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been thrilled as never before in his life by the reception in New York.

Address to Lawyers' Club

Earlier in the day M. Viviani was the guest of the lawyers of New York. On this occasion he delivered another of his important utterances, of which the following are among the significant passages:

It is not an abstract salute which the French Mission has brought to America. No, we are not here merely to exchange expressions of international friendship; we have not come merely for the purpose of shaking hands with you; we have not come here to salute you nor to become intoxicated by the clamorous acclamations which greet us in your streets. We have come here to penetrate your souls, to penetrate your hearts. Yes, this I say, we have come, however unworthy we may be of our mission, to show you the great soul of wounded France, of suffering France, of eternal France.

All the orators who have preceded me upon this platform have accorded me too much praise to permit me, with modesty, to surpass the height of their eulogy. You have shown the French, isolated at the beginning of the war, sleeping in muddy and bloody trenches, fighting night and day, constantly, not only for themselves, but for humanity. You have considered the French Army as the vanguard of all the armies of free men. Yes, indeed, that is true. For the last three years we have been fighting for liberty; we are flinging to the breeze under the fire of cannon the banner of universal democracy. May free men now rise and come to our side! For the honor of humanity let us not be alone in this fight!

Come to us, American brothers, whose hearts have been attached to ours since Lafayette, with his French soldiers, landed upon your soil and loaned the aid of his arms to American independence. It is not for France; it is not for you; it is not for England; it is not for Russia. No; it is not for the nations; it is for the whole world; it is for all humanity.

On May 11 Marshal Joffre visited West Point, reviewed the Cadet Corps, and was entertained by the staff. Previously the same day he visited Washington's Headquarters at Newburg, N. Y., where he was received by Governor Whitman. Here the Eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati was conferred on him. He had been elected an honorary member of this society. The only other foreigners who had thus been honored were Rochambeau and Lafayette.

From New York the French Mission

visited Boston, where they were enthusiastically received. M. Viviani proceeded to Ottawa.

Chamber of Commerce Speech

The New York Chamber of Commerce luncheon to Mr. Balfour and the English party was attended by more than 1,000 members and guests. In his address, after thanking the President, E. H. Outerbridge, for his kindly references to the bond between the United States and England, Mr. Balfour said the hope of his life had been that before he died "the union between the English-speaking, freedom-loving branches of the human race should be drawn far closer than in the past, and that all temporary causes of difference which may ever have separated the two great peoples would be seen in their true and just proportion, and that we should all realize, on whatever side of the Atlantic fortune had placed us, that the things wherein we have differed in the past sink into absolute insignificance when compared with those vital agreements which at all times, but never more than at such a time as the present, unite us in one great spiritual whole."

In alluding to the bonds between the English-speaking races, he said:

You have absorbed in your midst many admirable citizens drawn from all parts of Europe, whom American institutions and American ways of thought have molded and are molding into one great people. I rejoice to think it should be so. A similar process on a smaller scale is going on in the selfgoverning dominions of the British Empire. It is a good process, it is a noble process. Let us never forget that wherever be the place in which that great and beneficent process is going on, whether it be in Canada, whether it be in Australia, or whether on the largest scale of all it be in the United States of America, the spirit which the immigrant absorbs is the spirit in all these places largely due to a historic past in which your forefathers and my forefathers, gentlemen, all had their share.

In speaking of the Chairman's reference to the splendid work of the British fleet, Mr. Balfour said:

Does anybody think that if the sea power were transferred from British to German hands the historian of the future could say the same of the German fleet? By their fruits we know them. Deliberately brought into ex

istence in the hope that it would break down that naval power which the German autocracy-not the German people, but the German autocracy-recognizes as one of the greatest bulwarks of freedom, and one of the most powerful defenses against world domination, knowing that instinctively they have been feverishly building for eighteen or twenty years in order that, if it might be so, they could destroy the country with which they had no quarrel, and no cause of quarrel, but which they regarded with an instinctive and unalterable jealousy. They have been disappointed. Their fleet remains safely in the harbor.

