ous onslaught and destroyed by enormous losses to the German troops this dark scheme of their high command. Seven German divisions were in position north of the Scarpe and twelve south, in an arc around the defenses of Arras.

The brunt of this attack, preceded by colossal gunfire, fell upon London troops, and against these the German tides dashed and broke. By artillery fire, machine-gun fire, and rifle fire, the enemy's advancing waves of men were swept to pieces, and though they came on again and again this massacre continued until at last it must have sickened even the high German officers di. recting the operations from behind. The attacks died out and the night was quiet around Arras while the enemy collected his wounded. It was an utter defeat which will at least check German efforts around Arras.

On this Easter Sunday, under bright sunshine which is breaking through the storm clouds, the fields of France are strewn with death. A year ago it was the same around the old City of Artois, for it was on Easter Sunday, April 2, that we began the battle of Arras and fought over that ground which is again our battlefield, and it was a great anthem of gunfire which rose up to the sky on Easter morn.

Apart from all regrets at having had to fall back at all and at having suffered losses for which there is mourning in our hearts, because so many splendid men have fallen on the field of honor-that terrible field of honor which will be watered with tears for all time-we may at least rejoice that by the skill of our fighting officers and the steady courage of our men our line was brought back unbroken.

Heroic Cavalry Charge

Monday, April 1.-The battle of which I have been trying to give a daily narrative has been on so vast a scale, filled with so many episodes of terrific adventure and with so many hundreds of thousands of men moving along its lines of fire that I find it impossible to give a picture of the emotion and spirit of it. We out here, who knew this thing was coming upon us, creeping nearer every day with its monstrous menace, held our breath and waited. When at last the thing broke it was more frightful in its loosing of overwhelming powers than even we had guessed. Since then all our armies have lived

with an intense understanding of the greatness of these days, of their meaning to the destiny of the world, and every private soldier, or transport driver, or linesman, or laborer, has been exalted by an emotion stronger than the effect of drugs.

In the wood of Moreuil this morning British cavalry performed a feat as fine as the Balaklava charge, and this also should be made into a ballad and learned by heart.

Twelve hundred men who had been riding through the night went forward in three waves and charged that dark wood next morning at a hard gallop. The first wave rode to the edge of the wood, and the second to the centre, and the third wave went right through to the other side, riding through the enemy and over his machine guns and in the face of a hail of bullets from hidden machines. They cleared the wood of Moreuil and brought back prisoners and thirteen machine guns, but there were many empty saddles, and many men and horses fell.

That was the finest exploit of the British cavalry, but elsewhere it did splendid work, and everywhere the men were gallant and cool, as when some of the dragoons came under a heavy shrapnel fire near Gentille, and many men had to shoot their wounded horses to put them out of their agony.

Dashing Canadians

Away from Arras and down on the south of the line a certain body of Canadians have been having some of the most astounding adventures in all this battle, and fighting with valor and heroic audacity. They are officers and men of a machine gun detachment organized in the early days of the war by a French Canadian officer.

For ten days these Canadians have fought running fights with the German artillery, have engaged German cavalry and smashed them, have checked enemy columns crossing bridges and pouring onward, have scattered large bodies of men surrounding British troops, and in ten days of crowded life have destroyed many German storm troops and helped to hold up the tide of their advance. Their own losses have not been light, for these Canadians have been filled with a grim passion of determination, and when the supreme test came they fought and died.

Sometimes they fought in long gray open cars, and sometimes they fought dismounted, with machine guns on the ground; but always they fought through the ten days and nights, with less than twenty hours' sleep all that time. These cars near Maricourt gathered together 150 men who had been cut off and held the enemy at bay, covering the withdrawal of some of the British heavy guns and tanks. At that time they fought dismounted, with Vickers guns, in front of the barbed wire. The Canadians had many casualties, and a Captain's arm was torn away by an explosive bullet, and at last only a Sergeant and two men of the battery were

left unwounded. One of them mounted a motor cycle and brought back cars and took back the wounded. Two cars found the enemy massing up a road, and their machine guns enfiladed the field-gray men and killed them in large numbers.

