CHAPTER VH

SPEING OF 1915

Winter Stalemate—Neuve Chapelle—Its Purpose and Consequences
—The Second Battle of Ypres,

I

AT the beginning of 1915 the situation for the
Allies was gloomy but not yet menacing.
Japan had come in on their side, though she could
do nothing except in the Far East. Italy was
moving towards intervention on the Allied side.
Turkey had joined Germany, while Bulgaria, Greece,
and Rumania still remained neutral. On the
battlefields the situation was not promising. The
so-called steam-roller of Russia seemed inclined
to roll in the wrong direction, and in the West the
Allies found themselves confronted by an impreg-
nable fortress.

With the coming of full winter both armies were
forced into that trench warfare which took the place
of the old winter quarters. The shallow shelter
trenches of mid-October, hasty lines scored in the
mud by harried men, became an elaborate series of
excavations to which the most modern engineering

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