October 2, 1915." 
LAND AND WATEE. 
counter-attack, to bring up his heavy guns for the 
next piece of work, to renew the bombardment, 
hoping to maintain his superiority therein (which 
is not overwhelming), to attack again, and so on, 
pushing forward piece by piece until the whole 
depth of the defence is pierced. That is why the 
metaphor comparing it to fighting against a living 
man is accurate. The blows are met by counter- 
blows. They do not fall upon a body incapable of 
efficient reply, and the result is only determined by 
the excess oi energy developed on one side over 
that developed in the other. 
We must, therefore, watch this tremendous 
news of the next few days under a discipline of 
reserve, not expecting a continued rapid advance, 
which is out of the question and has, as a fact, 
not taken place, but expecting at the best a series 
of pushes which shall end in tne full retirement of 
the enemy and, at the worst, a halt not far in 
advance of the line from which the first attacks 
were delivered. 
Meanwhile, apart from the news we shall 
receive from our own communiques, we shall do 
well to read the German communiques carefully, 
not discounting too much their natural attempts 
to belittle the Allied successes or to enhance their 
own. We shall also do well, in reading those com- 
muniques, to expand their brief phrase^ by the 
use of common sense and of analogy with past 
^^.??xk^?k^i. ^^^c^shall note, for instance, in tnose 
unwounded 'pri'soners'flfe lit^OWreffTHJlded and 
sive north of Lens, next to the French offensive 
north of Arras, which was co-ordinated with it, 
and, last, to the minor work at the extremes of the 
lines before Ypres and in the Ban de Sapt. 
On a front of 17| miles, as we have seen, from 
the village of Aub^rive to the market town of Ville- 
sur-Tourbe, the French advanced in very great 
force upon Saturday morning. The first line of 
the enemy's defence in this region follows for the 
most part a crest roughly defined by the shaded 
space in the above sketch. This ridge is not an even 
one, nor was the whole of it occupied by the German 
works. In places it had been seized by the French 
during their work last February, and has been 
held ever since. Generally speaking, its summits 
nearly reach, or just surpass, the 200-metre contour, 
above the sea, but the whole of this country lies sq 
high that such a height only means a matter of 150 
to 200 feet above the water levels of the little 
muddy brooks that run in the folds of the land. It 
is a country of challc, but not of dry, turfy 
chalk, like those of the English Downs; rather a 
chalk mixed with clay, which makes for bad going 
after rain. It is the soil over which, further to 
the east, the battle of Valmy was fought, an action 
largely determined by the impracticable nature of 
the ground when wet. On the other hand, it is a 
soil thai dries quickly. The country as a whole 
is remarkably open. There are no hedges, and the 
movement of troops is covered only by scattered, 
not infrequent plantations of pine trees and 
larches, which grow to no great height. From any 
Donbrieni 
Toavbe 
Thousands (ftjardi 
Suippes 
to rank and file in these, the German claims to 
prisoners on their side (which we know to be 
nearly equivalent to all those missing after an 
attacK, dead and un wounded as well as prisoners), 
and so forth. 
This said, we can nOw proceed to the details 
of the movement. 
L— THE CHIEF MOVEMEiNT IN 
CHAMPAGNE. 
I will not take the movements in their geo- 
graphical order, but in the order of their im- 
portance, beginning with the main French opera- 
tion in Champagne, going on to the British offen- 
one of the observation posts along the seventeen 
miles of line one sees the landscape before one as a 
whole. It is the very opposite of what is called 
" blind country." On the east, to the right of the 
French positions, there runs along the horizon the 
low, even-wooded ridge of the Argpnne, which 
rises immediately behind Ville-sur-Tourhe. Far 
to the east, from the left, in clear weather one dis- 
tinguishes the great mass of Rheinis Cathedtal 
rising above the town. ■ 
The French advance, starting on the Satur- 
day morning from positions roughly those of the 
dotted line across the above Sketch II.. iiad 
reached, by the Sunday, a line roughly corresportd- 
ing to the line of dashes on the same sketch. It 
