In reckoning up these successive retirements from the point of view of military failure or success, or from the, perhaps, more interesting point of view of the relative fighting merits of those who retired and those who advanced, it is well to realize, from the start, the tremendous disparity in numbers and freshness of the opposing forces. The British commanders had, throughout this defence of Ypres, to ring the changes, as between reserve and firing line, with battalions, and sometimes even with companies. The German commanders could afford to do it with Army Corps. Day after day, the same British battalions, jaded, depleted of officers, and gradually dwindling into mere skeletons, were called upon to withstand the attacks of fresh and fresh troops. It was not merely that the Germans had the superiority in numbers on each occasion when they attacked. This, of course, must always be the privilege of the attacking side; but they had also the unspeakable advantage of being able at any time to direct a stream of fresh troops against any given part of our thin, weary, battered line. Thus on October 29th the XXVII. Reserve Corps attacked Kruiseik; on the 30th the XV. Army Corps attacked Zandvoorde; on October 31st and November 1st we had the XIII., XXIV., and II. Bavarian Corps attacking the line from the Menin road to Messines, to which on November 2nd must be added the XXVI. Army Corps. By this time, however, the 16th French Army had come up, and did something towards equalizing matters. But again on November 11th, fifteen fresh battalions of the Prussian Guard were brought up, and all that Sir Douglas Haig had to put in their path were the remnants of the same unconquerable battalions that had now been fighting, without intermission, for close on three months. ZANDVOORDE Following the loss of Kruiseik on the 29th came the loss of Zandvoorde on the 30th. The particular section in the line of defence known as the Zandvoorde trenches had from first to last been a death-trap, and had proved particularly expensive to the 3rd Cavalry Division, whose special privilege it had been to defend them. They curved round the south-east side of the village, following the contours of the ridge, and, being the most prominent feature in the entire Ypres salient, were particularly susceptible to shell-fire from all quarters, except the north. Their chief attraction, from the purely military point of view, lay in the fact that they were on the crest of a ridge some 120 feet high, which here juts out into the plain, and which faces the ridge of about the same height a mile and a quarter away, on which Kruiseik stands. Their weakness lay in the fact that they were practically surrounded by the enemy, and were even open to attack from the direction of Hollebeke, which lay due west of their southern extension. In these circumstances their loss on the 30th was not wholly a matter for regret.