retreat or fight an enemy in front and behind them. If they retreated to the Yperlee Canal, the bulk of the British troops from Broodseinde to the Ypres-Comines Canal near St. Eloi would either be cut off or have to make their escape, under the fire of the German artillery, through the encumbered streets of Ypres. That city would fall into the hands of the Germans, and the Kaiser would then be able to proclaim the annexation of Belgium.

The plan was ingenious, but it left out of account certain important factors. The Canadians were mostly recruited from a class of men forced by their occupations to develop individual daring and resourcefulness. Feeling that the eyes of the inhabitants of Canada and the United States were on them, they were determined to show that they were the equals of any troops in the world. Belonging to a race of sportsmen, they would be certain to be roused to fury by the dastardly trick about to be played on both them and the French troops to their left. They might, therefore, be depended on to hold out to the last extremity.

Nor were they or the French without supports. For both General Foch and Sir John French had assembled sufficient forces in or behind the salient to engage in counter-attacks. Two miles or so behind the right of Putz's Division, in a small wood to the west of St. Julien, was the 2nd London Battery of Heavy Artillery with 4.7 in. guns. Four battalions of the V. Corps were round Ypres. The 13th Infantry Brigade, which, as we have seen, had suffered severely on Hill 60, was resting three miles west of Ypres, at Vlamertinghe. The 1st Canadian Brigade was in general reserve, but with one battalion close to the trenches. Unless the line from Broodseinde to St. Eloi was simultaneously threatened at all points, the reserves of the British troops defending it could safely be employed to beat off the Germans descending on Ypres from the north. The Cavalry Corps, now, as ever, ready to replace infantry, was in general reserve, and if necessary the Lahore Division of the Indian Corps and a portion of the III. Corps could be sent to reinforce the British Second Army, on which and Putz's Division the storm was about to burst. Foch, too, had ample reserves. With the motor transport at his disposal, he could quickly concentrate fresh men and guns round Ypres.

The gassing was to have begun on the 20th

at the height of the combat for Hill 60-but the wind on that and the succeeding day was unfavourable. Thursday, the 22nd, dawned. The wind shifted and blew from the north. The weather was warm and sunny. During the forenoon and early afternoon nothing unusual was reported to the Allied Headquarters.

It was nearly 5 p.m. Suddenly an aviator reported that yellow smoke had been seen on the German position between Bixschoote and Langemarck. From their trenches the Turcos perceived a white smoke rising some three feet from the ground. In front of it appeared a greenish yellowish cloud, higher than a man, which drifted towards them. At every 50 feet or so along the German front there was a battery of 20 retorts, and the Germans had at last turned on the chlorine gas.

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"Very probably," wrote one of them on the 26th, we are going to settle the hash of the wicked English. We are making use of a new means of fighting, against which they are simply defenceless."

If they had no compunction in asphyxiating the British, they had still less in murdering Turcos. Unable themselves to employ coloured troops, for their brown subjects in South Africa would never have fought for their cruel masters, they hypocritically objected to the presence of Africans or Asiatics on European battlefields.

In a few seconds the Turcos began to experience intolerable irritation and smarting in the throat, nose and eyes. They began to cough and vomit blood; they felt frightful pains in the chest; they seemed to be suffocating.

Dimly they discerned detachments of the enemy advancing through the wall of vapour. Some of the Germans had their heads enveloped in huge masks, which made them look like divers; the majority wore indiarubber respirators pierced with holes and shaped, not inappropriately, like a snout. These respirators, which had been issued in sealed covers, were attached by means of elastic bands passing behind the neck. The wearer breathed through a plug saturated with bicarbonate of soda or some other solution neutralizing the evil effects of the gas.

The surprise was complete. Hundreds of the Turcos were thrown into a comatose or dying condition, others were shot or bayoneted by their opponents. The survivors retired from the gas area, leaving 50 guns in the Germans hands

A GERMAN LOOK-OUT POST. several field batteries farther to the rear and in

a more easterly direction. Before the guns could be brought into action the Germans were within a few hundred yards of them. One battery swung round, fired on the enemy at point-blank range and stopped the rush. The guns of another were attacked from three sides, but not a gun was taken.

Barely two miles of open country lay between Ypres and the Germans. The right wing of the two corps launched to the attack was marching on the Yperlee Canal to seize the crossing at Steenstraate and that at Het Sast, three-quarters of a mile south of it. Between Steenstraate and Dixmude the Germans were renewing their attacks on the Belgians at Driegrachten and, north of Dixmude, at the Château de Vicogne a small country house, the centre of a group of cottages. Still more serious, the Canadian Division was turned and a line of trenches formed by the enemy at right angles to its left flank. Advancing from these, the enemy might cut the Canadians off from Ypres.

Never had the position in Flanders been more critical. The French Colonial Division was almost wiped out as a fighting unit, and, apart from the Canadians, only the four battalions of the V. Corps round Ypres and the sorely tried brigade resting after its efforts on Hill 60 at Vlamertinghe were at hand to save the situation. "The self-governing Colonies in the British Empire," Bernhardi had written in 1911, 'have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theatre of war." The Canadian "militia " was about to prove on a European theatre of war that it possessed a courage and tenacity equal to those of regular troops.

The soldiers in reserve in and near Ypres, startled by the cannonade and by the sight of the retiring Turcos, were gathering in groups. Here and there a Turco who could speak English was gesticulating and trying to explain what had happened, while Englishmen who could. speak French were calmly asking questions. Out of the houses were rushing the thousands of civilians-men, women and children-who still remained in the city. They frantically endeavoured to make their way into the fields.

Suddenly a Staff officer galloped up and shouted: "Stand to Arms." The soldiers, some of whom had been bathing, quietly pushed their way through the panic-stricken civilians to their alarm posts. The officers, without waiting for orders, led them forward, and then the German host, attacked with the bayonet, was brought to a standstill on the ground which they had secured by their treacherous conduct.

