April I 8 , 1 9 I 8 
Land 6c Water 
maintenance of the Messines Ridge was of the greatest 
consequence to all that followed. 
Meanwhile, in the plain below, Armentieres, more and more 
threatened as Quast's troops over the river spread eastward 
and von Arnim's troops attacked westward, was being 
evacuated as rapidly as could be (it was full of gas) before 
disaster should befall it. The evacuation was far from 
cbmpleted before the place was virtually surrounded ; for 
the enemy claimed the surrender therein of 3,000 men and 
the General Officer commanding them. 
During this same day — the second day of the battle, 
Wednesday, the loth — the enemy also crossed at Estaires, 
and was fighting northward and westward from that town. 
He had tried hard to get further elbow-room westward by 
taking Lestrem ; had held it for a moment, but lost it again. 
He would seem, then, by the evening of the second day 
— Wednesday, the loth — to have been upon the line indicated 
on the map : the second line in front of Steenwerke and 
Nieppe Village, beyond Estaires, holding part of Ploegsteert 
Wood, just clinging to ^he eastern slopes of Messines, missing 
Wytschaete, and so round to Hollebeke. 
On Thursday, April nth, it was apparent by mid-morning 
that the momentum of the attack was being diverted and in 
places held. Though there is naturally complete silence 
upon the rapidity and number in which reinforcements were 
pushed up to tlie British Une, their effect had begun to be 
felt, and that although the enemy seeing what a gate he had 
obtained through the defensive zone, and how thoroughly 
he' had obtained (though upon a comparatively narrow front) 
a war of movement, had for at least thirty hours past begun 
to call up from the south and elsewhere further divisions. 
Up to this moment — Thursday, April nth — About 16 
German divisions had already been identified, counting the 
four from von Arnim's army, which had struck against the 
Messines Ridge (among which four may be quoted the first 
two to attack, the 49th Reserve German Division and the 
17th). But before the next three days were oyer the enemy 
more than doubled this feeding in of divisions. He reached, 
as we shall see, by Sunday night the total of well over 30, 
the latter half of which were mainly spent in attempting 
with increasing difficulty to advance the line attained, a 
result only effected — and that imperfectly — on his extreme 
left beyond Estaires. 
The end of that Thursday — the third day of the battle — 
found the enemy just north of Estaires and Steenwerke, 
holding all the ruins of Ploegsteert, and perhaps half-way 
between that village and Neuve Eghse, and most of Ploeg- 
steert Wood ; but they had made no further impression 
upon the Messines Ridge, though once again there had been 
a tremendous assault upon it, and once again the enemy 
had been thrown out by the 9th Division, which still stood 
there maintaining the crest. 
On the next day — Friday, the 12th — probably by the 
arrival of considerable new forces, the 'enemy enlarged himself 
upon the north by a crescent as much as a mile and a half in 
depth at its deepest part, and achieved the very real success 
of pushing westward to Merville ; whence, as we shall see, 
he was to push southward and try to turn B6thune. The 
crescent by which he advanced on the north brought him 
from his positions in front of Neuve Eglise to a fluctuating 
and violently contested front not far from Bailleul Station ; 
thence round between Old and New Berquin, and so just 
including Merville to the river line. The importance of this 
extension westward, including Merville, was that it turned 
the stoutly defended line of that little obstacle the Lawe, 
and therefore for the first time seriously threatened Bethune. 
This will be clear from looking at the line upon the sketch- 
map wliich indicates the position upon the evening of Friday 
last. That line may be seen still to cover Givenchy and the 
straggling hamlet of Locon, but the line of the brook is 
abandoned, and the enemy is facing right down upon Bethune 
from the north. It goes without saying that a huge projec- 
tion of this sort, curiing round a strongly held post like 
Givenchy, would be very perilous to any advancing force, if 
there were at the right moment sufficient bodies of opponents 
to press hard into the neck of the salient — that is, from the 
Givenchy region north-eastwards — and so threaten its 
existence. But it is clear that the enemy, when he thus 
Hooded westward into Merville and then turned southward 
towards Bethune, still took for granted, and had a right to 
take for granted, his continued numerical superiority. He 
was in again, as he had been a fortnight before, on the Somme, 
for all he was worth, though upon a smaller scale. By the 
night of this fourth day, Friday, the enemy claimed 20,000 
prisoners and 200 guns. 
