The lesson of the battle was written plain for the eyes of all to read. The British army was fired with as great courage as any that ever answered the summons of battle, but it did not equal its opponents in organization. None realized this better than the British them selves. They took the lesson to heart, realizing that ultimate victory could not come until their own organization was improved.
The introduction of poison gas will ever be associated with the second battle of Ypres, although asphyxiating shells had been used earlier. The gas was chlorine and being drawn into the lungs produced acute bronchitis, con gesting the face tmtil it was lividly purple and producing most intense pain. Those who first encountered it ran bacicward, thus accom panying the gas as it was wafted onward. Run ning and gasping caused heavy breathing, which resulted in the inhalation of larger quantities of the deadly fumes. The British authorities set at work to provide respirators, and by 8 May the army was supplied with appliances that were effective for preventing the worst effects of the gas. The use of this gas and the stories of the excruciating pain it produced shocked the neutral world. On 7 May came the news of the destruction of the Lusitania. It seemed that the Germans were determined to give one proof after another that they were callous alike to the feelings of humanity and the esteem of civilized pebples.
4. The Allied Offensive of 1915.-- When the second battle of Ypres occurred the British and French were prepared for a co-ordinated offensive against the German front at points south of the Ypres salient. It was their in tention to cut through the intricate system of railroacl.s in this portion of France by which the enemy got his supplies for the part of his line north of the angle at Noyon and south of Ypres. If such a blow succeeded it would necessitate the readjustment of a large section of the line. It would also force hint to draw off reserves that otherwise would be used in the Russian campaign. The battle was under taken primarily as the Fmnco-British offensive of the spring of 1915. The allied High Com-, mands did not think that they were reduced to the necessity of keeping the defensive. The French army was called out to the extent of its numbers. The British army stood at 500,000, the greatest land army Britain had ever pos sessed. It was believed that they were suffi ciently supplied with muultions.. Certainly they had quantities far in excess of any that a preceding British army had possessed. It was spring and the time for an advance.
The Germans were cognizant of the British preparations and opened the second battle of Ypres and carried it on for three bitter weeks in the hope of dra.wing off the British forces and so preventing the movenient. .They pro.
duced such a critical state of affairs in the ialient that the French were forced to open the battle in order to draw off the Germans from Ypres. It was a well-judged feature of the German policy that seeing themselves threat. ened by t, double attack at a time when their general western policy was the defensive, they concluded that the best course was to antic pate one of the proposed blows. Their attack on the British succeeded in turning aside moat of the energy that was due from that source, fighting wlille the French were still unready to .strike a blow. When that blow came the British were so far spent that they were of little weight, and most of the attention of the Gertnans was given to the French. We cannot withhold our admiration for the good general ship and daring that would try this alert strat egy, truly Napoleonic in concept, of dividing the foe and striking first one and then the other of the parts.
The British portion of the doable spring offensive was against Aubers Ridge, near Festubert, a mile north of Givenchy; the French portion, lcnown as the battle of Artois, was staged in the 10-mile sector between Lens and Arras, eight miles south of Givenchy. The pressure on the 13ritish lines at Ypres did not entirely stop the British preparations at Festu bert; and General FrenchApened his projected attack at that place on 8 May. It was a short and cutting thrust and netted hint f3,000 casual.. ties in a few hours without any noteworthy gain. On 16 May the attack was renewed three miles to the southward, at Festubert itself, but the gain was slight and the losses great. In Lir both of these e gements the British suffered from lack of • explosive shells, which alone could destroy e enemy's wire entanglements. The same lack had been felt at the first and second battles of Ypres, but little had been done to remedy the deficiency. The.reappearance of it in these two engagements and the resulting heavy sacrifices of life caused an outburst of indignation in Great Britain. The shell scan dal, as it was called, was one of the painfuf experiences of Great Britain's war, but it led, finally, to a better organization of the War Departtnent with a fuller realization of the altered character of warfare. How slowly the officials changed their views is shown by the fact that when General French returned from the scene of slaughter at Aubers Ridge he re ceived a dispatch ordering him to send 20 per cent of his reserve ammunition to Gallipoli. It is difficult to relieve Lord Kitchener, Secretary of War, of serious blame for this situation. Splendid soldier as he was, and always doing his utmost for his country, he had not yet realized how much had to be done to malce the British war machine equal to the demands on it The controversy over munitions became a chief subject of political interest at this period of the vrar. Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, was an optimistic man and could not be brought to see the need of more ammunition. General French made many requests to the Secretary of War and they came to the lcnowledge of the Pritne Minister. The opposition newspapers took up the cry. But Mr. Asquith set the criti cism aside in * speech in which he said that the army had all the ammunition it needed, At. this time .the ,Gallipoli expedition was de. manding a lane 'part of the products of the munitions mills, which was another imtoward effect of that expedition. After the battle of Festubert, General French took the extraordi nary.step of appealing to Mr. Ltoyd George, sub mitting to him copies of his ignored requests with a memorandum of the actual need of the situation. At the same time he gave a startling statement to the London Times that laid bare the situation. The upshot was the overthrow of the existing government and the installation of a Coalition Ministry, with Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions. From that time mat ters improved. The public did not understand that high explosives were necessary in trench warfare. Ordinary shrapnel had no effect on entrenchments, dugouts and machine-gun nests, in making which much concrete was used. The more powerful high explosive shells were needed to pulverize these works, reduce the artillery to inefficiency, destroy wire-entangle ments and thus make it possible for charging troops to advance without slaughter. General French was undoubtedly a man of little tact and he had acquired the reputation of a man who complains, but he was nght in holding that the British suffered heavy and needless re pulses at Ypres and Festubert because the ammunition was not in conformity with the re quirements of the raost modern type of warfare.