 
village of Gheluvelt. It has carried the whole of the bank ifi 
front of Zonnebekc. seized the ridge at the Broodseynde cross 
roads, and occupied tlie summit all along the Paaschendaele 
road to a point 1,000 yards up that road northwards and a 
little short of the passage of the Roulers Railway across 'the 
ridge near the hamlet of Nieuweniolen. 1-urther north, the spur 
called the Abraham Heijihts by the British army, has been 
seized ; also the ruins of the hamlet of Gravenstafel and those 
of the village of PoelcappcUc some two miles east of Lange- 
marck. The general result is, first, the complete clearing 
of the southern pillar, the heights in front of Gheluvelt 
and the highest part of the ridge. The summits here were 
seized when the first blow w;is delivered a fortnight ago, 
and now the slopes on the far side are securely in British 
liands. In the centre the change is still more striking. 
There 'the Broodseynde Cross roads in the very centre of 
the ridge are held and passed, and from this ])oint, though 
it is but 50 or (jo feet above the plain, one sees all I'landers. 
It is a clean view broken only by the isolated lump of 
Moorsledc. which is of the same height as the Passchendaele 
Ridge and about two miles from its summit. The command 
of Broodseynde connotes direct. obseiA'ation of a sort which 
had not yet b6en seized since the present actions began, 
and which mav be compared to that obtained when the \'imy 
Ridge was carried last spring. There now remains nothing sa\e 
the northern edge of the ridge on which' tlie ruins of Passchen- 
daele are perched to be occupied. Meanwhile another 
feature in the advance which will not be missed is the serious 
increase of the salient now driven into the German positions. 
That . salient cannot become much deeper . without com- 
pelling the enemy to modify his line and that is. of course, 
the object of the wlK)le nlo^•emeut. If or when British forces 
seize the whole ridge and the slopes upon the eastern side, the 
strong defensive position vvJiich the enemy has ultimately 
depended upon the whole of this autumn with the forest of 
Hoiithulst as its northern pillar and the heights of Gheluvelt 
as its southern one, will have gone. To whafkind of retire- 
ment the enemy may later be comi)elled is a matter of 
conjecture save to those who have the advantage of seeing 
the photographs token by aircraft behind the enemy's lines. 
The French Press has given us the mention of a new line 
which, it seems, is l)eing prepared as far back as Rouhrs, 
btit one has [only to look at the map of \\ estern Belgium 
as a whole to see the gravt- political and perhaps strategical 
imp<5rtancc of compelling a retirement here and to under- 
stand why the enemy has fought so very hard to maintain 
the heights, which he is gradually losing: 
Importance of Lille , ' 
The great importance of Lille, both politically anel-strategi- 
cally is now familiar to everyone. It is the neCessan' pivot 
upon which any further retirement to the south of that town 
must be conducted, and its long occupation has formed a 
political asset of the gravest sort. To the north pst,end and 
north of Ostend Zebrugge have a value to the 'enemy which 
onlv those can estimate who are acquainted with the maritimi; 
problem, which I do not pretend to understand, Bitt it is 
universally granted that the possession of this strip'''of the 
Belgian coast is of spt>cial advantage to the enemy' arid a' corre- 
sponding weakness to ourselves. Now if the salient in 
Flanders be much further advanced, if it is true thatJthe line 
in the neighbourhood of Roulers is being prepared as 'the next 
defensive chain of positions, the position of Lille' becomes 
difficult, and so does that of Ostend. We must not build too 
much upon a mere geographical consideration of th(ssort and. 
of course, the mere occupation of the ridge would ru)t in itself 
pro\'okc a retirement, it does not represent so proHt)unced a 
salient as all that. But even if the salient were pushed right 
on to the plain beyond, the war has taught us, what 'extra- 
ordinary positions can lie clung to bv the moflern defensive. 
On the older principles anyone would havesaicl, for instance, 
that the breaking of the Austrian line on the mountain plateau 
north of (jorizia would have in\'olved a general retirement to 
the south and perhaps even have uncovered Trieste. Under 
modern conditions nothing of the sort has happened. Half the 
plateau has been lost, but the lino to the south stands as 
securely as though no such movement had taken place. What 
is perhaps of more inip)ortance is the very serious losses in- 
flicted upon the enemy by this action. These lo?Ses Were far 
graver than those of the two previous actions, and the cause 
of so exceptional a casualty' list was the fact that the enemy 
was caught by the British advance in the act of preparing a 
great counter-attack. 
