novelty, both as to plan and means, to such an extent as to bewilder the enemy and render all his plans and means of defense futile. Whether the credit was due to Haig or Byng, or was to be shared between them, the muster-roll of fame was enriched by the exploit and by the military inspiration which it exhibited.

In its bearing on the Allies' plans, the gain of ground at Cambrai counted heavily. Lens, north of Cambrai, was already so closely beset that it seemed to await the finishing blow. St. Quentin, south of Cambrai, seemed within reach of the British on one side and the French on another.

The enfeeblement of the enemy at Cambrai increased the strain on the two cities. The interdependence of Cambrai, Lens, and St. Quentin was plain. The Cambrai gains were not merely gains; they were demonstrations of a new method for puncturing the German line. They threatened to overturn the tactics of the Western Front; they promised to supply the one indispensable element without which a victory had been impossible. Tanks, in short, had revealed their worth when employed wholesale. A year ago they had roused the laughter of Germans and it seemed as if they had been driven by ridicule into the background. Now they

were used on a new scale, and they had set at naught all the routine defensive means of the German trench-system. Without the aid of tanks it would have been necessary to throw a million projectiles from thousands of cannon, at an expense of over $50,000,000, in order to occupy half a dozen square miles of territory, and the pounding would have required several days. Tanks, which were of doubtful utility on steep uplands, could be employed in half a dozen vital areas of the Belgian-French front and so promised to do what the monitor did for the Union in 1862 and Krupp cannon for Prussia in 1870 and 1914.

The progress of the Allies in recovering French and Belgian territory since the Hindenburg retreat in March, 1917, had two principal phases: gains made at a single bound in the course of that retreat, extending roughly over a period of a month, and gains achieved in subsequent operations along comparatively limited portions of the front from the North Sea to Reims. These sections, pieced together, made up nearly the whole of that front. Hindenburg's retirement began about March 10. His "voluntary" surrender of territory stopt on April 9, when Haig delivered the first of his strokes from Arras. Just a week later the French made their attack on the Aisne. After that the story of the year's campaign was principally one of a sustained British effort, with blows coming at increasingly frequent intervals. The French were contented with much less frequent efforts, and along a much more limited front, their attention being virtually concentrated on the section of the line between Soissons and Craonne, including Malmaison.

In the British campaign since the beginning of April, with its shifting blows from north to south, the first blow in time, and perhaps the first in the fierceness of the fighting, was made at Arras. The territory regained in this sector was a semicircle on a diameter of twenty miles, with Arras as the center. It was ten miles from Arras north to Lens and about the same distance southeast to the region of Bullecourt and Quéant. Here the British won back something like 120 square miles. Close in importance to the Arras sector was the Ypres sector, where the British drove forward northeast to a depth of five miles with Passchendaele as the

farthest point and along an arc seven miles long from south of Houthulst Wood to the region of Gheluvelt. Here the gain was about twenty-five square miles. The third gain was registered in the single dramatic stroke of the battle of Messines on June 7, by which the German salient from Zillebeke south to Warneton, five miles long and four miles deep, was lopped off, with a British gain of about twenty square miles. Finally came this drive for Cambrai, a surprize not only in tactics, but in the fact that it came along a quiescent section of the front, and made a gain of perhaps fifty square miles.

In round numbers, therefore, the Allies had won back since March about 1,500 square miles of French and Belgian territory. Enormous German conquests had, however, been made in Russia, but this had brought the end of the war no nearer. Teutonic gains in Italy had not led to an Italian collapse, and stood removed from the front on which both sides agreed that the decision must come if the war was to be fought to the bitter end. The Allied gains in territory on that front in the west could not be correctly measured until the full Allied effort had been felt. On the Somme in 1916 the Allied gains had been considerable, but it was only in the next spring that the Somme brought in its full harvest of 1,200 square miles. While still engaged in the Cambrai sector, Haig did not overlook his chance to stab the German line in Flanders. Southeast of Ypres the British drove their line forward slightly. On the southern front the Germans delivered several small attacks against the French in the

The bridge in the center of the picture was originally built to cross a canal, but strangely survived all the bombardment to which the region was subjected and in which the canal itself was destroyed

Aisne region, northwest of Reims and in the Champagne, but all were repulsed by artillery.

