In these interiors, until yesterday, close to the windows, with their little leaded panes, the placid ladies of Ypres wove in traditional calm their arabesques of lace. Their agile and sapient fingers produced white, flowery patterns that were as light as foam. For Ghent had taken from Ypres the industry of its linens, England that of its cloths, Paris that of its damasks, but no country had had the power, the placidity, the patience, and the taste to imitate its lace. Here the old industry lived, modest and silent. The mediæval city slept its great sleep amidst the tumult of the outside world as if the Kasteelgracht and the Majoorgracht, the wide canals which encircle it and were its gates, were enchanted and had isolated it from swift innovations. * * * * * In the war between Germany and the Halles of Ypres, in the war between Germany and the Library of Louvain, between Germany and the cathedral of Rheims, it is not possible to remain neutral. CHAPTER IX THE WINTER CAMPAIGN The first purpose of the Allies' scheme of military envelopment was to arrest and eventually to break the German offensive. Even after their losses in the battle of Ypres and the concurrent Battle on the Yser, the Germans still had on the West a superiority in numbers. The shock of those defeats was bitter. That is sufficiently proved by the proclamation which soon afterwards the Emperor of Germany issued to his troops. A cruel hour, he told them, had struck for them and for the Fatherland. He exhorted them to meet it with a greater determination. For a time Germany became a land of mourning. The German newspapers of this date, the later part of November, appeared day by day with pages of private obituary advertisements. The dream of conquest, except as regarded Belgium, was shattered, and it was realised that even to keep that country as a reward of what were called the sacrifices made, Germany would have to face a struggle to the death with Powers whose united superiority was now only too manifest. That mood, however, soon passed, and feeling, directed at the outset of the war against Russia, was with a redoubled intensity excited against England. The reasons are not far to seek. Extraordinary efforts had become necessary, not only on the East to repair the disaster of the Battle of the Vistula, and to furnish General von Hindenburg with the forces for his great "drive" towards Warsaw, but to make good the wastage on the West.