What puts out to sea is not the battleship or the battle cruiser; there is no successor of the great fleets of ancient times; but the submarine which, in their hands, finds its natural prey in the destruction of defenseless merchantmen and the butchery of defenseless women and children. I will do the German fleet the justice to say that I do not believe that this was its ideal when this war started, or when its ships were under construction. What I do say is that the use which the German governing classes are now making of this new weapon, while it will never decide the issue of this war, nevertheless indicates a menace to the future commerce of the world which must be absolutely stopped for the future. Under the old maritime laws, which the United States and Great Britain in particular have always recognized, fleets undoubtedly did interfere with the commerce of any enemy belligerents, and it is very difficult to see how that could or ought to be avoided until that happy time comes when war is neither on land nor sea permitted to interfere with private rights, or indeed permitted to go on at all.

as

Germans Made War Inhuman.

But, gentlemen, maritime warfare as it has been carried on by civlized nations in the past has been a human affair, carried out under recognized laws, under which as little injury was done to the neutral trader was possible under the circumstances, compared to the abominations which are now insisted upon by the German staff. Huge tracts of ocean are marked out at the arbitrary will of one belligerent, and within these vast areas neutrals, peaceable traders, do not merely have their ships taken in, adjudged in the prize court, dealt with, and non-belligerent life carefully regarded, but they are sunk at sea, no examination, no knowledge of what is in the ship, no knowledge of the character of the crew, no knowledge of whether there are or are not passengers aboard, no knowledge of the goods which are being transported, of the place from which they came or the destination designed. That, gentlemen, is carrying out the methods of barbarism, and in a manner which would have been regarded as incredible even in Germany two years ago. It has been carried out by a Government which, when it thought

worth while for diplomatic reasons, was never wearied of talking of the freedom of the seas.

But it is a method of conducting warfare which in its indirect consequences, as well as its direct consequences, is of such a character that the civilized world must, when this war is over, take effectual precautions against its repetition. For, if not, it seems to me that, whenever two countries go to war, and whenever it suits the least scrupulous of the belligerents, not merely will a great wrong have been inflicted upon its opponent, but the commerce of the whole civilized world will be disorganized and destroyed. That is impossible to tolerate. And this Chamber has under its guardianship the interests of trade and commerce, and it is of all bodies the one most interested in seeing that, so long as wars are still permitted-and I hope that will not be long-maritime warfare shall be conducted under methods consistent with public law, consistent with ordinary humanity, consistent with those fundamental principles of morality which underlie-or ought to underlie-all law.

Problems After the War

When this tremendous conflict has drawn to its appointed close, and when, as I believe, victory shall have crowned our joint efforts, there will arise not merely between nations but within nations a series of problems which will tax all our statesmanship to deal with. I look forward to that time, not, indeed, wholly without anxiety, but in the main with hope and with confidence; and one of the reasons for that hope and one of the foundations of that confidence is to be found in the fact that your nation and my nation will have so much to do with the settlement of the questions.

I do not think anybody will accuse me of being insensible to the genius and to the accomplishments of other nations. I am one of those who believe that only in the multitude of different forms of culture can the completed movement of progress have all the variety in unity of which it is capable;

and, while I admire other cultures, and while I recognize how absolutely all important they are to the future of mankind, I do think that among the English-speaking peoples is especially and peculiarly to be found a certain political moderation in all classes which gives one the surest hope of dealing in a reasonable, progressive spirit with social and political difficulties. And without that reasonable moderation interchanges are violent, and as they are violent reactions are violent also, and the smooth advance of humanity is seriously interfered with.

I believe that on this side of the Atlantic, and I hope on the other side of the Atlantic, if and when these great problems have actively to be dealt with, it will not be beyond the reach of your statesmanship, or of our own, to deal with them in such a manner that

we cannot merely look back upon this great war as the beginning of a time of improved international relations, of settled peace, of deliberate refusal to pour out oceans of blood to satisfy some notion of domination; but that in addition to those blessings the war, and what happens after the war, may prove to be the beginning of a revivified civilization, which will be felt in all departments of human activity, which will not merely touch the material but also the spiritual side of mankind, and which will make the second decade of the twentieth century memorable in the history of mankind.

The Italian War Commission reached New York on May 10, headed by Enrico Arlotta, Minister of Maritime and Railway Transportation, with the following associates: General Gugliemotti, representing the Italian Army; Commander Vannutelli, representing the navy; Alvise Bragadini of the Transportation Department, G. Pardo of the Department of Industry and Commerce, and Gaetano. Pietra of the Agricultural Department.