Upon Saturday the gravest enemy success, so far as the 
still-important point of Bethune is concerned, was registered. 
The enemy entered (but did not pass) Locon, and just reached 
the projecting curve of the B6thune Canal. If the British 
Hne still at that moment held Givenchy, a point on which 
I have no information at the moment of writing, the German 
thrust southward on this extraordinary bulge must have 
reached its utmost limits of stability. 
In every other part of the field the advance was held. 
Though the enemy was now wholly in possession of Ploeg 
steert Wood, and even got into Neuve Eglise, he was thrown 
out of the latter place. He could not push, during the 
Saturday, Beyond the neighbourhood of the railway at 
Bailleul Station, which railway he failed to reach or to cross 
at that point. He just passed the railway somewhere in 
front of Meterem ; thence south-eastward he was much 
where he had been before, between Old and New Berquin, 
and close on the former, and feeling the eastern edges of the 
big Nieppe Forest. The whole effect of that Saturday on 
the shape of the front was slight. There seemed to be taking 
place what had taken place on the Somme — a gradual banking 
up of the flood. 
All the next day — last Sunday, April 14th — he was fighting 
furiously to increase this front, by however little, but the 
resistance grew stronger hour by hour, and he on that day 
achieved nothing appreciable to affect the future. He still 
stood, when night fell, upon the line which rims from Holle- 
beke to just the southern end of the Messines Ridge, thence 
in front of Wulverghem, Neuve Eglise, Bailleul, Meterem 
—all of them s. f.ht glacis, or rising slopes, possessed by the 
British. Thence I is line curved round, no further advanced, 
in front of Merris, Old Berquin, the edges of the Nieppe 
Forest ; so west of Merville town, due south across the 
Clarence River until it touched the canal ; thence through 
the ruins of Locon, and so to Givenchy ; all the latter part 
making an extraordinary western bulge of impossible shape. 
The factors in the maintenance, extension, or redressing 
of this western bulge we cannot judge ; but apparently, for 
the moment, it can neither be used by them for further 
outflanking Bethune, and thus cutting the railway and 
increasing their area of movement, nor as yet by us in counter- 
stroke behind them. That western bulge upon its either 
face, northern and southern, looks at, threatens, and 
approaches the two vital railway points marked A and B 
upon map 4. The one A, that through which passes, or did 
pass, a direct supply of men and material from the south ; 
the other, B, that through which comes all railway supply 
in men and material from the channel ports, Boulogne, 
Calais, and Dunkirk, Their retention or loss the future 
must decide. , 
The Numerical Situation 
Such was the situation when the last dispatches were sent 
after the nightfall of Sunday last, April 14th. The line of 
that moment, as shown in those dispatches, is indicated 
upon the accompanying map. 
But meanwhile there came by Saturday evening news 
more interesting and perhaps more important than the 
description of the line in the war of movement thus restored. 
It concerned a point already touched on, the number of 
divisions which the Germans had already thrown into the mill. 
That is the heart of the matter. 
Up to that date — the evening of April 13th — there had 
been identified upon the fronts of the two offensives since 
March 21st no less than no German divisions, and of these 
no less than 40 had been thrown in twice. 
Now let us appreciate what this means. We are dealing 
with exactly twenty-four days, of which about two-thirds 
have been days of very violent fighting, and of which the 
remaining third have also seen very expensive and heavily 
pressed local attacks. We may say that we are dealing 
with the equivalent of twenty days of maximimi effort. 
During this period there has been a call upon the German 
Army to the equivalent of 150 divisions. He began with 
50 in line during the first two days of his great main offensive 
of March, the fifty grew to over 100 ; his second offensive, 
here in April, used in the first two days perhaps 16. The 
r6 grew in six days to something well over 30 — perhaps to 40. 
He is putting stuff through the mill at the very maximum 
rate. He is giving divisions much less than half the old 
average time to rest in between two appearances on the 
l>attleneld. He has used his units at more than three times 
the rate of their use during the longer drawn battles of the 
last two years. In other words, he is straining his power of 
endurance after a fashion which we may represent as multi- 
plied by two or three times the fashion of any earlier period 
— of Verdun, Champagne, or the Somme. Tlie whole thing 
is a violent confirmation of the thesis that he is out to win 
in a very short time, or to be decisively beaten. 
HiLAiRE Belloc. 
