The Spectator at war: Siege fighting

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 20 March 1915:

When we wrote last week we were only able to chronicle very briefly the news that on Wednesday, March 10th, we had achieved a considerable local success at Neuve Chapelle. Now, however, that we have the details of the action contained in the spirited despatch from “Eyewitness” we are able to realize that the battle was not one of those confused events which are brought on by accidental circumstances, but a deliberate and well-planned attack by our troops. Sir John French, for reasons not disclosed, chose a particular section of the enemy’s line, massed opposite it in complete secrecy a huge force of guns—some accounts say four hundred, including some of the newest and most powerful artillery on wheels that the world has yet seen—collected, also in great secrecy, some forty-five thousand men in front of and around the artillery, and then when the Germans were not expecting it hurled his thunderbolt upon Neuve Chapelle, a place at which the German line formed a not very well- marked salient.

The result was wholly satisfactory. We took in the three days’ battle nearly two thousand prisoners, a form of success very difficult in trench fighting, and in addition we put some eighteen thousand of the enemy hors de combat. Of these casualties at least eight thousand men must be reckoned as dead or severely wounded—that is, men who can be written off for the purposes of the present war. It will be seen item these figures that the victory was well worth having for its own sake, and quite apart from its moral effect. It is true that the ground gained is small, but in siege fighting—for that is what the present war has come to—we must measure advances by yards, not miles. Unhappily, our success could only be purchased at a great expenditure in killed and wounded, though fortunately not in prisoners. Full lists are not yet available, but it would appear that, exclusive of prisoners, our losses were about two-thirds of those imposed on the Germans, or, say, twelve thousand men. Of these, however, not more than five thousand at the highest should be permanent losses.