columns were under accurate artillery fire at long range'; that our shells 'blocked streets and bridges and devastated villages so far back that any regular transport of supplies became impossible.' As regards rifle and machine-gun fire, we are credited with 'quantities of machine-guns,' 'large numbers of machine-guns,' etc.; with the result that 'the roads were swept by machine-guns'; and that 'over every bush, hedge and fragment of wall floated a thin film of smoke betraying a machine-gun rattling out bullets.' At that date we had no machine-gun units, and there were only two machine-guns on the establishment of a battalion, and of these many had been damaged, and had not yet been replaced; actually machine-guns were few and far between. The only inference to be drawn is that the rapid fire of the British rifleman, were he infantryman, cavalryman or sapper, was mistaken for machine-gun fire both as regards volume and effect. Our simple defences, to complete which both time and labour had been lacking, became in German eyes 'a well-planned maze of trenches,' 'a maze of obstacles and entrenchments'; and we had 'turned every house, every wood and every wall into a strong point'; 'the villages of WYTSCHAETE and MESSINES ... had been converted into fortresses' (_Festungen_); as also the edge of a wood near GHELUVELT and LANGEMARCK. As at the last-named place there was only a small redoubt with a garrison of two platoons, and the 'broad wire entanglements' described by the German General Staff were in reality but trifling obstacles of the kind that the Germans 'took in their stride,'[1] the lavish praise, were it not for the result of the battle, might be deemed exaggerated. Part of it undoubtedly is. It is fair, however, to deduce that the German nation had to be given some explanation why the 'contemptible little Army' had not been pushed straightway into the sea.