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Liége, Haelen, the three sorties from Antwerp, the ten terrible days on the Yser, are not due merely to the personal valour of the leaders and of their troops, but to the fact that they were Belgian leaders and Belgian troops, that they belonged to a nation conscious of her destiny and who had never despaired in the past, in spite of the ordeals to which she was subjected and of the scorn of those who questioned her very existence.
In the terrible battle of Ypres in Flanders, following the prolonged engagements along the Yser river, the Allies succeeded in repulsing the desperate German onslaught, and the German offensive was brought to a full stop.
Through the charred skeleton wrecks of houses one caught glimpses of the yellow flames mounting to the sky. We passed over the Yser Canal, dirty, dark and stagnant, reflecting the yellow glow of the flames. On our left was a church and graveyard, both blown to a thousand pieces. Tombstones lying about and sticking up at odd angles all over the torn-up ground.
A general survey of the front for the first days of January, 1916, reveals activity all round. In Belgium there was artillery fighting over the front of the Yser and along the front at Yperlee, and a similar duel between Germans and Belgians near Mercken. In front of the British first-line trenches the Germans sprang mines, but did not trouble to take possession of the craters.
The Germans north of the Lys planned to cross the Comines-Ypres, Yperlee, and Yser Canals, capture Ypres, take all of the ridge of the Mont-des-Cats, and then continue west and take Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. The Allies in their plan included an advance south of the Lys on two sides of Lille, the taking of the Aubers Ridge, and the turning from the north the German salient at La Bassée.
It was the hope of the Belgians that, the French taking their places on the line, they could retire for a time as reserves and get a little rest. But the German attack continuing fiercely against the combined armies of the Allies, the Belgians were forced to go into action again, weary as they were, at the historic curve of the Yser, where was fought the great battle of the war.
From Westende it will be continued to Nieuport-Bains, crossing the Yser by movable bridges, and thence to La Panne, and so onwards, winding through the dunes, over the French borders, and perhaps as far as Paris!
The German shells rose and burst behind us. They made the Yser Canal a stream of molten glory. Shells fell in the city, and split the darkness of the heavens in the early night hours. Later the moon rose in a splendor of spring-time. Straight behind the tower of the great cathedral it rose and shone down on a bloody earth. Suddenly the grand old Cloth Hall burst into flames.
Wegener stood in the way of his own judgment, and prevented him from seeing that the battle on the Marne which drove the enemy back, the battle on the Yser which brought him to a standstill, and the battle round Verdun which effectually wore him out, were each in succession the greatest of the war.
Shortly after midnight and in the early hours of Saturday morning, September 25, 1915, the German positions were treated to a bombardment that had rarely been equaled in violence. From the Yser Canal down to the end of the French line the Allies' guns took up the note, and soon the whole of the allied line was thundering and reechoing with the infernal racket.
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