Near La Motte they fought heavy bodies of German cavalry, killed a number, and put the rest to flight. They have not been seen since. At Cerisy a battalion of Germans, 600 strong, was encountered at a crossroads by one car, which brought them to a standstill and dispersed them with heavy losses. Everywhere they have been these Canadian armored cars have helped to steady the line and give confidence to the infantry.

British Airmen at Work

Thursday, April 4.-It has been raining hard these two nights past and this morning. For the German gunners trying to drag up field artillery or long-range guns there is now sticky bog and slime to come through. It is hard work for the German field companies, pressed furiously, to lay narrow-gauge lines over these deserts. All that spells delay in their plans and loss of life.

There is terror for the enemy over these fields in daylight and darkness, for the British flying men have gone out in squadrons to scatter death and destruction among them. This work has reached fantastic heights of horror for the German troops under the menace of it. There have been times when, I believe, the British have had as many as 300 airplanes up at one time. One squadron alone on one night dropped six tons of bombs over enemy concentrations, and each man went out six times. Another squadron went out four times in one night, and was bombing for eleven hours.

When the enemy was advancing in masses the British flying men flew as low, as 100 feet, dropping bombs among them and firing into them with machine guns. They attacked German patrols of cavalry and scattered them and machine-gunned trenches full of men, batteries in action and transport crowding down narrow roads. They fought German scouts and crushed them, and there are several cases in which they fought German airplanes at night, so that it was like a fight between vampire bats up there where the clouds were touched by moonlight.

North of the Somme

Friday, April 5.-Heavy attacks by the enemy are in progress north of the Somme, from Albert to Aveluy Wood. Further north there is separate fighting in progress round about the village of Ayette-such a wretched little place of brickdust and broken walls when I saw it last on the way from Arras to Bapaume-and the enemy is trying to recapture this, his fire reaching to villages several thousand yards behind the British front.

The British troops in this district are defending their positions resolutely, and the

first reports indicate that the German storm troops are suffering under their machine-gun. fire, after being shelled in their assembly places by heavy and field artillery.

A Valley of Death

Sunday, April 7.-Since the heavy fights on Friday, when the enemy made a series of vain attacks against the British north of Albert, there has been no battle. The Germans are still struggling hard to get their guns, especially the heavy guns, further forward and to reorganize their divisions.

They have no peace or quiet, for they are under a harassing fire, and along the valley of the Ancre, above Albert, in that stinking ditch between Bouzeincourt and Aveluy and Mesnil and Thiepval, where foul water lies stagnant below rows of dead, lopped trees and frightful smells arise from the relics of battles two weeks ago, their men are very wretched. Here in this valley of death, for it was that, and behind in the old fields of the Somme, the German troops have no cover from storms or shellfire.

Battle of Armentieres

Tuesday, April 9.-A heavy and determined attack was begun against us this morning a considerable distance north of our recent battles on about eleven miles of front between Armentières and La Bassée Canal. This new attack was preceded by a long, concentrated bombardment, which had gradually been increasing during the last day or two, until it reached great heights of fury last night and early this morning. The enemy used poison gas in immense quantities; during the night he flung over 60,000 gas shells in order to create a wide zone of this evil vapor and stupefy the gunners, transport, and infantry.

His gunfire reached out to many towns and villages behind the allied lines, like Béthune and Armentières, Vermelles and Philosophe, Merville and Estaires, and this did not cease around Armentières until 11:30 this morning, though further south from Fleurbaix his infantry attack was in progress at an early hour, certainly by 8 o'clock, and his barrage lifted in order to let his troops advance.

Part of the line was held by Portuguese troops, who for a long time have been between Laventie and Neuve Chapelle, holding positions which were subject to severe raids from time to time. They are now in the thick of this battle, most fiercely beset and fighting gallantly.

Formidable New Offensive

Wednesday, April 10.-It is now clear that the attack between Armentières and Givenchy is a new and formidable offensive. It also is made certain by this new thrust that the German high command have decided to throw the full weight of their armies against the British in an endeavor to destroy their forces

in Northern France instead of dividing their efforts by striking also at the French. It is a menace which calls for a supreme effort of the armies of Great Britain and her allies.

