the commander and officer standing on the bridge indulging in mutual congratulations at their success. At that moment a shell hit the bridge and wiped out the entire group.

"We fought what was in its way a great fight, although it was not a sailor's battle. Both the grand and the terrible were present to an almost overpowering degree. As a spectacle it was magnificent, awful. How awful, it was impossible to realize until the fever of action had subsided, until the guns were silent and the great ships, some battered, others absolutely untouched, were plowing home on the placid sea."

MEN THRILLED BY BATTLE FEVER.

After describing the battle itself, the officer reverted to incidents preceding it, saying:

"I shall never forget the thrill which passed through the men on the ships of the grand fleet when that inspiring message was received from the battle-cruiser squadron many leagues away: 'I am engaged with heavy forces of the enemy.' One looked on the faces of his fellows and saw that the effect was electrical. The great ships swung around into battle order and the responsive sea rocked and churned as the massive vessels raced for what were virtually enemy waters. As the grand fleet drew near the scene of action the smoke of battle and mutter of guns came down on the winds. The eagerness of the men became almost unbearably intense and it was a blessed relief when our own guns gave tongue."

RUSSIAN TROOPS LAND IN FRANCE.

Between April 20 and June 1, a large flotilla of transports arriving at Marseilles, France, brought Russian soldiers in large numbers to the support of the French line. The transports were understood to have made the voyage of 10,250 miles from Vladivostok under convoy by the British navy.

EARL KITCHENER KILLED AT SEA.

The British armored cruiser Hampshire, 10,850 tons, with Earl Kitchener, the British secretary of state for war, and his staff on board, was sunk shortly after nightfall on June 5, to the west of the Orkney Islands, either by a mine or a torpedo. Heavy seas were running and Admiral Jellicoe reported that there were no survivors. The crew numbered 300 officers and men. Earl Kitchener was on his way to Russia for a secret conference with the military authorities when the disaster occurred. His latest achievement was the creation, from England's untrained manhood, of an army approximating 5,000,000 men, of whom he was the military idol.

CANADIANS IN BATTLE.

After gallantly holding their own for many months against repeated German attacks, the Canadian troops holding that section of the western front southeast of Ypres, between Hooge and the Ypres Menin railway, were engaged during the week ending June 3, 1916, in a battle scarcely less determined in its nature than that of St. Julien and other great encounters in which they distinguished themselves and added to Canadian military laurels earlier in the war.

On Friday, June 2, the Germans, after a concentrated bombardment with heavy artillery, pressed forward to the assault and succeeded in penetrating the British lines. During the night they pushed their attack and succeeded in cutting their way through the defenses to the depth of nearly a mile in the direction of Zillebeke. The hardfighting Canadians then rallied and began counter-assaults at 7 o'clock on the following morning. By Sunday morning, June 4, they had succeeded in gradually driving the Germans from much of the ground they had gained, but the losses to the Canadians were severe.

In the British official report of the engagement, it was stated that "the Canadians behaved with the utmost gallantry, counter-attacking successfully after a heavy and continued bombardment." The German losses were very heavy and a large number of dead were abandoned on the recaptured ground. Frederick Palmer, the noted war correspondent, said that for a thousand yards in the center of the line where the Germans secured lodgment the Canadians fired from positions in the rear and filled the ruined trenches with German dead.

It was announced by the War Office that Generals Mercer and Williams, who were inspecting the front trenches on June 2, during the German bombardment, were among the missing. Soon after it was found that General Mercer was severely wounded during the fight, and was taken to hospital at Boulogne, while General Williams, who was wounded less severely, was captured by the enemy. General Mercer was the commander of the Third Division of Canadian troops, which in this action had its first real test in hand-to-hand fighting, and came out of the trial like veterans with glory undimmed.

The two-days' fighting occurred around the famous Hill No. 60 and Sanctuary Wood, names destined to live in Canadian history. It was entirely a Canadian battle, and while the losses of the devoted troops from the Dominion probably reached the regrettable total of over 6,000, including a number of men captured by the Germans during the first day's attack, when they overran the front trenches, they doggedly bombed and bayoneted their way back to the wrecked trenches next day and regained nearly all their front. The commanding officers were especially pleased that the newer Canadian battalions had kept up the traditions of the first contingent, established in 1915 at St.

Julien and elsewhere in France and Flanders, by immediately turning upon the Germans with a counter-attack which was carried out both coolly and skilfully.

The Ypres salient, thus successfully defended by the Canadians in one of the hottest of the minor battles of the war, was regarded by the British commander-in-chief as an important position which must be defended despite the heavy losses. General Gwatkin, Chief of Staff for Canada, stated that the German losses during the heavy fighting exceeded those of the Canadians.

Colonel Buller of the Princess Patricia Regiment was killed by shrapnel while leading his men at Sanctuary Wood.

men.

The total enlistments in Canada up to June 10 exceeded 333,000

GREAT DRIVE BY THE RUSSIANS.

The first week of June, 1916, saw the Russians successful in a great drive against the Austrian positions in Volhynia and Galicia, a movement that for awhile overshadowed the events on the western front. In the space of five days a new Russian commander, General Brusiloff, who had succeeded General Ivanhoff as Chief of the Russian Southwestern Armies, captured 1,143 Austrian officers and 64,714 men, recovered almost four thousand square miles of fertile Volhynian soil, and recaptured the fortified town of Lutsk. He had the advantage of a most efficient artillery preparation, which blew the Austrian entanglements, trenches and earthworks into such a chaos that the bewildered occupants surrendered in thousands when the Russian infantry charged.