The fate of the battle turned on the fortunes of the 3rd Canadian Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Turner. At the Canadians the Germans had also discharged a cloud of chlorine gas, behind which four divisions were massed for an attack. Fortunately, however, the direction of the wind saved the Canadians from the worst effects, and, though many soldiers were placed hors de combat, two assaults of the Germans were beaten off. As these combats proceeded, General Turner parried the blow aimed at his left and rear. The French Colonial Division had collapsed. The wood west of St. Julien with the 4.7-inch guns in it had been captured by the enemy; the French field artillery behind General Putz's force had been lost; our own field guns were in imminent danger of capture.

It was one of those moments which test the quality of leaders.

General Turner and his Staff rose to the. occasion. The left of the brigade was promptly swung back from in front of Poelcappelle until it was west of the Poelcappelle-Ypres road. It was its duty at all costs to hold the new line while the Turcos were being rallied and reinforcements rushed through Ypres to fill the gaps between the environs of that city and St. Julien, and all the available reserves of the Canadian and the other divisions east and south of it were brought up. This most difficult operation, ordered and carried out in an atmosphere loaded with poisonous fumes, under bursting shells, amid jets of lead from machineguns and in the teeth of a sleet of bullets from the German infantry entrenched between the wood west of St. Julien and Poelcappelle, was successful. Night fell. By the light of blazing farmhouses and cottages, their work from time to time illuminated by the moon, the Canadians dug themselves in.

But a passive defence was not sufficient. The Germans were crossing the canal at Steenstraate and Het Sast, and up both its sides they were descending on Ypres. Between St. Julien and the canal there were only the four battalions of the V. Corps under Colonel Geddes, of the Buffs, another battalion, some halfdazed Turcos and a few handfuls of soldiers who had been flung into the battle by enterprising subordinate officers. Ypres, the junction of nearly all the roads supplying the British forces from the region of Poelcappelle, through Zonnebeke to Hill 60, was in imminent danger of being stormed.

To relieve the pressure on the French, who had retired west of the canal, and on Geddes' scanty force, the 16th Battalion of the 3rd Canadian Brigade, under Lieut.-Colonel Leckie, and the 10th Battalion of the 2nd Canadian Brigade were prepared for a counterattack. Two battalions of the 1st Canadian Brigade, which, it will be remembered, had been in Army Reserve, had arrived in the fighting line and were at hand as supports. They were the 2nd Battalion, under Colonel Watson, and the 3rd Battalion (Toronto Regiment), under Lieut.-Colonel Rennie, which latter battalion, known as " The Queen's Own," consisted of a company of the GovernorGeneral of Canada's bodyguard, two companies of the Queen's Own Rifles and a company of the 10th Grenadiers.

Their immediate objective was the recovery of the wood west of St. Julien, and of the heavy guns lost there. This charge of the Canadian Scottish will live in history. It has been graphically described by one who took part in

it:

The moon,

The night had now become very dark. of which we had only had a few glimpses during our march, had disappeared behind dense black clouds, but farm buildings were ablaze all around us, and at a distance of, as near as I could judge, about two miles and a half, in nearly a straight line from our new front, there was a large wood.

The sound of firing had now entirely ceased and was succeeded by a silence which, to those of us who had been months at the front, was uncanny. After a further halt, which seemed interminable, but was really only one of minutes, we were ordered to move off in the direction of the wood. Scarcely had we done so when the intervening plain was again treated to shrapnel, but at intervals only, and we arrived within three-quarters of a mile of the outskirts of the wood without any casualties in our lot.

Here a further halt was called, and the officers were then told that the Germans were occupying the wood, that they had been in possession since 4 o'clock, and, in all probability, were entrenched therein. It was pointed out that the enemy were occupying a strong position in the rear of the British lines and that they must be driven out of it at all costs. It was whispered also that some British guns had been taken during the afternoon, and that it would be our "bit" to retake them. It was well understood by all that we were in for bayonet work and that we should not be supported by artillery.

We again moved on, in column of companies, forming fours to pass through a narrow gateway. This passed, we deployed in long lines of half companies, the second half of each company keeping about 30 yards in the rear of the first. All the battalions marched in this formation and each first half company knew that its "pals" in the second would not fail to support it when it came to the Charge." The 10th Battalion had the post of honour in the van-its gallant Colonel, Russell Boyle, fell leading it.

It wanted but a few minutes to midnight when wo got to a hollow which was at most 300 yards from the wood. The moon now reappeared at intervals and we could have done without her. The shrapnel fire had completely ceased and we had a second spell of a silence which could be felt.

Whispered orders were given to fix bayonets, which were obeyed in a flash. Overcoats, packs, and even the officers' equipments were dropped, and we immediately advanced in light order.

Scarcely had we reached a low ridge, in full view of the wood, when a perfect hell of firo was loosed on us from rifles and machine-guns, which the Germans had placed in position behind the undergrowth skirting the wood. Instantly the word was given to charge, and on we rushed cheering, yelling, shouting, and swearing, straight for the foe. At first the Germans fired a little too high, and our losses until we came within fifty yards of them were comparatively small. Then some of our chaps began to drop, then the whole front line seemed to melt away, only to be instantly closed up again.

Cheering and yelling all the time, we jumped over the bodies of the wounded and tore on. Of the Germans with the machine-guns not one escaped, but those inside We were the wood stood up to us in most dogged style. so quickly at work that those at the edge of the wood could not have got away in any case. Many threw up their hands, and we did not refuse quarter.

Pressing on into the wood itself, the struggle became a dreadful hand-to-hand conflict; we fought in clumps and batches, and the living struggled over the bodies