Committee on Public Information

A WORKING PARTY OF BRITISH TOMMIES GOING OVER THE TOP AT NIGHT Note the German flare in the distance, by light of which this photograph was taken

object daubed with all the colors of the rainbow. Before long camouflage came to be used on ships, not only vessels of war, but merchantmen. The sight of great ocean-going liners covered with patches of green, red, black, and yellow, in the manner of a crazy-quilt, would a few years earlier have made the observer think that he had suddenly gone mad.

To hide the movement of men and supplies along roads exposed to the fire of the enemy, huge screens were erected, painted so as to give the impression of foliage, or blank walls. Artificial treetrunks were constructed and set up in No Man's Land as hiding-places for snipers. Even the dead bodies of horses were imitated, in papier-mâché, and dummy guns, soldiers, and fortifications were frequently employed by both sides, in order to deceive the observers in the air.

The first attempts made by the English and French to overcome the German system of trench defense were failures. The loss in human life was huge, and the world began to think that such defenses could never be taken, except at prohibitive cost. It was not until the latter part of the war that the English and French were able to solve successfully the problem of trench warfare.

CHAPTER IX

THE WESTERN AND TURKISH FRONTS IN 1915

HE British Regular Army was almost de

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stroyed during the great retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Marne, and the defense of the channel ports around Ypres, and as a consequence Great Britain began at once to form a large new army. Lord Kitchener, famous for his brilliant work in the Sudan, and the Boer War, was now at the head of the War Department. All over England volunteers were training, and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the other overseas dominions of the empire men were rallying to the nation's support. In France the war was accepted in the most heroic spirit, and while the men left their farms and shops to defend their country, the women and children took up the men's burdens. Deprived of a large part of her iron and coal deposits, France was obliged to look to England and America for fuel and steel, and this placed her at a great disadvantage. Germany, on the contrary, was drawing large quantities of both from the territories in Belgium and France which she had occupied. It is estimated that without these captured supplies the Germans could have carried on the war for but a few months.

In the spring of 1915 the English made their first serious attempt to break through the German line of trenches. At the town of Neuve Chapelle they launched a heavy attack, capturing the enemy's lines over a front of several miles. But the losses were huge, and military men were of the opinion that the few miles gained did not justify them. At the Battle of Loos, and in Artois, the results were much the same. It seemed at this time that the Germans could never be driven out of France by a frontal attack.

During the summer the French made a similar attempt, on a far wider front. In the Champagne country, east of the city of Rheims, they sent their troops forward, after a terrific bombardment which leveled the Germans' front line of trenches. At first it seemed as though the French had won a great victory; they swept forward, not only over the first German lines, but even over the second and third, and captured many prisoners and guns, but when they had reached the enemy's rear lines, they found that they could not hold them. Concentrated machine-gun and artillery fire played havoc in the French ranks, and after superhuman efforts they were obliged to fall back. Here, as at Neuve Chapelle, it seemed clear that the cost of breaking through carefully constructed trenchlines was prohibitive.

Early in 1915 the Germans began the use of poison gas as a weapon of war, while attacking