It will be seen that Sir Douglas Haig had a formidable problem before him. The immediate key of the area was Vimy Ridge, the capture of which was necessary to protect the flank of any advance farther south. It was clear that no strategic result could be obtained unless the Drocourt-Quéant Switch were breached, and that meant an advance of well over six miles. But this position was still in the making; and if the fates were kind, and the first three German systems could be carried at a rush, there was good hope that the Drocourt-Quéant line would never be manned, and that the drive of the British, assisted by the great French attack on the Aisne, might bring them to Douai and Cambrai. It was a hope, but no more. A result so far-reaching demanded a combination of fortunate chances, which as yet had not been vouchsafed to us in any battle of the campaign. The city of Arras, situated less than a mile inside the British lines, was, like Ypres, the neck of a bottle, and through it and its environs went most of the transport for the new battle front. For two years it had been a place of comparative peace. It had been badly shelled, but mainly in the autumn and winter of 1914. The cathedral, a poor rococo edifice, had been destroyed, and looked far nobler in its ruin than it had ever done in its integrity. The beautiful old Hôtel de Ville had been wrecked, and much damage had been done among the exquisite Spanish houses of the Grande Place. Few buildings had altogether escaped, but the place was still a habitable though a desolated city. Entering it by the Baudimont Gate on a summer’s day the stranger saw the long white street running intact towards the railway station, and it was not till he looked closer that he noted shell marks and broken windows and the other signs of war. There were many hundreds of civilians still living there, and children could be seen playing on the pavement. Visitors came often, for it was the easiest place in all France from which to enter the first lines. Across the railway, a short walk in communication trenches, or even on the open road, and you were in the actual battle front west of Blangy or in the faubourg of St. Sauveur. An inn, the Hôtel de Commerce, was still open, and men could dine there in comfort before proceeding to their posts in the line. But up to April 1917 the place had the air of a tomb. It was like a city stricken with the plague: whole, yet untenanted. Especially eerie did it seem in the winter twilight, when in the long echoing streets the only sign of life was an occasional kilted Scot or South African, or a hurrying peasant woman, and the rumble of the guns beyond Vimy alone broke the heavy silence. The gaunt ruins of the cathedral rose like a splendid headstone in a graveyard.