THE BRITISH FRONT.

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 July 1915, Page 8

THE BRITISH FRONT.

MOST DIFFICULT BATTLEGROUND IN HISTORY. CONTINUOUS RAIN OF SHELLS. From Switzerland to the sea an oval roof of 'hissing steel and sound and fire arches above the cities, towns, and trenches, where vast armies engage in the once barbaric, but now up-to-date, necessity of killing each other, writes the correspondent of an English exchange. As night conies on the batteries that make the crescent cease their work, only to begin again at sunrise.- If all the steel which makes the hellish rainbow could be gathered up and soldered together in the circle it speeded through, there would be a metal meshwork rounding .about a vast chamber ten miles wide and 591 miles long. Only aircraft look down on the war hall they sometimes enter as a tomb. Many who are ignorant of the exact situation are too prone to prate about the 543 miles of French front, the thirty-one of British. If they but knew the character of the battleground our army is facing, if they realised that from our junction with the French the Belgian border runs through one of the most densely populated districts of Europe, they would close the subject. THIRTY-ONE MILES FRONT. From one city can be seen another and so on to the sea; vast factories, brickfields, cement works, coal mines, and a network of canals and railways go to make a thirty-one mile length of battlefield, difficult beyond precedent, where the struggle is confined to the ruins of cities, works, and factories of this battered down industrial frontier. Take, then, from La Bassee on to Berry-au-Bac, and then on through the Champagne country, through Rheims and on to Nancy. Take, again, the section where the country flattens out. We face the Germans on a long front, where they hold, and have held for months, ground infinitely more advantageous than ours. Comparisons are certainly not called for at this time, and they only tend to belittle the man who is at the front fighting for the stay-at-homes. The gallant French army, than which there is no braver or better in the world, while sustaining their strong and invincible front, realise and acknowledge that when the history of this war is written no comparison of mileage will be found in the estimate of intense and incessant fighting on the thirty-one miles of the most difficult battleground known in history. SAFE UNDER FLYING SHELLS. Throughout the towns, villages, and cities-in the long war zone the iiinabitants exist under many exciting and variable conditions, but among the many the situation in Armentieres is possibly the most remarkable and certainly the most interesting at Che present time. The German trenches curve round it on the north just as ours do on the south. The shells of their batteries' pass continuously in a crescent overhead. The cafes on the north edge of the town are patronised by German soldiers just as our men use the cafes on the south side. People walk the streets, where children play and restaurants and shops do business regardless of the shell shrieks overhead. No German bombs fall into the town, and ours, "for many reasons, will not. During the German occupation long lines of mines were planted under every street, and then they retired, hoping the British would take possession, but, the ruse not succeeding, the city became neutral, and the population, after so long a time, like those that live around Vesuvius, have forgotten their danger. That Armentieres will be the scene of a great battle in the near future there can be no doubt, but what will become of the people walking on the hidden mines and listening to the shrieks of shells above ?