and rolled the German armies in France and Belgium slowly back to the Rhine and the Dutch frontier.
Undismayed, and fighting against heavy odds with a magnificent courage and steadiness, Germany took up a seemingly impregnable position on the right bank of the Rhine and marshaled her forces for a strictly defensive campaign in 1916. Late in November of 1915, however, when by common consent the warring hosts on the Western battle line had apparently settled down for comparative rest and recuperation during the winter months in a quasi-defensive, similar to that of 1915, Holland suddenly declaring war, entrenched herself heavily on the German border, and a vast Allied reserve army, entering Holland by the Belgian-Dutch border, and by way of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, concentrated to the east of the Rhine, drove down in a resistless offensive into West-
