The greater part of Poland lying in a broad sweep of country west, southwest and northeast of Warsaw has been swept over and battered to pieces by shot and shell like the strip of Flanders on both sides of the Yser river.

After capturing Antwerp the Germans pushed on to Ostend, an "open" or unfortified town, and occupied it with slight resistance from the Belgian army, which was reforming its broken ranks to the south, between Ostend and the French frontier, and preparing to contest the passage of the Kaiser's forces across the River Yser.

For more than a week the Belgians gallantly held the banks of the Yser in spite of the utmost endeavors of the Germans to cross, and it was not until October 24 that the latter finally succeeded in getting south of the river, with the French seaport of Dunkirk as their next objective point.

The passage of the Yser cost the Germans dearly and Dixmude was strewn with their dead.

As the Belgian troops, assisted by a British naval brigade, were pushed back from the Yser, they were gradually merged into the army of the allies, by whom they were received with the honors due the men who had made, for twelve long weeks, such a gallant and determined defense of their country against invasion and despoilment.

In the terrible battle of Ypres in Flanders, following the prolonged engagements along the Yser river, the Allies succeeded in repulsing the desperate German onslaught, and the German offensive was brought to a full stop.

" In their great effort to smash the Allies on the Yser the Germans also sustained terrible losses.

By April 27 it was asserted that the German force that managed to pass the Yser and took possession of the town of Lizerne had been practically annihilated.

The fighting was said to have been far more terrible than that of the autumn of 1914, when the Yser canal ran red with blood.

At one point on the Yser where the Germans were beaten back, they left 2,000 dead on the field, but this was only a small percentage of the total losses during this series of engagements in May.

The battle exceeded in violence and losses even the great battle of the Yser earlier in the war.

20Fighting along Yser river begins.

"On the other bank of the Yser lay the enemy and fired continuously.

During the autumn and winter months of 1914 the whole Yser domain was transformed into a vast graveyard.

Then I was for a few weeks liaison officer on the Yser at the point where the English and Belgian lines met.

I had hoped, on reaching Calais, to work in toward the fighting along the Yser, but, finding it impossible, decided to turn about and travel away from the front instead of toward itdown to see Bordeaux while it was still the temporary capital, and to see what life might be like in the French provincial towns in war time.

An English general just down from the front had told him that four thousand soldiers had been sent out as a burial party after the fighting along the Yser, and had buried, by actual count, thirty-nine thousand Germans.

The line of the Belgian trenches ran in a circle, following the course of the River Yser, the little stream which has proved such an insuperable barrier to the German advance.

We in the hospital hoped that the passage of the Yser would prove too much for the Germans, and that we should be left in peace, for we could not bear to think that all our labour could be thrown to the winds, and that we might have to start afresh in some other place.

The Belgian Army, supported by a certain number of French troops, made its final stand on the line of the Yser, the little river which runs from Ypres through Dixmude and Nieuport to the sea.

The waters of the Yser had helped to turn the tide of war.

In the trenches along the Yser men crouched down close to the moist mud to shelter themselves from a wind which was harder to dodge than shrapnel shells.

You who live through the same agonies, old friend, must learn and rejoice that I have been promoted adjutant on the night of November 13 on the banks of the Yser.

The extent of the ruins in Belgium east of the Yser has been exaggerated.

"In his hands on the Yser, if he is not dead, monsieur.