By the evening of October 19 the line of the Second Corps ran approximately from east of Givenchy--Violaines--Lorgies--west of Illies--Herlies to Le Pilly, while between it and the Third Corps was General Conneau's French Cavalry Corps, somewhat to the left rear of the Second Corps. The Third Corps had reached the line Radinghem--Ennetières--Prémesques--Frélinghien--Le Gheer. The British cavalry continued the line down the Lys to the Ypres--Comines Canal, and was in touch with the right of General Rawlinson's command, which, after attempting to advance on Menin on the morning of October 19, had been forced to fall back to the position Zandvoorde--Kruiseik--Zonnebeke by the appearance on its left of large forces of Germans, before which the French cavalry (connecting General Rawlinson's force with the Belgians) was falling back. The situation, as it then stood, seems to have offered Sir John French two alternatives for the employment of Sir Douglas Haig's Corps, which had then completed its concentration in the area St. Omer--Hazebrouck: he might utilise it to reinforce Generals Smith-Dorrien and Pulteney, who were holding a long front, and whose troops had had over a week of difficult, if on the whole successful, fighting, and lacked the numbers needed for any further advance. Reinforcements thrown in on this quarter might have saved Lille, and enabled the French, in co-operation with whom the British were acting, to outflank the Germans opposed to them in the neighbourhood of Loos and Arras. Ever since the battle on the Aisne had reached a deadlock in the middle of September, it had been the object of the Allied forces to outflank the German right, while the Germans had by continually reinforcing and prolonging their threatened flank succeeded in thwarting this effort. It is this double prolongation of the opposing lines, first by one combatant, then by the other, which is called "the Race to the Sea," and of which the first battle of Ypres was the culminating point.