FRENCH ARMY IN LORRAINE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 61, 12 March 1915, Page 7

FRENCH ARMY IN LORRAINE.

A SPLENDID FIGHTING FORCE.

"We could- drive the Germans back here if we chose to attack in force," said a staff officer who accompanied the correspondents an a tour of the positions held by the French in Lorraine, "but there would be no object in doing this. We should have to retreat unless advances were made at certain other points along the line. Every thousandyard trench is lined up with another, and each divisiom front with the others." At that timo the members of the party were looking from the positions among the ridges of the Vosges across the old frontier, which the French had swept over in thelir invasion of Lorraine and the Germans in their invasion of eastern France. The reserve territorials quartered ,in the villages near the front were bu j y excavating new trenches to stay any German attack in force. GERMAN GUXXEiRS "DIFFIDENT." "It gives the men exercise," said the officer, "and sometimes the Germane drop in shells and interrupt the work for a while. We will go on .now to where we may get a shell ourselves. Under cover of rising ground, while the French guns were firing from the woods on either side, the car was stopped. The correspondent went to the trenches on the edge of the wood, but the German gunners did not think them worth a shell. "They are diffident this afternoon," said one soldier. There were glimpses to be had of the Aline troops, hardy mountaineers, at home in this mountain work. Whether in the front-line t.renches or in reserve, the spirit of the mcvi "was the same. All were bearded and warmly

clothed, cheerily referring to themselves as "poilus," which means "frewhiskered bearcats," who had seen fighting. French humour, ardour, and democracy were abundant. ■ The officers say that, after the first montfi of the war, many of the men were homesick, but they have now settled down to the comradeship of war. FRENCH ARMY IMPROVED. The professional opinion that the French army has been improved by the war is evident to an observer. The winter has given time for perfecting the organization and the hardening of the troops. Tne further away from Paris, the nearer the front, the more resolute and cheerful seems to be the atmosphere. The destruction in this region, which no correspondent had visited before, surpasses anything seen in Belgium. Luneville has suffered far greater damage than Louvain. It was here, late in August and early in September, that the Bavarian army tried to sweep through the gap between Epinal and Toul, and, failing this, struck at Nancy—figEting of overwhelming severity, charge and counter-charge, and all unchronicled to the world. French kepis and German helmets were still to be found in abundance in the fields.

- RUIN ON EVERY HAND. Every building or Tillage on the heights where artillery was likely to be placed has been utterly shattered, the fields are scarred with trenches, pitted with shell holes, and lumpy with graves of the dead, buried where they fell when a charge met a swathe of fire. On the rising ground graves are as thick as in a cemetery.

Had the French failed here, and the Bavarians succeeded, tlie French army would have been in a trap. Virtually all the villages destroyed are now in the hands of the French, while the AlsaceLorraine frontier is still most closely guarded.