Yesterday the enemy struck north on the British left, beginning in the flat grounds opposite Neuve Chapelle as the centre of the thrust, with Fleurbaix to the north and Givenchy to the south, and extending this morning further north still above Armentières, and including the ridge of Messines.

An enormous gunfire was directed against the British positions along all this line last night again after yesterday morning's bombardment, and continued without pause through a very unquiet night, when all through the hours this tumult of great guns beat upon one's ears with continued drumfire, and all the sky was full of flame and light.

This morning again when I went up into French Flanders and through the villages which the enemy had been shelling regardless of the women and children there, this frightful, unceasing thunder was as loud as ever and told one without further news that the battle was still going on and that the Germans were extending its zone.

Portuguese Are Hard Hit

It was a tragedy for the Portuguese that the heaviest bombardment in the storm of gunfire, as terrible in its fury as anything of the kind since March 21, was directed against the centre, which they held. It was annihilating to their outposts and smashed their front-line defenses, which were stoutly held. It beat backward and forward in waves of high explosives from the trench line opposite Neuve Chapelle to the second line, opposite Fauquissart and Richebourg St. Vaast. Large numbers of heavy guns also searched behind these defense systems for crossroads, ammunition dumps, railways, villages, and headquarters or units, while the Portuguese batteries were assailed with gas shells and flying steel.

The Portuguese front line was overwhelmed by the intensity of the bombardment, and, although some of their outposts held on, fighting gallantly to the last man, their line had to fall back to the second system. This was attacked by enemy assault troops and between 6 and 7 in the morning they had reached Fauquissart. The barrage lifted at 7 o'clock for a general attack on the second line. Here the strongest body of Portuguese troops fought stubbornly, but by 11 o'clock the Germans forced their way through to Laventie and the position round Fleurbaix was threatened.

The Portuguese field artillery served their guns as long as possible and destroyed the breechblocks whenever it became inevitable that they would have to leave a gun behind. The Portuguese gunners were attached to the British heavy batteries and behaved with special courage.

Bloody Valley of the Lys

Thursday, April 11.-Yesterday afternoon and today the enemy exerted all his strength in men and guns in the battle now raging from the River Lys to Wytschaete. Once again the British are outnumbered, and it is only by the courage and stubborn will of battalions weakened by losses and of individual soldiers animating their comrades by acts of brave example that the enemy has been unable to make rapid progress and, as at Wytschaete and Messines, has been flung back with most bloody losses.

The British had to give ground along the Lys Canal south of Armentières, blowing bridges behind them and the railway bridge at Armentières, and the enemy is now trying to thrust forward south of Merville by bending back the British line from Lestrem and getting his guns across the Lys.

This morning there was a ceaseless tumult of gunfire, loud and terrible, over all this countryside. There were strange and terrible scenes on all the roads leading to the battle zone where British infantry and gunners were going forward to stem the tide. Masses of transport moved and civilians passed them in retreat to villages outside the wide area of shell range, and wounded men came staggering down afoot, if they could walk, or were brought down by ambulances, threading their way through all this surge and swell of

war.

Here and there stretcher bearers waited with their burdens on the roadsides. Among them were men of the Black Watch, with the red hackle in their bonnets, calm and grave like statues beside their wounded comrades lying there with white, upturned faces and never a murmur or groan. They were the heroes who yesterday, with gallant hearts, came up at a great pace when the enemy was in Wytschaete and Messines, and in a fierce counterattack drove him off the crest of the ridge and dealt him a deadly blow there on that high ground, which was won in the battle of last June, when English, Irish, and New Zealand troops stormed the ridge and captured thousands of prisoners.

The enemy yesterday fell in great numbers and his dead lie thick, and though he came on wave after wave, after all his day's agony and struggle he had not gained a yard of the crest, but was beaten back.

English in Death Struggle

Friday, April 12.-The enemy is playing a great game in which he is flinging all he has into the hazard of war. He has, of course, a stupendous number of men, and, while holding his lines across the Somme after his drive down from St. Quentin and playing a defensive part against the French on the British right, he has moved up to the north with secrecy and rapidity a large concentration of troops and guns for new and tremendous blows against Haig's forces. This is continuing his now determined policy to crush Eng

land before either France or America is able to draw off his divisions by counteroffènsives.

