POSITION IN FLANDERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LII, Issue 49, 26 February 1918, Page 5

POSITION IN FLANDERS.

A writer in Country Life compares the fighting in Flanders in the end of the last year to a game of chess. "When the board is set," he says, "and two strong players are opposed to one another, you do not expect a crash, as when a rook player is opposed to . a champion. The first manoeuvres are made in order to gain position, and in real war. as well as in its mimic counterpart, position is everything. When the pieces of one player are well developed so that 'they occupy the commanding spots and are well hacked up one by the other, the experienced player can easily see the end of the game, even though the pieces on each side are numerically the same. But what gives them a clue is , that one party has been thrust, into a sta'te of defence and the development of his pieces has been Many ot the most powerful are of no avail because they are forbidden any field of operation. The point is that Sir Douglas Haig has so far been playing for positibn and has won it. Wherever one goes on the fronts, the relative position •of. the opposing armies is reversed Whereas at the beginning of trench warfare the Germans held the heights and therefore commanded the line ,of the British array on the plains, to-day-it is the British Army which holds ..the ' commanding positions and the Germans who are forced down to the watery., plains. It is so in a marked degree at Vimy Ridge, where the observation posts of the- British Army command a wide sweep of the . surrounding country and of the German lines entrenched in it. At Verdun, Germans behind the dune-like ridges, so that they have 110 aid from direct sight, .but must trust wholly to their aeroplanes foe locating the situation of the hostile guns. Sir Douglas Haig has had a formidable task in establishing a similar position on the - Belgian front. Not only were the points" of vantage occupied by the ' enemy, but the German' had been ■ fully alive to the fact that on the possession of. those ridges one t>y one have been captured by the Valour and dogged persistency of the British Army lay their hopes Of retaining Belgium. And th'at was by no means all. Belgium counts enormously in the German calculations because part of the Country supplies them with an outlet for their submarines. The task of forcing a retreat from Zeebrugge and the bank of the Scheldt has become infinitely more within the grasp of tho British Army since L'asschendaele and the heights beside it have been _ captured; - The French military authorities . hold that ' Passchendaele is the key to the German positions, and that after it has been gained the unlocking the Hun grip upon Flanders must b e cotn« comparatively simple. . , *