The Battle of Arras Day by Day

By Philip Gibbs

[Published by arrangement with The London Chronicle]

The progress of the great struggle in the region of Arras is here graphically described as seen from day to day by one of the most brilliant correspondents with the British armies in France. The battle of Arras began on April 9, 1917, and the story is here taken up where it broke off in the May issue of CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE.

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[See Map on Page 422]

PRIL 23, 1917.-The battle of Arras has entered into its second phase; that is to say, into a struggle harder than the first day of the battle on April 9, when by a surprise, following great preparations, we gained great successes all along the line.

This morning shortly before 5 o'clock English, Welsh, and Scottish troops made new and strong assaults east of Arras upon the German line between Gavrelle, Guémappe, and Fontaine les Croisilles, which is the last switch line on this part of the front between the British and the main Hindenburg line. It has been hard fighting every where, for the enemy was no longer uncertain of the place where the British should attack him. As soon as the battle of Arras started it was clear to him that they should deliver their next blow when they had moved forward their guns upon this "Oppy line," as the British call it, which protects the Hindenburg position north and south of Vitry-en-Artois. His troops were told to expect the British attack at any moment and hold on at all costs of life.

To meet the British strength the enemy had brought up many new batteries, which were placed in front of the

Hindenburg line and close behind the Oppy line, and massed large numbers of machine guns in the villages, trenches, and emplacements, from which they could sweep the line of advance by direct and enfilade fire. These machine guns were thick in the ruins of Roeux, just north of the River Scarpe, in Pelves, just south of it, in two small woods called Bois du Sart and Bois de Vert, immediately facing Monchy, on the slope of the hill, and in and about the village of Guémappe, which we had assaulted and entered twice before.

Many German snipers, men of good marksmanship and tried courage, had been placed all about in shell holes with orders to pick off the British officers and men, and the enemy's gunners had registered all British positions so that they were ready to drop down a heavy barrage directly the British made a sign of attacking.

A Battle to the Death

It was only to be expected that this second phase of the battle of Arras should be extremely hard. For the British it is a battle to the death. Fighting is in progress at all points attained by the troops, and there is the ebb and flow of men-beaten back for a while

by the intensity of fire, but attacking again and getting forward.

At the outset of the attack, according to accounts given me by men who went over with the first waves, the enemy showed himself ready to meet it with fierce resistance. Last night was terribly cold, and the British troops lying out in shell holes or in shallow trenches dug a day or two ago suffered from this exposure. Some of the Scottish troops had fought in the first day's battles of Arras, and, with English troops, had gone forward to Monchy and into the storm centre of German fire. Some of the men I met today had been buried by German crumps and had been dug out again, and as they lay waiting for the hour of attack shells fell about them and the sky was aflame with the flashes of British bombs. The men craved for something hot to drink. But they nibbled dry biscuits and waited for the dawn, and hoped they would not be too numb when the light came to get up and walk.

The light came very pale over the earth, and with it the signal to attack. The bombardment had been steady all through the night and then broke into a hurricane of fire. As soon as the men left the trenches the gunners laid down a barrage in front of them and made a moving wall of shells ahead of them-a frightful thing to follow, but the safest if the men did not go too quickly or failed to distinguish between the line of German shells and the British. It is not easy to distinguish, for the men had hardly risen from the shell holes and ditches before the enemy's barrage started and all the ground about them was vomiting up fountains of mud and shell splinters. At the same time there came above all the noise of shellfire a furnace blast of machine guns. The machine gunners in Roeux and Pelves, in the two small woods in front of Monchy, and in the ground about Guémappe were slashing all the slopes and roads below Monchy on the hill. "It was the most awful machine-gun fire I have heard," said a young Scot this morning as he came back with a bullet in the hip.

Desperate Fighting at Monchy

April 24.-Fighting, harder and more stubborn on both sides, more desperate in resistance on the enemy's part than anything since the battles of the Somme, has been in progress east of Arras since the hour of attack yesterday morning. For the German Army they have been two days of dreadful sacrifice, for the British days of grim struggle, with many attacks and counterattacks which in the end have won and held important ground.

