The Times history and encyclopaedia of the war. Part 76, vol. 6. Feb. 1, 1916, (I.) The October fighting in the west. (II.) Miss Cavell's execution.

Date:
1916
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Credit: The Times history and encyclopaedia of the war. Part 76, vol. 6. Feb. 1, 1916, (I.) The October fighting in the west. (II.) Miss Cavell's execution. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was this to be taken into account by the Germans. With infinite pains a vast burrow of fortifications had been created between La Bassée and the Scarpe. The German troops believed those fortifications to be impregnable. If that belief were discovered to be erroneous, the moral effect on the Germans might be It would’ be tantamount to a Western Allies scientific warfare. The enormous. eonfession that the were their superiors in Germans had nowhere in the Western theatre formidable as those between La Bassée and The Labyrinth and the Hohenzollern Redoubt were, as it were, test cases. If the Hohenzollern Redoubt, like the Labyrinth, had to be abandoned, a sense of discouragement of war carried entrenchments so Vimy. might sink into the minds of the Germans in Artois, and thence permeate to the rest of the huge horde defending the four hundred miles of trenches on the Western front. As a panic in one considerable sector would entail the collapse of his whole line, and the best specifics against panics were counter-attacks, the Crown Prince of Bavaria made numerous attempts to drive back the Allies to their original positions. From the tactical standpoint the main effects of the Battles of Loos and Vimy had been to accentuate on the south the German salient at La Bassée, and*to create a second German salient from the environs of Lens through the outskirts of Liévin and Angres, and by Givenchy en Gohelle, and the Vimy heights to the Scarpe below Arras. On running the side of the Allies the corresponding salient created by their victory commenced near Cuinchy on the Béthune-La Bassée-Lille Canal. It went south-eastwards by the Hohenzollern Redoubt, the Hulluch Quarries, the western exit of Hulluch, and the Chalk Pit taken by the Coldstream Guards to the edge of Hill 70; thence it turned westwards round the south of Loos and the Double Crassier to the Allied trenches at Grenay. The Cuinchy-Hulluch-Grenay salient mea- sured at its base only some five miles, and, taking into consideration the range of modern artillery, it was obvious that the British and French troops holding it were in a peculiarly perilous position. The French 10th Army had, indeed, cleared the enemy out of his trenches on the eastern
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