s place beside the French armies then at death's
grips with the main forces of the Kaiser's armies, who, having burst
their way through Belgium, now invaded France. That historic retreat
towards Paris, and the swaggering triumphal march of the Germans, were
followed by a striking blow against the Teutons, who were driven back
across the Marne, hurled out of central and northern France, till but a
strip of the country remained to them.

Meanwhile thousands of British soldiers were flocking in, shoulder to
shoulder, ready for the fray; while French forces were being mobilized.
A line--thin enough in all conscience, desperately thin--was stretched
from the eastern frontier of France across its northern provinces, to
the very tip of Belgium at Ypres, and so across it to the sea. This
line of men who burrowed their way in trenches--a force of less than
one man to the yard--was yet a force of heroes. Unprepared though they
were, unsupported, without a doubt because there were as yet no new
armies to support them, without reliefs for the very same reason, and
therefore dependent entirely upon themselves, they stemmed the German
tide. Hopelessly outnumbered, they yet held their ground, and, though
deluged by shells and faced by an enemy superbly equipped and prepared
with the latest machinery of war, held him back, causing enormous
losses in his ranks, and barring his way onward. The tale of the First
Battle of Ypres is a tale of splendour, of heroic British action--the
tale of how those few divisions--war-worn, hardened divisions by
now--barred the road to Calais, and smashed the power of the Prussian
Guards, troops hitherto considered invincible.

There is no need to recall those other battles, the almost daily
exchange of shots along the trench-line, though for the information of
our readers it may be just as well to enumerate some of the more
important. From the sea, in the neighbourhood of Nieuport, the line of
trenches ran in a southerly direction across the flats of Belgium and
Flanders in front of Ypres, and down towards Arras. Thence, curling
towards the east, and skirting the River Aisne and the famous city of
Reims--where the vandals who had destroyed Louvain and many another
city had long since wrecked the Cathedral, famous throughout the
world--their line swept on over hill and dale, and hollow and furrow,
across chalky plains and wooded heights and forest country to
Verdun--that famous city which for centu