German reinforcements from the trenches north of the Pripet River tried to stay the Russian rush, but in vain, and many Germans were among the prisoners taken. At several points the Russian cavalry led the attack after the artillery had done its work. A division of young Russians, by an impetuous attack, captured a bridge-head on the Styr and took 2,500 German and Austrian troops and much rich booty. In Galicia the Russian armies crossed the Stripa and by June 10 were once more too near Lemberg for the comfort of the Austrian garrison. At that time the total number of prisoners taken in this drive was considerably over 100,000, while the booty in guns, rifles, ammunition and supplies of all conceivable kinds was enormous. The Allies were greatly heartened by these Russian successes on the eastern front, and on June 15 Germany was preparing to meet them. by troop movements from the north, where Field Marshal von Hindenburgh was in command on Russian territory. The extent and rapidity of the Russian successes up to that time were without parallel in military history.

RUSSIA COMPELS AUSTRIAN RETREAT

During the following month the Russian advance toward the Carpathians, for the second time in the war, continued steadily. It was apparent that General Brusiloff, unlike his predecessors in command, was well supplied with effective artillery and ammunition in plenty, and that the vast resources of the Russian Empire had been at last successfully mobilized for attack. Guns and ammunition, in immense quantities, had been secured from Japan, among other sources, and this former enemy of Russia, now her strong and capable ally, aided materially in changing the aspect of affairs on the Eastern battle front.

On June 16, the Russian offensive had progressed to the Galician frontier, and terrific fighting marked the advance along the whole line south of Volhynia. Two German armies went to the aid of the Austrians in the region of the Stochod and Styr rivers, and German forces also made a stand before Kovel. The mortality on both sides was described as frightful, but the Russians continued to make headway and the capture of thousands of Teutonic prisoners was of almost daily occurrence, the total reaching 172,000 before June 18.

Czernowitz, the capital of Bukowina, fell into the hands of the Russians at midnight of June 17, after the bridgehead on the Pruth river had been stormed by the victorious troops of the Czar. One thousand Austrians were captured at the bridgehead, but the garrison succeeded in escaping. The invading troops swept on, crossed the Sereth river, and soon gained control of about one-half of Roumania's western frontier. By July 23 the Austrians were retreating into the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, hotly pressed by the Russian advance. The German army around Kovel continued to make a stubborn resistance, but could not prevent the Austrian rout, and as the Russians approached the Carpathian passes the Austrian prisoners taken by them during the drive reached a total of 200,000 officers and men. Immense quantities of munitions of war also fell into their hands.

On July 4 Russian cavalry patrols advanced over the passes into southern Hungary, and General Brusiloff's army neared Lemberg, which was defended by a combined Teutonic army under General von Bothmer, along the River Strypa. The losses of the Austrians and Germans, in killed and wounded up to this time, were placed at 500,000 men, the Russian offensive having lasted one month, with no evidence of slackening. General von Bothmer then began a retirement westward, while General Brusiloff advanced between the Pruth and Dniester rivers, and a concerted push toward Lemberg was begun.

"BIG PUSH" ON THE WESTERN FRONT

After many months of preparation by the British, during which "Kitchener's army" was being sedulously trained for active service, a new phase of the great war began on July 1, 1916, when a great offensive was started on the western front by the British and French simultaneously, after a seven-day bombardment of the German. trenches. In this preliminary bombardment more than one million sheils were fired daily, and the prolonged battle which ensued was the greatest of all time.

This offensive proved that the Allies had not been shaken from their determination to bide their time until they were thoroughly prepared and ready for the attack, and were able to co-ordinate their efforts in genuine teamwork against the powerful and stronglyentrenched enemy in the west, while the Russian offensive on the eastern front was also in progress. This long-awaited movement was no isolated attack, costly but ineffectual, like those of the English at Neuve Chapelle and Loos, but "a carefully studied and deliberately prepared campaign of severe pressure upon Germany at each of her battle fronts." It proved that the war-councils of the Allies held in Paris and London, in Petrograd and Rome, were no mere conventional affairs, but were at last to bear fruit in concerted action that might decide the issue of the war.

The "big push," as it was popularly called in England, was started by the British and French on both sides of the River Somme, sixty miles north of Paris, at 7:30 o'clock on the morning of July 1, and resulted on the same day in a great wedge being driven into the German lines along a front of twenty-five miles, with its sharp point penetrating nearly five miles. The French advance was made in the direction of Peronne, an important center of transportation and distribution long held by the Germans.

An eyewitness who watched the beginning of the battle from a hill said that overwhelming as was the power of the guns, yet as the gathering of human and mechanical material proceeded, "the grim and significant spectacle was the sight of detachments of infantry moving forward in field-fighting equipment, until finally the dugouts were hives of khaki ready to swarm out for battle."

As the days of the bombardment passed, the air of expectancy was noticeable everywhere through the British army, commanded by Sir Douglas Haig. Finally the word was passed that the infantry was to make the assault early the next morning. Then, "at 7:20 A. M. the rapid-fire trench mortars added their shells to the deluge pouring upon the first-line German trenches. After ten minutes of this, promptly at 7:30 o'clock. the guns lifted their fire to the second line