POSITION AFTER POSITION TAKEN.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13792, 12 June 1915, Page 5

POSITION AFTER POSITION TAKEN.

FRENCH DRIVING ENEMY WITH

BOMB A^D BAYONET,

London, June 9

"The Times' " correspondent in the north of France states: —"While the British," French and' Belgians are firmly holding the enemy in check in Flanders, the French are battering his lines in Artois. "For weeks they have been fiercely fighting their way to Lens and Vimy. They are still heroically advancing. Every yard is strongly fortified and i istubbornly defended, but the French are driving the enemy out of position after position with bombs and bayonets, j "The ground gained is strewn with German bodies. There is no time to bury them, and the stench is unbearable to French nostrile. "The enemy is offering a stout resistance. They know that an important, perhaps vital, point of their line of communications is seriously threatened. "The army under Prince Ruppreclit of Bavaria has been strongly reinforced with the finest troops, and is making a frantic effort to stay the French advance. "The French are making secure their newly-acquired positions, preparatory to a further advance. "Further south the French are covering themselves with glcry. There have been furious hand-to-hand encounters at Neuville St. Vaast and at the Labyrinth, "The French are driving out the enemy, house by house, in the Labyrinth —Vasr area. Trenches which were open have been covered, and the warI fare is practically subterranean. "The French have displayed a special aptitude, and an astonishing skill and daring, in the taking of networks of wiro entanglements.

"Two-thirds of the Labyrinth is in their hands, and the line of outer defences at Vimy must soon fall."

The German casualty lists fill 7000 close printed pages, and afford evidence of enormous losses by crack regiments.

A Berlin official message states: Our position at Vauquois was attacked on Sunday last, but, despite the employment of incendiary bombs and burning liquid, the French did not succeed in penetrating cur position.

"The Times" comments on_the assertion, which, it says, acquires significance in view of tlx> statement that Krupy's art- making an enormous gun to throw burning liquid, because any charge against the Allie3 has hitherto preceded the German adoption of some method of fighting opposed to all rules of civilised warfare.