During their held on the initiative the enemy have been
most careful never to let us fight where we should endanger their grasp of the coast from .Nieuport to the Dutch frontier, That piece of coast-line they have always regarded, most rightly from their point of view, as their most precious posses- sion. As long as they possess it they pcssess a hundred advantages which perhaps it would not be wise to enumerate. Hence their tremendous preparations and the massing of some of their heaviest suns behind the dunes. If we, not they, were in possession of the Belgian coast-line, their hold on Belgium must be certainly precarious and probably short. Even now, though we have got the power of initiative and may fight, and, what is more, conquer, where we like by land, though not, of course, without a tremendous effort, Ire are still bound by many old material ties of circumstance and of time.
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