So now the British troops in the north are faced by enormous forces. Nearly thirty German divisions are against them from Wytschaete to La Bassée Canal, and with those troops are innumerable machine guns, trench mortars, and massed batteries of field guns, very quick to get forward in support of their infantry.

This northern offensive is as menacing as that which began to the southward on March 21, and the gallant men among these little red brick villages in French Flanders and in the flat fields between Bailleul and Béthune are greatly outnumbered and can hold back the enemy only by fighting with supreme courage.

Horrors Amid Beauty

The scene today along the line of this hostile invasion was most tragic, because all the cruelty of war was surrounded by beauty so intense that the contrast was horrible. The sky was of Summer blue, with sunshine glittering on the red-tiled roofs of the cottages and on their whitewashed walls and little windowpanes. All the hedges were clothed with green and flaked by snow-white thorn blossoms.

In a night, as it seems, all the orchards of France have flowered, and cherry and apple trees are in full splendor of bloom, fields are powdered with close-growing daisies, and the shadows of trees are long across the grass as the sun is setting. But over all this and in the midst of all this is agony and blood. On the roads are fugitives, wounded soldiers, dead horses, guns, and transports.

There are fires burning on the hillsides. I saw their flames and their great, rolling clouds of smoke rise this morning from places where the day before I had seen French peasants plowing as though no war were near, and young girls scattering grain over the fields harrowed by their small brothers, and old women bending to the soil in the small farmsteads where all their life was centred, until suddenly the frightful truth touched them and they had to leave their homes.

Sometimes today I wished to God the sun would not shine like this nor nature mock at me with its thrilling beauty of life. However, the British are full of confidence. If they were forced back they are glad to know that they made the enemy pay heavy prices and that their line is still unbroken. They are full of faith that against all odds they shall hold their own in the last battle of all.

Yes, the men are tired, so tired after weeks of fighting, after these last days and nights, that they can hardly stagger up to resist another attack, yet they do so because their spirit wakes again above their bodily fatigue; so tired that they go on fighting like sleep-walkers, and in any respite lie in ditches and under hedges and in open fields under fire in deep slumber until the shouts of their Sergeants stir them again. Some of these men have been fighting since March 21 with only a few days' rest.

To people living in the villages of Flanders, from which one can see the whole sweep of the battleline, Friday night was full of terror, and from the windows they watched the burning of places from which they had escaped and the bonfires of their homes, and these refugees while sleeping with children at their breast wept.

Yesterday it was a drama of noise, beating against one's ears and against one's heart, and it was a strange, terrible thing to stand there, blind, as it were, listening to the infernal tumult of gunfire south of Bailleul, with knockings and sledgehammer strokes, loud and shocking, above the incessant drumfire of field artillery.

The German shells came howling over into fields and villages beyond Bailleul, bursting with gruff coughs, and there was an evil snarl of shrapnel in the mist. It was the noise of the greatest battle in history.

Fall of Neuve Eglise

Monday, April 15.-In the attempt to surround Bailleul two heavy attacks were made-one on the west toward Meteren, and one on the east at Neuve Eglise. Near Meteren the enemy failed utterly and suffered immense losses. There has been fierce fighting around a place called the Steam Mill, near Meteren, the enemy having been ordered to capture the Meteren road and the high ground beyond it at whatever sacrifice. They nade the sacrifice, but did not get the ground.

Neuve Eglise, however, is now theirs. Last night the British troops who had held it through three days and nights of intense strife withdrew, unknown to the enemy, to a line a short distance back from the village, in order to avoid remaining a target for unceasing shellfire.

It is now the enemy's soldiers who this morning are in the ruins under the great bombardment. This battle at Neuve Eglise has been filled with grim episodes, for the village changed hands several times. Each side fought most fiercely, with any kind of weapon, small bodies of men attacking and counterattacking among the broken walls and bits of houses and under the stump of the

church tower deathtrap, as it now is for them. Without yielding to the direct assaults, the British obeyed orders, stumbled out of the place, silently and unknown to the enemy, and took up a line further back.

On the night before last the British line fell back from near La Chèche and swung around in a loop south of Neuve Eglise toward Ravelsberg Farm. It was then that Neuve Eglise itself became a place of hellish battle.

