Book Description

Excerpt from The European War, Vol. 2: March 1915 September 1915 For the sake of convenience in description, we shall divide this campaign into two sections, the first of which, the northern, begins at Westende on the Belgian sea coast and continues southeastwardly to Ypres; thence curving southwardly to Arras. At Arras the southern division begins; the line first running south as far as Noyon and thence running by irregular courses eastwardly to Belfort. The reason these two divisions are made is because it permits us most conveniently to handle the correlated offenses of both the Allies and the Germans on the Ypres and Arras front separately from those in Champagne, the Argonne, Vosges and Alsace to the east; thus making for clearness in comprehension of the military manoeuvres between March and the first of September. These two sets of manoeuvres, both in a topographical sense and in a military sense, are sharply divided. The objective of the German operations in the northern section was the conquest of the seaports of Dunkirk and Calais, and the objective of the Allies' operations in this same region was the turning or piercing of the German left wing so as to compel its retreat, firstly, from Lille, its base in northern France, and, secondly, from the Belgian territory held by it. The operations further to the east affected only the French territory, the German offensives in this section were aimed at crushing the French army if possible, while the French offensives were aimed more at resisting this process than in attempting any seizure of strategic points which would necessitate a German retreat of more than local significance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.