July 10, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
ward, so that the shape as well as the moulding 
ofthe whole may be compared to that of a toncme 
iWhen the end of this valley is reached, and the 
ground has already risen by some hundreds of 
teet, we mark upon the left, as upon the right 
two deep ravines; the one on the east, marked 
Jv— -K, afforded cover from which the French 
so long as they lay to the south of it, were perpetu- 
ally attacked. ^ 
Some weeks ago the French carried a 
temporary work at about B, from which post they 
now command the ravine, and presumably make it 
untenable to the enemy. On the west, another 
ravine, some 200 or 300 feet deep, and very narrow 
which the British have called the " Nullah," runs 
up northward from the sea. The trenches ran 
before the last action, from B pretty nearly 
darectly across the Peninsula to the sea, so that 
about half the Nullah was in the hands of the 
Aiiies, the remaining, or northern, half in the 
hands of the enemy. Beyond the Nullah, and 
between it and the sea, was a plateau, the further 
side of which, towards the Aegean, falls precipi- 
tately 400 feet on to the water. 
Now, towards the northern end of this 
plateau, about the point marked A, there is 
a rather higher portion of ground, or knoll, and 
It was from this point that the first enemy attack 
was delivered upon June 28. It failed, and the 
knoU was occupied. In the night between the 
29th and the 30th, the enemy attacked again, at 
about two o'clock in the morning, not at first in 
great strength— about half a battalion. This 
torce was spotted upon the open high ground 
which here slopes down in a regular glacis from 
the Achi Baba ridge. They came under the 
searchlights of the Scorpion, the guns of which 
vessel opened fire and destroyed the formation. 
But immediately afterwards the enemy, swarmin" 
up from the Nullah itself, continued the attempt 
to take the knoll in much larger numbers, and even 
when it was broad daylight the reinforcement of 
a couple more battalions coming from Krithia 
advanced into the Nullah and up against the 
positions the British had captured, only to be 
broken— mainly by machine-gun fire. The next 
night, the 30th, immediately after dark, came the 
third attack, repelled by the Gurkhas, and at 
dawn a fourth, in no great strength, made across 
the open of the plateau, nearly all of which last 
attack was wiped out. 
Meanwhile, during all these assaults upon 
the knoU west of Krithia, the main line east of the 
Aullah and south of Krithia village was being 
subjected to continual assault, an assault the 
brunt of which was mainly borne by Colonial 
troops. Twice on July 2, in the morning and in 
the evening, the attack was renewed, broken upon 
the latter occasion mainly by the shrapnel fire of a 
British field battery. This was the last attempt 
of the enemy, and by the next morning the action 
nad ceased. 
THE WESTERN AiND ITALIAN 
FRONTS. 
The Western front has been distinguished 
this week by nothing but two counter-attacks by 
the enemy. The first was a veiy violent attack by 
the Germans in the Argonne, which succeeded in 
carrying some hundred yards of trenches over a 
depth of perhaps a third of a mile. It is but a 
detail in the perpetual struggle along those five 
•"f u? ^^^^- ^^^ ^^y sigiiificance is the con- 
siderable concentration of men with which it was 
effected and the very heavy losses entailed. It 
would seem to have been delivered by a couple of 
divisions of the Crown Prince's army, and these 
VTOuld seem to have lost about one-quarter of their 
effectives. 
■ ?\^ °^^®^ attack (of the same sort and meeting 
with the same qualified success) was delivered just 
west of the Moselle, at the corner of the Priest's 
Wood, and succeeded in giving the enemy the line 
of trenches he lost two months ago and three or 
four hundred yards of ground. It was distin- 
guished by a particularly heavy bombardment, 
but, like its fellow, is a detail of no general 
significance in the progress of the war. 
ppon the Italian front the bombardment of 
the Austrian fieldworks and of certain of their 
permanent works continues. It has not yet arrived 
at any decisive result, nor even at any appreciable 
advance. The Italians are at much the same dis- 
tance from the essential points upon the railway 
at Tarvis m the Pustecthal and above Trent, as 
they have been for two weeks past. They continue 
to hold and cut the railway upon the Isonzo 
VaUey, but they have not yet reduced, it would 
seem, the fortified ring surrounding Tolmino 
Ihere was a riunour in London derived from sundry 
Irench and American papers that Tolmino had 
fallen last Friday. There was a further rumour 
that, though it had been evacuated by the 
Austrians, it had not yet been occupied by the 
ItaUans. The official communiques, which are 
our only reliable guide in these matters, say 
nothing of aU this, and it is pretty clear that the 
town IS stiU, at the moment of writing (the even- 
ing of July 6), in Austrian hands— or, rather 
was in Austrian hands when the last communiques 
were issued upon the evening of Monday, the 5th. 
TO A FEW CORRESPONDENTS. 
The total result would seem now to be the 
advance of the AUied line as a whole to positions 
TOrrespondmg roughly to the dotted line upon the 
sketch above. Krithia viUage still lies immedi- 
A /• ' V^*^^'^ o^ It, and the average distance of the 
Achi Baba ridge, which must be occupied or 
turned before any attempt can be made upon the 
Pasha Dagh and the consequent domination of 
the Narrows, is about 3.000 yards. 
7» 
In reply to a certain amount of correspon- 
dence which has reached me in the course of the 
week upon the matter of enemy casualties and of 
the blockade, which I have been asked to refer 
to in these columns, I must beg to be allowed the 
utmost brevity, for they are points which have 
b^n dealt with over and over again in these 
columns. 
In the matter of the blockade, the greater 
part of the questions directed to me ask for some 
explanation of the fact that the enemy has been 
allowed to obtain masses of material essential to 
the conduct of his campaign, and in particular 
cotton, through lack of which, had he been for- 
bidden it, he would long before this have come to . 
an end of his resources. 
The only answer that can be given to these 
questions is that which has been afforded over and 
over again in these columns : There is no military 
reason whatsoever why such a thing should have 
