"We felt," said a distinguished officer after the action, "that the Battle of Messines was won at Zero, and that the Battle of Ypres was lost long before it." In the vast armies of the late war the Army Commander, and even the Corps Commander, was a shadowy personage, not alone to the private soldier, but to the Colonel commanding a battalion in the trenches or a brigade of artillery behind them. But the Second Army and the IX. Corps, under the orders of which the 36th Division fought at Messines, had a subtle power of making their presence felt. The system of liaison was practised by the Second Army as in no other. General Harington's car stopped at every door, and the cheerful young staff officers, who knew every communication trench on the Army front, who drank with company commanders in their front-line dug-outs before coming back to tea with a Brigadier, or with General Nugent at his Headquarters, formed a very real link between the Higher Command and the troops. The private soldier knew the Army Commander and his eyeglass as he knew no Corps Commander under whom he fought. His personality was a real accretion of strength. The difficulties at Ypres were infinitely greater than at Messines; that everyone recognised. But in the former case they did not appear to be met with quite the precision, care, and forethought of the latter. The private soldier felt a difference. He may have been unfair in his estimate, but that estimate was none the less of importance. For what the private soldier felt had a marked effect upon what the private soldier, the only ultimate winner of battles, accomplished.