IN THE YPRES SALIENT

THE YPRES SALIENT.
See Key on page 6
(From the Picture copyrighted and published by
R. Dunthorne, Vigo Street, London, W.)

IN THE YPRES SALIENT.

Long after the issue of minor engagements in this War are forgotten, and when everybody has ceased to care whether at any moment we gained or lost a hundred yards of ground or a mile of trench, the memory of how the Canadians fought against hopeless odds near Hooge will be remembered, and Canada will be proud and the Empire will be proud of these men. Nor will Canada or the Empire ever forget--what every neutral in the world should be told to-day--how the Germans called these men cowards.

The Times, June 12, 1916.

AVANT-PROPOS.

Je saisis cette occasion pour rendre un nouveau hommage à l'armée britannique, dont la longue et héroïque rèsistance a rendu notre ville inviolée. Si Ypres a été détruite par les barbares germains en haine d'Angleterre, notre magnanime protectrice, nous avons l'espoir que, grâce à votre pays, la ville martyre ressuscitera aussi belle, si non aussi prospère, qu'elle le fut aux siècles de sa splendeur. Déjà nous avons un Vicomte d'Ypres portant un nom anglais! déjà des hommes généreux de votre pays songent à faire reconstruire nos splendides monuments. Pourquoi ne pourrions nous pas espérer que le sol d'Ypres, arrosé du sang de vos enfants et où reposent vos héros morts pour nous, verra prochainement surgir une ville digne du nom Anglais et de notre ancienne renommée?

Signature of René Colaert, Bourgmestre d'Ypres

KEY TO "THE YPRES SALIENT."
By W. L. WYLIE, R.A.

PREFATORY NOTE ON THE SALIENT

On October 16th, 1914, the Ypres Salient, the theatre of three of the most deadly and critical battles in this War, was born. Up to that date the area it comprises--a few thousand acres at most--was merely a tract of well-tilled Flemish meadowland, with patches of forest and here and there a village or hamlet.

Ten weeks before the Germans had invaded Belgium, and in the fateful and anxious time which followed, the Belgians had been pressed slowly back, those who had not been utterly crushed. Antwerp fell, and a mighty German host, foiled in its advance southward to Paris, was moving relentlessly towards the sea-coast, destroying and desolating the land as it came.

A newly-landed British force advanced to check them and to take up a position in the long line of Allied troops. This force, the 7th Division, under Major-General Capper, and the 3rd Cavalry Division, commanded by Major-General the Hon. Julian Byng, marching through the quaint old Flemish city of Ypres, penetrated to a point six miles beyond the British, French, and Belgian alignment as it ran north and south. There they halted, their ranks causing the Allied front to project forward a bold "salient," or peninsula, on the map. To crush that salient--to flatten out that line at any cost--instantly became the aim of the enemy. Consequently, he flung himself on the point of the Salient (which was then Becelaere) and the fierce and bloody First Battle of Ypres was the result. It lasted from October 20th to November 11th. On October 30th the Kaiser told his troops that they must break through the line to Ypres, and to the Bavarian Crown Prince he said: "Take Ypres, or die." He considered the attack to be "of vital importance to the successful issue of the war." It was then that we became familiar with the names of these little villages and hamlets, first drenched with blood and then crumbled to dust, Zonnebeke, Zillebeke, Wytschaete, Hooge, Langemarcke, and the rest; with those fields, woods, and hillocks which have then and since seen some of the most terrible slaughter and the most gallant deeds in all military history, and where lie to-day more than one hundred thousand of our British dead. The enemy recoiled, bruising his legions against the sharpness of the Salient, and his failure marked a notable stage in the progress of the War.

For six months the two hostile armies faced one another in the crescent line of trenches defending Ypres towards the east. Spring came, and on April 22nd the Second Battle of Ypres began, lasting until May 13th, only two days less than the first. In that second