VALUE OF YPRES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8463, 31 May 1916, Page 6

VALUE OF YPRES.

WHY GERMANY WANTS IT.

ITS IMPORTANCE TO SEA POWER. " More men of the British and Irish race have died -in battle about Ypres tnaii about any other place in tho ivorld," says the Manchester "Guardian." _ I " Yet there has been very little plain speaking about tho reason why and tho real significance of tho place in English History. Hastings, Grecy, Pla-ssey, and Quebec each stands for something in Jinglisjb, history. '•Does Ypres stand for something equally "definite P Arid in any case, swhy are we fighting so desperately for the possession of a Belgian town?. Is I'pres just a stick to beat Germans with, or is there some other good reason why we should be fighting there rather than elsewhere. '' The true inwardness of the situation, seems to be that Ypres.is really a naval battle. .No. doubt the fighting has come about there by a chain of events that arc-purely military^ but the real reason why our army is fighting there is that it is against our interest as a sea Power to let the Narrows fall into the possession of a naval rival. Ypres is just as much a naval battle as Edward Ul.'s Battle of Sluys, on the coast nofc far away. The Germans, indeed, used to call the fighting for Ypres tho battle of Calais, and that is what it still is.

"Their first plans for the invasion of France took no account of, Flanders; it was only later, when they realised how dangerous our intervention was likely to be on Land, that they occupied Antwerp and descended along the Belgian coast towards the Narrows. And there is rea-son to believe that the first desperation of their attacks on Ypres had some connection with their plans for a submarine blockade of the British Isles, which, though it was not proclaimed till three months later, had already shaped itself in their minds. " Nothing is so certain as that if the Germans were to win in the west they would keep possession of the west side of the Narrows, even though they evacuated all the rest of Belgium and France, and hold it as one of the keys to the outer worW. Ypros, then, is more to us than, the name of a- town in Belgium. It is the symbol of British sea power against a Continental military tyranny,, and that is the real reason that we are fighting there. " Ypres is the symbol, but not, of course, the seat of sea power. The fight vrould be the same object if it were 10 miles north-east or south-west. The reason that it has centred round Ypres is that that is the point of equilibrium betwoo* the German drive to the south and the British drive to the north. It is. difficult to appraise values in the course of war, ' but we think that the value- of the British defence of Ypres has been much underestimated. -