The second stage of the Ypres struggle began on 16th August, when the Fifth Army attacked the German third position, the Gheluvelt-Langemarck line, which ran from the Menin road along the second of the tiers of ridges which rimmed the Salient on the east. These tiers, the highest and most easterly of which was the famous Passchendaele crest, had the common features that they all sprang from one southern boss or pillar, the point on the Menin road marked 64 metres, which we knew as Clapham Junction, and all, as they ran northward, lost elevation. The attack, which took place at dawn, made a considerable gap in the German third line, but it was very far from attaining its main objectives. That day, indeed, showed at its best von Armin’s new defensive method. The weather was in his favour, for the air was thick and damp, making airplane observation difficult, and therefore depriving us of timely notice of the enemy’s counter-strokes. The ground was sloppy, and made tangled and difficult with broken woods; and the whole front was sown with “pill-boxes,” against which we had not yet discovered the proper weapon. The result was a serious British check. The splendid courage of the Fifth Army had been largely fruitless. Fine brigades had been hurled in succession against a concrete wall, and had been sorely battered. The troops felt that they were being sacrificed blindly; that every fight was a soldiers’ fight, and that such sledge-hammer tactics were too crude to meet the problem. For a moment there was a real ebb of confidence in British leadership. Sir Douglas Haig took time to reorganize his front and prepare a new plan. He extended Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army northward, so that it should take over the attack on the enemy front on the Menin road. Sorely tried divisions were taken out of the line, and our whole artillery tactics were revised. The “pill-box” problem was studied, and a solution was found, not by miraculous ingenuity, but by patient and meticulous care. Early in September the weather improved, and the sodden Salient began slowly to dry. That is to say, the mud hardened into something like the _séracs_ of a glacier, and the streams became streams again and not lagoons. But the process was slow, and it was not till the third week of the month that the third stage in the battle could begin. [Sidenote: _Sept. 14._]