Three German divisions had been concent^ated during 
\\ ednesday night for a counter-attack to be delivered 
apparently a couple of hours after the moment for which the 
British advance was planned. There was here apparent the 
drawback to the new defensi\'e tactic which the enemy has 
developed in the course of the late summer and autumn. 
Thepolicy of holding the front line with as few men as possible, 
of depending upon isolated strong points, of organising the 
craters and abandoning the older trench system, saved both 
men and material whenever the immense superiority of the 
British artillery asserted itself. But it compelled the enemy 
to increase his depth and to mass both more slowly and further 
off for his counter-attacks. They lost by this in their power 
to surprise and correspondingly increased the power of their 
opponents to surprise, and such a surprise they suffered upon 
this Wednesday morning. F.veryone of these three divisions 
or, at any rate, of their attacking troops crowded on the narrow 
front between the Reutelbeek and the neighbourhood of 
Zonnebeke was caught first b\' the British barrage and next 
by the advancing infantri^'. The German attack was planned 
for six o'clock. It was organised upon a two-mile front from 
near Zonnebeke to tlie southern limits of the Polygon A^'ood, 
and its three divisions were in their order from north to 
south the l-'ovirth Guards Division, facing Zonnebeke ; 
south of this the 45th Reserve Division north of Polygon 
Wood, and (apparently) opposite Polygon Wood the i6th 
Division. The enemy put over a barrage at half-past 5 pre- 
paiatory to his attack. The British barrage opened shortly 
after, completely disarranged his plans and the British troops 
were right in the midst of his concentration before the surprise 
was fully appreciated. 
Details of the Attack 
The British advance was so far as one can judge from the 
correspondents in the following order : 
On the extreme left, north of Langemarck, Irish troops, 
Fusiliers, worked forward along the railway embankment 
through \-erv bad nxarsliy ground ; next to them on their right 
were troops from the Midland^!, who also had difficulty with 
the ground, but ncjne the. less tcnik and held the ruins of Poel- 
cappelle. To the right or south of these again New Zealand 
troops carried Gravensta,fel. antl the low spur called the 
Abraham Heights. Somewhere where the Midlanders and the 
New Zealanders touched there was a particularly difficult 
piece of marshy ground on either side of the Stroombeck and 
one of thepointsbf resistance most remarked was the German 
machine gun position in the ruins H)f Wellington Farm. 
This was carried, however, and the line advanced as the sketch 
map shows, some hundred yards beyond. In the centre of 
tlie region of Zonnebeke arid down to Polygon Wood where 
the German attack was to have been delivered, were the 
Australians, and to their right again, from Polygon Wood to the 
Menin Road, were English West Country troops and more 
Midlanders. But I am not clear whether tliere were not 
l':nghsh troops also to the north of this with the Australians, 
■ for I note that one correspondent talks of English troops from 
the Midlands having carried Xdordemhoek, having difficulty 
with the resistance the enemy put up at Retaliation Farm. 
The German order of battle, apart from the three divisions 
just mentioned, who were to have taken part in the great 
attack, consisted, on the north of the Zonnebeke region and 
apparcntlv opp(Jsite the New Zealanders, of the 20th Division 
recently brought West from the Russian front, and beyond 
them to the. nurth. again the loth Ersatz. To the south, 
beyond Polygon Wood there was. on the German, side, a 
curious situation. The German line here, up to the Menin 
Road, seems to have been held l)y the iqth Division of Reserve 
recently brought west from the Russian front. But appar- 
ently thev were ])eing relieved at the very moment of the battle 
by the Stli Division. There was consequently very- great con- 
fusion ; prisoners from both divisions were taken freely and 
. the units appear to have got hoiH-lessly mixed. 
But for the matter, of that, confusion was the note of the 
. enemy's line almost everywhere after the first shock, arid 
particularly from Zonnebeke southwards where the (rerman 
attack was to have been delivcMed had not the Bjitish fore- 
stalled ^ it. The considerable concentration of men here, 
caught first b>' the biurrage and then by the advancing iri- 
' fantry*. accounting as we ha\'e seen for the very hcavj losses 
and also for the comi)lete disarrangement of the enemy's plans. 
When the enemy re-acted, his main effort wti-s made, as 
might have been exjx;cted, against the southern wing between 
the Polygon Wood and the Menin Road where he has always 
thrown" in the greater part of his strength. There were no 
less than six counter-attacks in this region between three 
o'clock and dark im the afternoon of the first day's fighting, 
the Thursday, and another strong counter-attack on the morn- 
ing of the Friday after very- heavy shelling all night. 'The 
total result of this pressure exercised upon the British 
