grimmer struggle. The German retreat ended at the Aisne, and the long
outflanking manoeuvres of both hosts towards the Channel began. The
English attempts to assist Belgium in October came too late for the
preservation of Antwerp, and after a long and complicated struggle in
Flanders the British failed to outflank the German right, lost Ghent,
Menin and the Belgian coast, but held Ypres and beat back every attempt
of the enemy to reach Dunkirk and Calais. Meanwhile the smaller German
colonies and islands were falling to the navy, the Australian battleship
_Sydney_ smashed the _Emden_ at Cocos Island, and the British naval
disaster of Coronel was wiped out by the battle of the Falklands. The
Russians were victorious upon their left and took Lemberg, and after
some vicissitudes of fortune advanced to Przemysl, occupying the larger
part of Galicia; but the disaster of Tannenberg had broken their
progress in East Prussia, and the Germans were pressing towards Warsaw.
Turkey had joined the war, and suffered enormous losses in the Caucasus.
The Dardanelles had been shelled for the first time, and the British
were at Basra on the Euphrates.


Section 11

The Christmas of 1914 found England, whose landscape had hitherto been
almost as peaceful and soldierless as Massachusetts, already far gone
along the path of transformation into a country full of soldiers and
munition makers and military supplies. The soldiers came first, on the
well-known and greatly admired British principle of "first catch your
hare" and then build your kitchen. Always before, Christmas had been a
time of much gaiety and dressing up and prancing and two-stepping at the
Dower House, but this year everything was too uncertain to allow of any
gathering of guests. Hugh got leave for the day after Christmas, but