After hard fighting, in which troops came into hand-tohand fighting with varying results, Haig's forces on November 25 were in possession of the town of Bourlon and the greater part of the Bourlon Wood, west of Cambrai. This gave Haig a dominating position over the much sought for railroad center and the surrounding country. English, Welsh, and Scottish battalions, aided by cavalry, encompassed the defeat of the Germans, who had concentrated fresh reserves-men of extreme valor-to face the British in their do-or-die efforts to win high-ground positions. Irish troops late in November took the last mile and a quarter of a thirteen-mile Hindenburg tunnel-trench-the most amazing system of subterranean defenses on the Western Front. The tunnel extended from Bullecourt northwest to the Scarpe, east of Arras, snaking its crooked way so as to conform to the Hindenburg line. It was forty feet underground, with an entrance every thirty-five yards leading from the main trench above. It was electrically lighted. Small rooms opened off the main corridor. In these were superimposed bunks where 20,000 or more troops might, and doubtless did, sleep in comfort out of reach of the heaviest shells. Electric fans kept the air fresh and acted as insurance against asphyxiating gases. Furnaces made it possible to prepare hot meals. Special quarters for officers were as luxurious as in the average modern hotel. They had electric reading-lamps, call-buttons, soft beds, pictures on the walls, writing-desks. Belts and boots put out in the corridor during sleeping hours insured cleaning and polishing by servants. The Irish did the trick at the tunnel in an hour and forty-five minutes. The whole tunnel was mined.13 In the autumn of 1918 this tunnel became the scene of another thrilling minor action. November 25 found British troops stretched in a semicircle about Bourlon Wood and Bourlon Village. All day the opposing forces struggled at close quarters for possession of the village, from which the British had been forced after gaining a footing in the rush that took them through the wood. Nightfall still found waves of infantry surging back

13 William P. Simms, United Press correspondent.

and fourth through the streets of the hamlet, their crimson bayonets telling the story of the conflict. Gradually the Germans fell back, the British pressing forward with a persistance which the enemy could not withstand, until the hamlet was cleared of German troops. The Germans had attached much importance to Burlon. The fighting over the wooded slopes was among the most spectacular of the year. Tanks and airmen paved the way for onrushing infantry, Several monitors led the advance with planes circling over the enemy at a height of thirty to fifty feet, and carrying on vigorous warfare with machine-guns and bombs. It was hard fighting, but the advance was continued successfully until the northeast corner of the wood was reached, where the tanks were held up by a strong force of the enemy. British airmen, who had been fighting close to the ground, deliberately charged on the foe, with machine-guns sending a stream of bullets into the German ranks. The battle was short and decisive. Airplanes wheeled and re-wheeled over the heads of Germans and maintained such an intensive fire that they were forced to retire, after suffering considerable losses. Tanks then pushed on, and the conquest of the wood was completed. An entering wedge had been driven into the village.

Almost immediately the Germans delivered a heavy counter-attack on the troops who had penetrated the hamlet, and after a stiff engagement forced them to withdraw to the edge of the wood. A sanguinary struggle followed, and the British, unable to withstand the fury of the German attack, withdrew slightly, until the Germans gained a footing in the northern edge of the forest. The British surged forward again, until dismounted cavalrymen advanced with infantry, and between them they reestablished the old line. Dusk settled down about the contending forces, but they continued to shoot and thrust at one another in gathering darkness. Finally the German forces were driven outside the village, but were still full of determination. Several times through the night they reformed and swept forward against the village, but were hurled back.

Canada had been spendidly represented in the British advance. For the first time since the German retreat from