"Yet the Germans gained far less by this advantage than they should have done, for they wasted their time in consolidating the trenches they had won. A marvelous opening was before them, but for lack of personal dash, their best opportunity passed away forever. 'They sold their souls as soldiers,' as one of the English writers, Sir Conan Doyle, expressed it, 'but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had the Germans had a corps of cavalry ready and passed them through the gap, it would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.'" "'They sold their souls as soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one.' That's a good phrase," repeated Horace, "I'll remember it." "It was really the most dangerous moment of the war," the veteran continued, "for it was the only time in the war that the Germans actually broke through. They had not broken through in Belgium. They had not broken through--save for advance cavalry--at Charleroi. They had not broken through on the British left in the retreat from Mons, though it was a near shave. They had not broken through at Foch's right in the Battle of the Marne, though in a few hours more they must have done so. But they broke through at Ypres. The initial poison gas attack pierced the Allied lines for the first time. "Then the hidebound German strategy, which wins a few battles for them and loses twice as many more, became their ruin. Finding themselves on the farther side of the line, it seemed a supreme opportunity to adopt flanking tactics. The Canadians--whom the Germans hated equally with the Australians and twice as much as the English, if that were possible--held the line to the north of the sector which had been pierced by the aid of poison gas. The Germans hungrily turned on the Canadians to encircle and crumple them up. "They soon found that they had clutched a spiny thistle in bare hands. "From three sides they advanced upon the Canadians, ranging their artillery in a devastating cross-fire. Not a man in the Canadian regiments expected to survive. Few did. In the teeth of every conceivable projectile, Canadian reënforcements came up to dare and die. Again the Germans, having recharged their reservoirs, opened their poison gas valves. But the direction of the attack was different and the wind blew the fumes away. The Germans, though in gas-masks (worn for the first time that day), were not sufficiently protected and hundreds died from their own infernal device. The gas was shut off. In the night the wind changed and on Friday morning another discharge of gas was sent against the Canadian lines.