NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE victory on the Messines Ridge, which we could do no more than barely record as we went to press last week, was the greatest offensive achievement of British arms in the war. All the lessons of past offensives at Neuve Chapelle, the Somme, Arras, and elsewhere seemed to be gathered up and applied with a precision and completeness of success that were positively startling. Every- thing worked not only " according to plan," but according to the minute. The Messincs-Wytschaeto Ridge is that frowning and powerful bastion which since October, 1914, overlooked the famous Ypres Salient, and was at once the symbol and the cause of the long and heroic sufferings of the troops that held tho Salient. There is no position of greater natural strength on the Western front, and it was plain that an Army which could capture it could capture anything guarded by German troops.
