The British were equally determined to take Messines Ridge and had planned to _blow it up_ in order to clear the way for the advance of their guns, to straighten out a part of the line near Ypres and to gain command of the plain of Lille. The preparation for the “earthquake” took no less than a year! Mines were driven deep down under the German front-line trenches by men from the coal districts of Britain as well as parties of stalwart Australians and New Zealanders. Their plan could not have been quite unknown to the Germans; for they too dug mines towards the British lines, and sometimes the parties of rival diggers came quite close to each other. But the extent to which the British were prepared to go in “blasting” operations was not realised by their foes. When the long task of digging and tunnelling was finished electric wires were placed in position; and it was arranged that the tons of explosive packed away in the earth were to be fired by the touch of a spring on a metal plate. In a dug-out some distance behind the mines a little group of men gathered together on the night of the 7th waiting for the moment at which the spring was to be touched. A few minutes before three o’clock on the following morning the spring _was_ touched, and for a moment the watchers held their breath. Then there was a deafening quivering sound unlike any other that had been heard in the long-drawn-out din of the fighting in this greatest of all great wars. The earth opened, sending out great tongues of flame and dense clouds of smoke; then came huge fragments of rock and earth mixed with the bodies of Germans and the wreckage of their first-line system of trenches. British infantry were posted ready for the advance. The shock of the explosion threw many of them to the ground; but in a very short time they went forward with a mighty rush and quickly captured Hill 60. There was now a general advance along the line and in many places the Germans were found to be too dazed to make any real resistance. Large numbers of prisoners fell into our hands. “This is more than human nature itself can suffer,” said a German officer to those who had captured him. Among the prisoners were two German boys of about seventeen, who had already been in the firing line for about twelve months. A British officer said to them, “You ought to be spanked and sent home to your mothers.” The boys laughed merrily and one of them replied for both, “That is what we should like, sir, if you please.” The man-made earthquake was of course a preparation for the advance, not only of infantry, but also of the artillery. The latter had been specially anxious to move forward after the long period of fighting in one quarter. The artillery advance is thus described by one who saw it and who speaks of it as an “historic incident,” which indeed it was: