CELEBRATING YPRES DAY.
The Ypres Times.
155
The Press throughout the United Kingdom gave much attention to the activities of the League on
October 31 st. The following are extracts from some of the leading papers.
The eighth anniversary of the climax of the first battle of Ypres, now universally
acknowledged to have been one of the most decisive battles of the Great War, falls to be
celebrated to-day. The 31st October, 1914, was the time when, by the stubborn stand
of that gallant band of British heroes, another thin red line reminiscent of the Crimean
war, against the Hun hordes, the way to the Channel ports was barred to the enemy and
a victory achieved which ranks in history with the first battle of the Marne in importance.
It was that memorable day when, as one historian has picturesquely phrased it, over
the green Flemish meadows, beside the sluggish water-courses, on the fringes of the old-
LORD HORNE PLACING THE WREATH UPON THE CENOTAPH.
world villages, and in the heart of the autumn-tinted woods two great Empires fought
for the mastery," and Britain won. But for that victory and success in the subsequent
struggles at the same crucial spot our country would have stood in fearful peril, for if
the German long-range guns which threw heavy shells into Paris and Dunkirk from a
distance of 25 miles had been planted on the cliffs of Calais they might have reduced
Dover to ruins and enabled the enemy to seize command of the Channel from the hands
of the British navy. Communications between French and British forces would have
