CHAPTER PAGE I. THE CRISIS OF OCTOBER 9 II. HOW THE CRISIS WAS MET 20 III. THE EVE OF YPRES 34 IV. THE BATTLE OF YPRES--FIRST PHASE 44 V. THE BATTLE OF YPRES--SECOND PHASE 58 VI. THE BATTLE OF YPRES--THE CRISIS 81 VII. THE BATTLE OF YPRES--FINAL PHASE 104 VIII. THE BATTLE ON THE YSER 120 IX. THE WINTER CAMPAIGN 144 X. NEUVE CHAPELLE 169 CHAPTER I THE CRISIS OF OCTOBER At the beginning of October there had arisen in the Western campaign a crisis with which it needed the utmost skill and resource of the Allied generals to grapple. Both the nature of this crisis, and the necessity of reticence concerning it at the time, ought to be made clear if we are to appreciate either the momentous character of the Battle of Ypres, or the profound effect which that glorious feat of the Allied arms has had upon the fortunes of this War. Into France at the beginning of the War the Germans threw their mighty Expeditionary Force of twenty-eight army corps, disposed into eight armies acting in co-operation. With the circumstances under which that line of armies, in part held on the French fortified frontier, was compelled to turn from Paris to the valley of the Marne and was there defeated, I have dealt in "The Battle of the Rivers." For the reasons there set out the original objective, the seizure of Paris, was seen by the Germans when the army of General von Kluck reached Creil, to have become impossible until the French fortified frontier was in their hands. Their armies were directed upon the Marne with that aim. In the manoeuvre they exposed the vulnerable point of their line, its right flank, to the powerful onset, which General Joffre, who had foreseen the situation, at once launched against it. Defeated on the Marne, the Germans lost the military initiative--the power to decide upon their movements and to compel the enemy to conform to them. To the soldier the initiative is the practical embodiment of military superiority. It is the first great step to victory. In every war the struggle has been to seize and to hold it. More than in any war has that been the motive in this. Campaigning with armies, not only vast in point of numbers, but dependent upon a huge, varied, and costly machinery of destruction, transport, and supply, has made victory more than ever hang upon this power to direct their complex organisation to the desired end.