The magnitude of the movements of troops and material, as well as the need for ensuring rapid transfer in all directions, have compelled the creation of all means of communication to alleviate the existing shortage--roads, tracks and railways of standard or narrow gauge. The execution of such work is attended by great difficulty where the soft nature of the soil gives an unreliable foundation. You may imagine also how complicated the task is when foot-bridges, in many cases several hundred yards long, have to be carried right across the floods in full view of the enemy, to give access to the most advanced positions. In conclusion, we may mention among the most important undertakings the vast network of telegraph and telephone wires, with which the whole of the occupied zone has to be covered in order to inter-connect the numberless centres and keep them in touch with the posts close to the enemy lines. * * * * * * Topographically, the sector which the Belgian Army has had to organise and defend is certainly one of the worst. This will be denied neither by the British units which this year occupied the Nieuport district nor by the French units linked up with the Belgians near Boesinghe and Steenstraat. Several descriptions have been written of the peculiar appearance presented by this low-lying, perfectly flat, region between the Franco-Belgian frontier, the sea coast and the Yser, and known as the "Veurne-Ambacht." It is a monotonous plain of alluvial soil, which centuries of toil have slowly won from the waters. As far as the eye can see stretch water-meadows, which serve as pasturage for large numbers of cattle. That they may be flooded during the winter and drained again later in the year, these water-meadows are surrounded by irrigation ditches three to four yards wide--"vaarten" or "grachten," as they are called locally. A glance at the Staff map reveals so great a number of these ditches that the district appears to be nothing more than a huge marsh. As a matter of fact, the country is subdivided into innumerable lots by this inextricable tangle of ditches, and looks like a huge fantastic chess-board. With the approach of winter the "vaarten" become brimful of water; and at any time of the year a short spell of rain makes them overflow and transform the ground into a morass. During the happy times of peace the only shelter to be found on the plain was that of the villages or hamlets, their houses as a rule grouped round a slated steeple, and of the isolated farms whose red roofs relieved the monotony of the landscape with bright splashes of colour. Apart from Nieuport and Dixmude it could boast but one town of any importance--Furnes the dismal, which German shells soon reduced to deserted ruins.