From November 8th to 11th there was little fighting. It had been apparently realized at length by the German commanders that the troops they were at present employing were incapable of breaking the British line, but at the back of that admission there was evidently still the belief that the task was possible, provided the troops employed were sufficiently good. Accordingly the Prussian Guard was sent for. Pending the arrival of that invincible body there was a lull in the ceaseless hammer of battle; and in the meanwhile the weather changed for the worse. By the time the Prussian Guard was ready for its enterprise, that is to say by November 11th, it was about as bad as it could be. A strong west wind was accompanied by an icy rain, which fell all day in torrents. Luckily the wind and rain were in the faces of the enemy, a factor of no little importance. The battle of November 11th may be looked upon as the last attempt but one of the Germans to break through to Calais during the 1914 campaign. The actual last serious attempt was on November 17th. On the 11th the cannonade began at daybreak and was kept up till 9.30. In violence and volume it rivalled that of October 31st. The entire front from Klein Zillebeke to Zonnebeke was involved, the enemy's design being--as on the 31st--to attack all along the front simultaneously so as to hamper and cripple the British commanders in the use of the very limited reserves at their disposal. The newly-arrived troops were the 1st and 4th Brigade Prussian Guard, and some battalions of the Garde Jäger, in all fifteen battalions, and to these was entrusted the main attack on the key of the position, _i.e._, along, and north of, the Menin road. The Prussian Guard attacked through Veldhoek, and in their advance displayed the invincible courage for which they have ever been famed. Such courage, however--though sufficiently sublime from the spectacular point of view--cannot fail to be expensive, and the losses among these gallant men were prodigious. It was afterwards said by a prisoner that they had been deceived by the silence in our trenches into thinking that the bombardment had cleared them, and so came on recklessly. However, in spite of their losses, by sheer intrepidity and weight of numbers, they succeeded in capturing all the front line trenches of the 1st Brigade, who were astride the Menin road between Veldhoek and Hooge. In three places large bodies of the enemy succeeded in breaking through, and in each case their success furnished a subject for reflection as to the why and the wherefore of battles. For, having succeeded in doing that which they had set out to do, they stood huddled together in the plainest uncertainty as to how next to act, a point which was speedily settled by the arrival of our reserves, who fell upon the successful invaders and promptly annihilated them. One party of some 700 were accounted for to a man by the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, led by Col. Davies.