In order to realize the importance of this new battle of Flanders which, begun on July 31, was to rage till the following winter, it may not be out of place to quote a German appreciation.  In an issue of the Lokal Anzeiger, published at the end of September, 1917, after two months’ uninterrupted fighting, Doctor Wegener wrote as follows: 

How can anybody talk of anything but this battle of Flanders?  Is it possible that some people actually grow hot over the parliamentarization, or the loan, or the cost of butter, or the rumors of peace, while every heart and every eye ought to be fixed on these places where soldiers are doing wonderful deeds!  This battle is the most formidable that has yet been fought.  It was supposed to be ended, but here it is, blazing afresh and promising a tremendous conflagration.  The Englishman goes on with his usual doggedness, and the last bombardment has excelled in horrible intensity all that has been known so far.  Even before the signal for storming, the English were drunk with victory, so gigantic was their artillery, so dreadful their guns, so intense their firing....

These lines help us to realize how keen was the anxiety caused in Germany by the new offensive coming so soon after the battles of Champagne in April.  But the lyricism of Dr. 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.  The second battle of Flanders ought rather to be compared to the battle on the Somme, the real consequences of which were not completely visible till the German recoil on the Siegfried line took place in March, 1917.  While the first battle of Flanders had closed the gates of Dunkirk and Calais against the Germans, and marked the end of their invasion, the second one drove a wedge at Ypres into the German strength, made formidable by three years’ daily efforts, secured the Flemish heights, pushed the enemy back into the bog land, and threatened Bruges.  In the first battle, the French under Foch had been supported by the English under Marshal French; this time the English, who were the protagonists, under Plumer (Second Army) and Gough (Fifth Army), were supported by the First French Army under General Anthoine.

It was as late as June that General Anthoine’s soldiers had taken their stand to the left of the British armies, and after the tremendous fights along the Chemin des Dames and Moronvillers in April, it might well be believed that they were tired.  They had borne the burden from the very first; they had been on the Marne and the Yser in 1914, at the numberless and costly offensives of 1915 in Artois, Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace; and in 1916, after the Verdun epic, they had had to fight on the Somme.  Indeed, they had only ceased repelling the enemy’s