The enemy broke through into its ruined streets, and small parties of Wiltshires, Worcesters, and others sprang on the Germans or were killed. They fought desperately in backyards, over broken walls, and in shellpierced houses, wherever they could find Germans or hear the tattoo of machine guns.

Several times the enemy was cleared out of most of the town, and the British held a hollow square containing most of the streets and defended it as a kind of fortress, though with dwindling numbers, under a heavy fire of shells and trench mortars and machine guns.

Capture of Bailleul

Tuesday, April 16.-It seemed inevitable after the British loss of Neuve Eglise that the enemy should make a quick and strong effort to capture Bailleul, and this he did last night by putting into the battle three divisions of fresh assaulting troops not previously used, and thus encircling that city by fierce attacks on ground southeast and east, including the ridge of Le Ravetsberg and Mont de Lille. His troops included his Alpine corps of Jaegers and possibly a Bavarian division and the 117th Division. Among the men defending the city against these heavy forces were the Staffords and Notts and Derbies.

Yesterday when I was in the country around Bailleul the enemy's guns were working up for this new attack, and there was a continual bombardment spreading up to Wytschaete Ridge. Heavy shells were being flung into Bailleul itself, and the smoke of fires was rising like mist from small towns and villages like Meteren and Morbecque down to Merville.

The British guns were also pounding the enemy's positions, and through that the concentrations of Germany-infantry, guns, transport, and cavalry-were moving up the roads in and north of Merville. The enemy must have lost severely again, for the British were stubborn in defense, but their machinegun fire must have been of a deadly nature owing to their positions along the railway and on the ridge; but the enemy advanced upon them in waves, striking upon both sides of Bailleul, so that after great resistance the line was withdrawn beyond the town.

The capture of this city belongs to the third great attack which has been delivered by the enemy since March 21. Always he has massed his strength opposite the British lines and struck with full weight against their

troops. In the first phase down from St. Quentin and the Cambrai salient the French came to their help and relieved them by their gallant aid, but the Germans then edged away from the French to strike the British again, this time at Arras, where they failed.

A third phase has now followed in this northern blow and once again the British have had to sustain the abominable pressure of German divisions constantly relieved and supported by fresh divisions passing through them, while the British troops fight on and on, killing the enemy in large numbers, but having to withdraw to new lines of defense. Under these enormous odds their heroism and their sacrifices are beyond words that may be uttered except in the silence of one's heart. Wonderful Panorama

Wednesday, April 17.-Yesterday morning the fortune of war seemed again in favor of the enemy by the capture of Wytschaete Ridge down to Spanbroekmolen and by the The entry of Meteren, west of Bailleul. hard-pressed British troops were forced to give ground at both these places, after a grand resistance which cost the enemy many lives, but in the evening counterattacks hurled the enemy back from Wytschaete village, that pile of brick dust above stumps of dead trees which were Wytschaete Wood, and in a separate battle west of Bailluel the British regained, at least for a time, a part of Meteren. This morning renewed counterattacks gave them back all of Meteren and the enemy garrison there was destroyed.

I watched the battle last night and again this morning from the centre of the arc of fire, which was like a loop flung around from Wytschaete to Bailleul and in a sharp curve around to Merris and the country about Merville, so that the great gunfire and whole sweep of battle were close about on three sides.

It was an astounding panorama of open warfare, such as I never dreamed of seeing on this western front, where for so long both sides were hemmed in by trenches. Bailleul was still blazing. In the early evening, after a wet, misty day which filled all this battlefield with a whitish fog, one could only see that city under a cloud, but as the sky darkened and the wind blew some mist away enormous flames burned redly in the poor dead heart of Bailleul, and in their glare there were dark masses of walls and broken roofs outlined jaggedly by fire.

To the left the village of Locre was aflame under a storm of high explosives, and the enemy's guns were putting heavy shells down the roads which lead out to that place.

There were fires of burning farms and hamlets as far southward as Merville behind one, as one stood looking out to Bailleul, and lesser fires of single cottages and haystacks, and the wind drifted all the smoke of them across the sky in long white ribbons.