A stretch of waste ground lay between the trenches, and often for days at a time the fire was too heavy to rescue the wounded or bring in the dead.  The men in the trenches, on either side, were compelled to hear the groans of the wounded, lying in the open day after day, until exhaustion, cold and pain brought them a merciful release.  In letters more than one soldier declared that the hardest thing to bear was to hear a fellow comrade shrieking or groaning in agony a few steps away for hours—­even days at a time—­and to be able to do nothing to help.  The stench from the unburied bodies was so great that officially all the tobacco for the whole battle front was commandeered and sent to the trenches under the plateau of Craonne and on the hill to the westward, where the British First Army Corps was placed.  Such, for the two weeks between September 22, 1914, and October 6, 1914, was the trench warfare during the second phase of the battle of the Aisne, a condition never after repeated in the war, for such a feat as the crossing of the Aisne could scarcely be duplicated.  It was gallant, it was magnificent, and it was costly—­the British casualty list for September 12 to October 6, 1914, being, killed, wounded and missing, 561 officers and 12,980 men—­but it was useless, and only served to give the Allies a temporary base whereby General Foch was successful in checking the German attempt to capture the Rheims-Verdun railway.  It was a victory of bravery, but not a victory of result.

During all these operations the Belgian army, now at Antwerp, had harassed the German troops by frequent sorties.  The capture of the city was at once undertaken by the German Staff, following the stalemate created by the operations at the Aisne.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXV

“The race to the sea”

The Germans, having failed in their first enveloping movement, attempted a second after the battle of the Marne.  They tried to repeat their maneuver of August, endeavoring to overwhelm the French left; while the French, on their side, tried to overwhelm the German right.  Each of these armies, by a converging movement, gradually drew its forces toward the west.  No sooner did the Germans bring up a new corps on their right than the French brought up another on their left.  Thus the front of the battle ascended more and more to the west and north until arriving at the sea it could go no farther.  This is what has been called by French military critics “The Race to the Sea.”  In this race to the sea the Germans had a great advantage over the French.  A glance at the map is enough to make it understood.  The concave form of the German front made the lines of transportation shorter; they were within the interior of the angle, while the French were at the exterior.  On the German side this movement drew into the line more than eighteen army corps, or twelve active corps, six reserve corps, and four cavalry corps.