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Les Eparges 
2 
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they still hold on to St. Mihiel in the hope that 
later forces released from other theatres of war 
may enable them at last to advance from the 
Argonne. They hold on thus to the advance post 
of St. Mihiel not without some peril. The position 
is awkward, threatened on either side, and depen- 
dent upon a line of supply from Metz, the first 
half of which is furnished with a railway, long 
established, to Thiaucourt, and the second half 
with a field railway the Germans themselves have 
constructed, taking it through the middle of the 
wedge, as far as possible from its two threatened 
edges. 
In sketch VI. the vshape of the wedge 
occupied will be seen roughly delineated. It runs 
from the Moselle to the Meuse, and its two edges 
are being bitten into continually by the slow 
French advance. On the north that advance has 
been considerable, and the French have taken Les 
Eparges, but on the south the action is more im- 
» 1 a » ♦ 5 
tAxUs 
portant because the line at Thiaucourt comes close 
to this southern edge. 
The French advance at Thiaucourt began 
from the main road which runs from Com- 
mercy to Pont k Mousson. Once they got hold of 
this tliey advanced into the wood called the Wood 
of the Priest (Bois du Pretre), slowly making their 
way in desperate forest fighting comparable to 
that of the Argonne. They hold at the present 
moment very nearly the whole of this wood, lying 
on a front indicated by the line of crosses, and 
somewhat helped by the fact that the whole of this 
ground slopes away from the high road, which ia 
about 1,100 feet above the sea, down to the valley 
in which the railway runs, 400 feet below. They 
carried, as we have seen. Fey en Haye, and last 
Saturday Regnieville, two tiny hamlets, the one 
with less than 200 inhabitants in time of peace, 
the other with a trifle over : both now, presumably, 
in ruins. 
From Regnieville you cannot see down into 
the valley to Thiaucourt, tlie nearest point of the 
enemies' supply railway, because of a belt of wood 
which interrupts the view, but if the French ad- 
vance can pass this wood and establish itself well 
on the slope beyond, the railway is done for. The 
big guns working behind the line will have it in 
range, and there are a mass of vulnerable points, 
culverts, and one narrow road bridge, if I am not 
mistaken, which would be within extreme range of 
guns posted between the high road and the woods. 
The whole thing is an advance upon Thiaucourt. 
This detail of Regnieville which we have been 
reviewing, and all similar local successes, past and 
present, in the trench warfare — Perthes, Neuve 
Chapelle, the Hartsmannweilerkopf — have one 
common feature which must be grasped if we ara 
to understand the present phase of the war. Thia 
common feature is the domination exercised over 
the new trench warfare by the heavy gun. 
Many excellent critics have said that there ia 
nothing new in this, because whenever siege work 
was concerned the heavy gun was obviously the 
master weapon. They are right so far, that the 
action of the heavy gun along the Western front 
in the present phase of this war differs only in 
degree, and not in kind, from the action of every, 
big piece that has been turned against any earth- 
work during the last three hundred years. But the 
novelty of the present work consists in two points : 
the degree of exactitude necessary to the fire of the 
heavy guns, and the degree in the number of their 
projectiles. 
As to the first point, exactitude, it is necei- 
I* 