The village of Monchy dominates the present scene of battle, and is the key position above the Cambrai road, for which the enemy is fighting with full strength. His gunners made it one of their fixed targets yesterday and today and flung enormous high explosive shells at it, so that it is no longer the white village I saw last week, but a heap of broken walls and skeleton barns. Opposite lie the two woods of Bois Vert and the Bois du Sart on the slope of the opposite ridge, and it is from these woods that the enemy has come in his counterattacks. At 10 o'clock yesterday morning strong bodies of Rhinelanders left the cover of Bois Vert and, in spite of heavy losses from British machine-gun fire and field batteries, succeeded in driving back part of the British foremost line. Four thousand Germans of a fresh division gathered in the Bois du Sart for a further attempt to break the line, but they were seen by flying officers, and the British batteries filled the wood with gas shells so that great slaughter was done there. This body of men was literally shelled to death, and it was a human hell in that wood under the blue sky.

Like the Somme Battle

April 25.--The battle which is still in progress east of Arras is developing rather like the early days of the Somme battles, when the British fought stubbornly to gain or regain a few hundred yards of trenches in which the enemy resisted under cover of great-gun fire and to which he sent up strong bodies of supporting troops to drive the British out by counterattacks. The attack made by the Scottish troops yesterday afternoon and English troops at 3:30 this morning re

established the line on this side of the two woods called Bois Vert and Bois du Sart, and on the further side of Guémappe. Parties of British troops who had been cut off, and were believed to be in the hands of the enemy, were recovered yesterday, having held out in the most gallant way in isolated positions. The British barrage preceding an infantry attack actually swept over them, and they gave themselves up for lost, but escaped from the British shells and German shells which burst all around them and seemed in competition for their lives.

A similar case happened with a party of Worcester men, recovered last night. They were cut off in a small copse, and lay quiet there for several days, surrounded by the enemy. They had rations with them, and lived on them until they were gone. They were then starving and suffering great agony for lack of water, but still would not surrender, and last night they were rewarded for their endurance by seeing the enemy retire before the advancing waves of English troops, the enemy suffering big losses, but replacing them each time by fresh battalions.

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It is impossible to estimate the German losses during the last three days, but successive counterattacks smashed by shell fire, machine-gun fire, and rifle fire, so that the ground was heaped with their dead. There have been no fewer than eight counterattacks already upon the village of Gavrelle, and not one of them reached the British front line, but they have been broken and dispersed. In the first counterattack upon the British line opposite Monchy between 2,000 and 3,000 Germans left Bois Vert, but after many hundreds had fallen they retired to reorganize. The second attack was in greater numbers and rolled back the British line for a time, but has now been forced to retire to its old position in the woods, which the British kept continually under an intense fire, so that the slaughter there must be great. The guns never cease their laboring night and day, shelling the enemy's infantry positions, batteries, lines of communication, railheads, and crossroads, so that no

troops may move except under the menace of death or mutilation.

Fierce Aerial Combats

April 26.-East of Arras, after three days of battle, the British hold good lines, with almost all the high and commanding positions south of Scarpe, and the enemy so far has made no further effort to recapture ground by sending out masses of men behind heavy curtain fire. He has paid a heavy price already in these endeavors, and is reorganizing and replacing his shattered divisions and carrying back his wounded to join that vast army of cripples, blind men, and nerve-broken men who in Germany are hideously eloquent of the truth and reveal the mockery of official history.

In the daily official reports a brief picture has been given of the battle which has raged in the skies while the earthmen have been struggling below. Truly during these last few days the air service has fought wonderfully. There have been hours when I have overheard the continual tattoo of the Lewis guns, and when the great sweep of the sky has been tracked out with white shrapnel clouds, following the British flying squadrons, engaged hotly with hostile machines.

British Daring in Raids

The British airmen go daily far back across the German lines, taking thousands of photos, engaging enemy squadrons so that they are held back from the line of battle, and dropping tons of explosives upon ammunition dumps, railheads, and transport. The boys (for they are absurdly young in average age) take all these deadly risks and do all this work of terror with the same spirit as did the young gentlemen of England who rode out with Sir John Chandos and Sir Walter Manny to seek combat with the French knights many hundred years ago along roads where the modern British men at arms go marching today. During this recent fighting one of them challenged a German albatross, who accepted fight, and for an hour they did every trick known to flying—stalling, banking, sideslipping, and looping-in order to get in the first shot: It was the German who tired first, though he

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