A GRAPHIC OUTLINE OF THE GREAT WAR.

Northland Age, Volume 25, Issue 30, 13 November 1925, Page 7

A GRAPHIC OUTLINE OF THE GREAT WAR.

DEEDS THAT SAVED THE EMPIRE. (All Rights Reserved). Chapter 8. THE RUSH FOR THE CHANNEL PORTS, AND THE FALL OF ANTWERP. When we last looked at the course of the war on the western front we left the French and British up against the impregnable lines behind which the Germans had entrenched themselves on the Aisne. The battle of the Aisne had resolved itself into a stalemate, that is to say, neither army could hope to make headway against the other. But before long there were suspicious indications that something unusual • was going on behind the German ♦. lines. It was learnt from prisoners and by other means that the best German troops were graduI ally being withdrawn for some unknown destination. Sir John French was the first to divine the enemy’s real intention: the Germans were going to avail themselves of the few weeks left before Winter would set in to make a dash for the Channel ports and so prepare the way for some big

stroke against Britain. The British Commander-in-chief it once made arrangements with General Joffre to transfer the British army with all possible speed to the threatened zone, and thus began in the first days of October that race for the coast — the Germans from the northern bank of the Aisne through Belgium, the British from the southern bank through France—which was to culminate in the most fearful series of battles in the world’s history. The Germans had by this time completely subjugated Belgium with the exception of Antwerp, into which what was left of the Belgian army had withdrawn. Antwerp was supposed to be the most strongly fortified town in Europe and the possession of its great port would have meant i much for the Allies. The Allied plan was therefore to link up their lines in France with Antwerp by holding the valley of the Scheldt, a canalized stream which flows through Central Belgium into the North Sea at Antwerp. But by the 6th of October it had become apparent that not only must Antwerp succumb to the German howitzers but that the overwhelming numbers of German troops pouring south would prevent the Allied armies from making any stand whatever in Belgium. The fall of Antwerp is perhaps the most dramatic event ef the whole war. This great port with its half-million inhabitants and an annual trade of more than £100,000,000 sterling was one of the handsomest and most prosperous cities in the world. So rich a prize could not hope to elude the greedy grasp of Belgium’s ruthless betrayer. After the cap- : s itulation of Brussels the Belgian Court and Government had withdrawn with the army to Antwerp and it was hoped that with British aid this corner of their territory fc might yet be safegurded. Some 1 British naval forces were indeed sent; but it was soon realized that the day of impregnable fortress had gone by and that to keep the foe at arm’s length the imperative need was for overwhelming forces and these for the present were out •f the question. On the evening of Wednesday, October 7th, the citizens of Antwerp were given to understand that the worst was inevitable. The machinery of the German _ ships in the harbour was rendered useless by dynamite explosions. The great tanks, the oil reservoirs for the greater part of North Western Europe, had been tipped by order af the Authorities, but since Ahe ail raa off too slowly set on fire and soon huge fire clouds reeking with the smell of Oil darkened the city. The wild beasts in the zoological gardens were shot by their keepers; on all sides were indications of the impending doom. The citizens of Antwerp remembering the German atrocities 0 perpetrated at Louvain and other Belgian towns, prepared to flee by every open road. Frantic crowds, carrying what household treasuresthey could in theirhands • struggled for a footing on any or every kind of vessel afloat. Dredges, trawlers, yachts, fishingboats and even rafts were sunk K almost to the water line with a weight of distracted humanity. Such was the exodus by sea. But the army and throngs of men, women and children were obliged to make their escape as best they l<?uld by land. As you will see

iby the map the Dtitoh border to the north is only about | twenty miles from Antwerp, but lit was a longer journey than I that to reach even the little town j of Bergen which in these terrible j days received at least 200,000 exiles, most of them of the poorer I and weaker class and having neither money nor provisions. Many fell weary and famished by the wayside. The fields for miles around were black with panting crowds. The siek and the old died from exposure. Morsels of raw turnip or potato were greedily eaten even by the most delicately nurtured. One correspondent tells us that he saw white haired men and women grasping the harness of the gun teams, high class ladies clinging to the end of waggons literally heaped with wounded soldiers whose piteous white faces were reflected against the pall of black smoke covering the heavens, while the leaking waggons trailed behind them streams of human blood. Huddled together under white-faced nuns were troops of helpless children many of whose fathers were at the moment either fighting in the outer trenches against desperate odds or already stiff and stark in death.

The clamour was beyond all imagination, the great shells screeched overhead making lurid patches in the overhanging canopy of smoke from the oil tanks. In the distance the mighty German howitzers seemed to shake the very earth to its foundations, reverberating through the dense masses on the closely packed boats until it seemed that at each tremor the dark waters would engulf their prey; vehicles of every description from the pushing motor car to the rickety wheelbarrow creaked on the way, and ever, and ever, came the shuffle, shuffle of countless weary feet. These are only some of the horrors that accompanied the emptying of one of the proudest and gayest cities in Europe. When by October 10th, such of the Belgian troops as could withdraw themselves had got away and the Germans marched down the broad boulevards of Antwerp it was a city of the dead that met their gaze. We must now follow the remnant of the Belgian army in its retreat until it falls in line with the French and British armies forming up in the south to block the Germaa rush to the coast. In the early days of October a newly formed British army Corps under Sir Henry Rawlinson landed at Zeebrugge just in the nick of time to cover the Belgian retreat. It is however little short of a miracle that the whole Belgian army as well as the British detachment were not cut off to a man as could easily have happened had the Germans taken the precautions to hold with any strength the roads leading from Antwerp to the Belgian coast. As it was, either from contempt for their foe or for some other inexplicable reason, German troops did not cross the Scheldt, in any great force until the Belgian army was safely on its way to the Yser where it fell into alignment with the British army now swinging into line a little north of the old Belgian city of Ypres.