ject of their terror, they read this inscription
on it: "April Fool--Gott strafe England."

Though the antiaircraft guns, or "Archibalds," as the soldiers
called them, were not especially effective except in keeping the
flyers at such a height that it was not easy for them to make effective
observations, a "Taube" was brought down at Pervyse, and near Ypres
another was damaged on April 8. But on April 12 a German flyer
inflicted some loss on the Allies' lines and escaped without being
even hit. On the following day, presumably emboldened by that success,
German aeroplanes threw flares and smoke balls over the British
trenches east of Ypres, with the result that the soldiers of King
George were subjected to a severe bombardment. All things considered,
however, the Allies had ground for their belief that they more
than held their own in the air.

Afloat the Allies continued to maintain the supremacy which had
been theirs. The French and British battleships held the left of
the Allies' line. Their great guns proved their effectiveness on the
Germans who were advancing from Ostend on Nieuport. They repeatedly
bombarded the position of the kaiser's men at Westende, east of
Nieuport. The Germans had trained one of their mammoth pieces of
artillery against that town presumably because it held the sluices
and locks which regulated the overflowing of the Yser territory.
If the means of flooding the land could not be seized, the next
best thing to do was to wreck them.

The Belgians, in the meantime, assumed the offensive, their left
being protected by the Allied fleet and the French forces in the
neighborhood of Nieuport. These troops captured one of the smaller
forts east of Lombartzyde on March 11, 1915. There was also fighting
at Schoorbakke, north of the Yser loop, where the German trenches
were shelled by French artillery. This was on the eastern border
of the inundated section. After destroying the German front in the
graveyard at Dixmude, the French artillerists battered a German
convoy on its way between Dixmude and Essen on March 17, 1915. By
March 23 the east bank of the Yser held a Belgian division. In
fact, from Dixmude to the sea the Allied troops were advancing.

The Germans, however, advanced south of Dixmude. On April 1, 1915,
they shelled the farms and villages west of the Yser and the Yperlee
Canals, and took the Driegrachten farm. Thereupon the Germans crossed
the canal with three machine guns. Their plan