A considerable change in the general arrangement of the Army was carried out early in August. This consisted in the formation of a third army under General Monro, an officer whose rapid rise was one of the phenomena of the war. This army consisted of the Seventh Corps (Snow) and the Tenth Corps (Morland). The rearrangement would be of little {166} importance, since most of the units have already been mentioned, but it was accompanied by a large extension of the British line. Up to this date it had joined the French about six miles south of the La Bassée Canal. Now the Tenth French Army (Foch) was left in position before Lens, and the British took up the line again upon the farther side of them, carrying it from the south of Arras to the neighbourhood of Albert, thus adding a dozen miles or so to the British region, and bringing the total to about fifty--a small proportion, it is true, but a very vital sector, and the one most free from any natural feature of protection. There was at this time an ever-thickening flow of reinforcements, as well as of munitions, from across the Channel, but the new movements of Germany in the Near East made it very evident that their use would not be confined to the lines of Flanders. It was towards the end of this summer that the length of the war and the increasing pressure of the blockade began to interfere with the food-supplies of the German people. It had been pretended that this was so before, but this was an attempt by the German Government to excite sympathy in neutrals. There is no doubt, however, that it was now a fact, and that it continued to slowly tighten from month to month, until it finally became extreme. There are few Britons who feel satisfaction at such a method of warfare, but so long as armies represent the whole manhood of a nation, it is impossible to make any provision by which food shall reach the civilian and not the soldier. It is always to be borne in mind that the British, with an almost exaggerated chivalry, considering the many provocations which they had received, did not exert their full power of blockade {167} for many months. It was only when Germany declared the British Islands to be blockaded as from February 18, 1915, and that food-ships would be destroyed, that the British in retaliation, by an Order of Council in March of the same year, placed German food upon the index. Thus by one more miscalculation the Germans called down trouble upon their own heads, for whereas their decree proved to be worthless, that of Britain was ever more effective. It is curious to remember that only forty-five years before, the Germans, without one word of protest from any of their people, had starved the two millions of Paris, while Bismarck, in his luxurious rooms at Versailles, had uttered his brutal jest about roast babies. They are not so very slow--those mills of God!