The battle of Ypres, the determined operations of the Germans for the capture of Calais, is the other critical moment in the history of the World War, when Russia once more brought heavy sacrifices to the common cause of the Allies. Ludendorf, in describing these difficult days for the Germans, again makes use, we regret to say, of the same unsavory expedient he used in describing the first engagements in East Prussia. Thus, for instance, he asserts that when he was defeated in October, 1914, at Warsaw, the Russians had 1,200,000 men,[4] while he had only one German army--the 9th--and one Austrian army--the 1st. As a matter of fact, the Russians were opposed, on the entire front, by five Austrian armies and two German armies--the 8th and the 9th--by more than 70 divisions approximating about 1,200,000 men. The Russians, having left only a small force to oppose four Austrian armies, fell with their three armies upon two enemy armies, one German and one Austrian, near Warsaw. With a numerical superiority of one and a quarter to one the Russians defeated the Germans, and threw them back across the whole of Poland to Posen. The Germans saved themselves on that occasion only by destroying the railroads back of them and by burning the bridges. The significance of the operations at Warsaw and in Galicia in October, and beyond Warsaw in November, 1914, is to be seen from Ludendorf's own story. Referring to a conversation he had with General Falkenhayn, who at that time was the main leader of all German Army operations, he writes in his memoirs: "At the end of October, 1914, General von Falkenhayn summoned me to Berlin.... _Gen. von Falkenhayn spoke hopefully of the attack near Ypres_, and wanted to defer further decisions." But already in the beginning of November, i. e., a few days after this conversation, the operations of the Russian Armies in Galicia, the Posen territory, and on the East Prussian front, greatly diminished the hopefulness of Falkenhayn and _compelled him to slacken the pressure against the Allies at Ypres and to transfer large forces from France to the Russian front--to the detriment of the offensive against Ypres_. Ludendorf himself figures these reinforcements which arrived from France in the middle of November, and, consequently, must have left there in the beginning of November, at 225,000 men. There were 4 corps with 2 infantry divisions, which Ludendorf figures at 225,000 men. Besides, Ludendorf mentions right here the arrival of Richthofen's Cavalry Corps, Hollen's Cavalry Corps, the 2nd and 4th Cavalry Divisions. Still earlier Ludendorf mentions that the newly formed 25th Reserve Corps and the 15th Reserve Corps were dispatched to East Prussia. And finally, in still another place, we can find in Ludendorf's account a number of other new divisions which had been sent to the Russian front instead of to Ypres.