This bird's-eye view and lack of information about the details do less than justice to the crucial battle, which Maud'huy under Foch's general direction waged against the Germans round Arras and both they and the French regard as one of the decisive incidents in the war. Clearly, if Von Buelow succeeded in breaking through towards Doullens or Béthune there was little to stop his reaching Boulogne or Abbeville, and the British Army would be first isolated and then driven into the sea. The struggle for Arras began on the 20th, after the Germans had secured an initial advantage by seizing Lens, and Von Buelow was given the Prussian Guard to achieve its capture. The climax was reached on the 24th in an attempt to take the important railway junction of Achicourt just south of the city. Arras itself was reduced almost to ruins by the German bombardment; but Maud'huy's men held good, and on the 26th were even able to take the offensive. The Germans were driven out of their most advanced positions, though they held the Vimy Ridge, and accepting defeat before Arras, transferred some of their best troops, including the Prussian Guards, farther north. Possibly this relinquishment was the worst of their tactical mistakes, but the higher commands on both sides had learnt the cost of persisting in attempts to break through, and Falkenhayn may well have thought it best to seek a weaker spot. Maud'huy's successful resistance made it possible for Smith-Dorrien's 2nd Corps to hold a line north of the La Bassée Canal, though not the line on which he had first come up against the Germans advancing from Lille. That formed a right angle, stretching north-east from Givenchy to Herlies and then north-west to Fauquissart; but on the 22nd his right was driven out of Violaines, and the salient had to be evacuated by withdrawal to a line in front of Givenchy, Festubert, and Neuve Chapelle. On the 27th Neuve Chapelle was taken by the Germans. A gallant attack by Indian troops, who had been brought up from Marseilles to assist Smith-Dorrien's tried and depleted corps, checked their advance on the 28th and drove them back into Neuve Chapelle; and another German attack was held before Festubert. Here Sir James Willcock's Indian Corps had a hard task for the next few days, and a breach in our lines on 2 November was only repaired by a desperate charge of the Gurkhas. The winter of northern France was to have more effect on their physique than German warfare on their moral, and after a final assault on Givenchy--one of the virgin pivots of the war in the West--on 7 November, the battle in front of the 2nd Corps subsided into an artillery duel. The fighting in front of Pulteney's 3rd Corps, which carried on the line from Smith-Dorrien's left towards Ypres, was overshadowed by the struggle round that city; but it had enough to do to maintain the connexion. Its hold on the left bank of the Lys north of Armentières was strenuously disputed; on the 20th the Germans