PROGRESS CONTINUED.

Otago Witness, Issue 3212, 6 October 1915, Page 25

PROGRESS CONTINUED.

LONDON, September 28. All accounts agree that the British continue to progress in Artois, and a big battle is proceeding in the Champagne, while the Allies are preparing for another spring. Critics are of opinion that the efforts to hold the British and French immobile while

slaking a decision upon operations in the east have been definitely frustrated. The Germans are now facing a double effort, which it has been the prime object of their strategy to avoid. The enemy are likely to uncover a certain portion of their front in order to accumulate large forces at the threatened points, and the Allies will not miss the opportunity of attacking weak points. Hence the fighting is likely to be in places not yet mentioned. GERMANS BLINDLY CONFIDENT. IGNORANT OF ALLIES’ PLANS. LONDON, September 28. In the Daily Chronicle Mr Philip Gibbs writes from the British Headquarters on Sunday: Along a 500 miles front the battle commenced at dawn yesterday. The enemy, suspecting movements of troops behind our lines, expended a quantity of shells, especially at Ypres salient. The ruins were again churned up by high explosives. There was a lull on Friday, and millions of men in both lines were waiting in tense expectation. The German prisoners admit they were ignorant of our strength and plans, and were blindly confident in their own security. Our men knew by various signs and portents that important operations were on hand. Those detailed for the attack had been enjoying a rest, many having been at home on leave. But other overworked fighting “ forwards ” also entered the fight with the old songs and jokes. The din of the bombardment was doubly intense at dawn. Our guns had never spoken like this. The attack began in earnest east of Vermelles, south of La Bassee Canal, and the plain of Lens, where the men were soon in deadly grips with the enemy, advancing steadily over ground that was no longer barred irnpregnably by the enemy’s trenches, upon which they had peered through loopholes in sandbags for many months. The generals and staff officers had gathered upon the rising ground, trying to pierce the veil behind which masses of brown men were struggling forward. Battalions and then brigades vanished into the fog. The British, advancing through Loos, fought behind a veil from which came the thunder of battle and later the first stream of wounded. The position was known only when a telephone wire was laid. The Germans in their dugouts were dazed with the intensity of the bombardment and stupefied into surrender. Among the attackers were many battalions of “‘Kitchener’s army.’’ All Saturday it rained heavily, and the soldiers dug themselves in, the trenches being half filled with mud and water. The rain ceased at nightfall, and the moon shone bright above the battlefield. On Sunday there was brilliant sunshine and a cloudless blue sky. In a field near the railway 1400 Gorman prisoners—a great mass of slate grey men, lying on the grass awaiting entrainment. I walked among them, and studied the types. There was nothing of hate in the eyes of the fresh-faced “Tommies” who stood guard. The prisoners had a beaten, exhausted look. Some were

wounded in the arms and legs, but not seriously. I noticed the care of the prisoners for wounded comrades. Many seemed glad to be prisoners. Great batches who were captured at Loos said : “ The English at Loos gave us a great surprise. Tire first we knew of the attack was the British streaming into our trenches. We were surrounded on three sides, and the position was hopeless, but we fought to the last cartridge.’’ Officers spoke with profound admiration of the stoic charges of the British infantry and their fine showing. The battle of Monday was intensely concentrated, lying between La Bassee and Lens, with the" French on the right working from the captured town of Souchez. The weather was so bad that artillery observation was difficult. British and German wounded were lying in pools in a pitiable condition. Although halfveiled in a thick, grey mist the battle ground could be seen from a ridge at Notre Dame De Lorette. It was an impressive and awe-inspiring sight. At Hill 70 a great struggle was progressing. Large bodies of British who had fought their way through Loos, were confronted by German reserves who had been hurried up after our surprise attack on Saturday. Across the lower spur of Notre Dame De Lorette there was a continual storm of high explosive shrapnel, where the enemy were trying to throw back the French advance. Overhead all day, aeroplanes carried out reconnaissances. Some remained for hours over the enemy’s lines. Mr Gibbs sums up the results of Saturday and Sunday’s fighting thus : “We emptied the enemy’s trenches along a five miles front south of La Bassee, and they were carried. The enemy north of the canal brought up heavy reserves and checked our advance. The Germans at Hooge were trapped, and many were forced to surrender, but the Germans retook Bellewarde Ridge, which we swept over in the first rush.” EFFECTS OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES. THE FULCRUM OF THE LEVER. LONDON, September 28. The Westminster Gazette’s correspondent in Northern France, writing on September 25, says; “This is the third day of a continuous British bombardment. The German fire is astonishingly light, suggesting that they are short of guns or ammunition on this front. Looking towards the German lines there is no sign of life. Even their trench periscopes are not hoisted. The German infantry are lying low, packed in their deepest dugouts. The ground immediately below the surface is chalk, and the trenches of both sides arc clearly defined, wavy lines, the parapets glaring white in the sunshine. The most prominent feature of the country is the pithead erections, towering chimneys, and huge black slagheaps. Most of the mine chimneys have been shelled down, because they were used as artillery-observation stations, but the tall winding-gear erections of metal lattice work resist shell fire.

“ The spectacle along the British front

was wonderful and awe-inspiring. Shelli from our heaviest artillery, resembling spouting geysers of flame, smoke, and dust, were playing ujmn the slag-heaps at Lens; lyddite from the howitzers plunged into the German firing and communication trenches, blowing- down parapets; shrapnel pelted savagely the masses of barbed-wire entanglements protecting the German lines. The amount of wire used in these is stupendous. Great thickets and hedges of wire run in front of every trench. The Gormans were continually adding reinforcements to the rusty wire with fresh tangles of bluetinted heaps, through which only shrapnel can blast a path. It was necessary for oUr artillery to cut many more miles of entanglements than the actual attack required, otherwise the Germans would have realised the spot selected for the assault.

“ The British bombardment blotted out whole stretches of the German line in a slow-moving curtain of smoke, through which we could see the orange flame of bursting shells. Every heavy shell threw up an enormous column of dust, which drifted slowly down along the German front.

“ The bellowing thunder of the guns, the shrieks and screams of the shells, tha crashes and growls of the high explosives never ceased all day long. Even the darkness was broken by continued gunflashes, telling of the activity of the gnns throughout the battle-line. “The British have heard of the hammering the Russians have undergone, of the apparent lockfast at Gallipoli, and of the painfully slow progress of Italy. Now they feel that the fulcrum of tha lever is back on the west front. Tha Germans have jeered at Kitchener’s armies, but these feel that now they hava a real good chance of showing their mottla alongside the remnant of Sir John French’s ‘contemptible little army.’ ” WHAT HAS YET TO COME. LONDON, September 28. Le Petit Parisian says that since tha Marne no such day has shone on our flag. Le Matin says we must not forget that the Germans put their trust, not in their first lines, which are mainly defended by machine guns, but in the defensive organisation of their second and third lines. But our first-line results were gloriously achieved. The New York Herald says the elan of the Allies was irresistible, but they have to find out what lies behind the first German trenches.