British success

Hill captured near Ypres

Some important questions

From the Germans we learn there has been fighting North of the Ypres canal, that a German position was attacked by the British and, reading between the lines, a considerable success achieved.

Thus it was written yesterday morning and the reading between the lines proved to be accurately done.

In the afternoon came the official information from Paris that the British troops had carried 200 metres of German trenches in Belgium, that counter attacks had been repulsed and that the captured positions had been consolidated.

Late at night we were able to issue a special edition of the Argus containing the War Office’s welcome announcement confirming and amplifying the news of the afternoon.

Ypres is a few miles direct North of St Eloi where the previous hard fighting took place and Zillebake lies just southeast of Ypres while Hill 60 is a little over two miles North East of St Elot.

It is situated in a district where little impression has been made on the German lines for some time and the success is therefore all the more encouraging.

Hill 60 dominates the country to the North and North west so that early and favourable developments may be anticipated.

It stands 200 feet high or 50 feet higher than the surrounding land in the direction indicated and whatever may have happened towards the end of last year it would seem that we are now in indisputable possession.

Nothing is said in the despatch as to what it cost us but the German losses have evidently been very heavy.

In their heavy counter attacks they advanced in close formation with the results that ‘our machine gun battery got well into them’.

The British have now established a wedge and it must be maintained.

These and similar successes show what can be done when great efforts are made but in the main they emphasise the very pressing need of men and munitions.

It is useless advancing if we cannot keep the ground taken and it is just as futile to describe local successes as great victories.

Our cumulative losses in these small affairs are approaching a huge total and the general advance cannot take place until there is an absolute assurance of a supply of 200,000 shells a day.

At the moment there does not appear to be a guarantee of this and indeed weeks may lapse before the co-ordinating in manufacturing these shells has reached the desired pitch.

We have still a long long way to go and something more than a straw showing the way that the wind is blowing is the statement by Mr FJ Wall, the secretary of the Football Association, that there will be no Association Football cup ties or league matches next season.

Those to who this announcement comes as a shock should learn very quickly the lesson it has hitherto seemed impossible to drive home.

It is evident that the French are doing consistently good work even if their point of concentration varies.

At present they seem to be making very considerable progress in Alsace.