I\Iarch 16, 1916. 
T. A N D A X D ^^' .\ T K R 
boiubardmeiit of Ihc ridgc and of tlir villages at its foot, 
opened the afternoon or evening of Saturday, tlic 4th of 
March, and continued tlnougiiout that night and the 
Sunday night. This bombardment was particularly 
severe along the valley where the French lines lay, behind 
the marshy brook from Bethincourt to I'^orges (both of 
which sets of ruins were occupied by the French) and so 
round the base of the hill to Kegneville. 
On the Monday morning, the 6th of March, the enemy 
launched no less than Iv.o divisions against the eastern 
portion of the line he had thus been bombarding and, 
probably in the course of that morning, he succeeded in 
rushing the village fif Forges ; he carried his assault on to 
the ruins of the hamlet of Regneville, which he also 
occupied. The assault was continued against all the 
main slope up to the " trunk " of the " palm tree " and 
by the evening of that Monday, March 6th, it had had 
the following results : 
One of the two German divisions had reached and 
captured Hill 265 ; the other inclining to the right, had 
forced its way up to the Crow Wood and right through 
that wood to its further western extremity. It was 
here not half a mile from the Mort Homme, and it 
looked as though the Mort Homme itself, and with it 
the whole ridge, would be in (jcrman hands by the Tues- 
day morning. 
At this moment, by the nightfall of Monday, March 
6th, the French line still held Bethincourt, ran across 
the shallow valley immediately beyond, skirted the edge 
of the Crows' Wood and covered the ruins of C'umieres. 
(All these little villages are places of from 300 to 500 
inhabitants or less). 
During the Monday night the bombardment was 
continued with intensity, not only along the whole ridge, 
but over the ground beyond it to the south in order to 
prevent the arrival of reinforcements. Reinforcements 
must nevertheless have arrived to the F'rench, for on the 
Tuesday the following day, the 7th, the FVench counter- 
attacked and drove the (iermans half way back through 
Crows' Wood. The Cierman forces, themselves reinforced 
during the Tuesday night, early, attacked (presumably 
after the early setting of the moon), the portion of the 
wood recovered by the French, and at the same time 
launched another new, separate force, against Bethincourt 
from the north, coming down the open fields abo^•e that 
village. These attacks were continued on into the 
Wednesday morning and were both completely broken. 
During the remaining daylight hours of the Wednes- 
day the F'rench continued a slow progress through the 
Crow Wood and recovered the whole of it except the 
eastern end. 
During Thursday, March gth, the enemy made no 
new attack. He was presumably re-forming and bringing 
up further troops. The lull was maintained through 
the night. But on Friday, March loth, the equivalent 
of a whole division was launched against the wood in 
successive attacks, .and before the end of the day the 
wood was again reoccupied by the Germans. 
Upon Saturday the nth, a further attack was 
launched against the F"rench trench running just in front 
of the road from Bethincourt village towards the south- 
east, and marked upon the sketch A A. This is the most 
advanced of the French trenches in this region. The 
attack was not successful, although at one moment the 
enemy got right past one section of the lust trt'hcli and 
was beginning io clear the main lomnumication trench 
k'ading up to it. He seems to ha\e been tvnned out of 
this in the course of the afternoon. 
Upon Sunday, the 12th, he continued a heavy bom- 
bardment along all this sector from Bethincourt to the 
Mcuse, but attempted no infantry attack upon that day. 
And on Monday 13th, he continued the bombardment 
with increasing inten.sity, especially securing the ground 
behind the Goose Crest to interfere with F'rench reinforce- 
ment. He devoted particular attention, at very long 
range and from' his heaviest pieces, t(3 the Bororrus Wood 
in the Charny Ridge, as though preparing for a general 
attack later on. 
The result by the Monday e\ening after a whole 
week's infantry action, and nine days from the beginning 
of the artillery preparation against this sector of five 
miles long (from Bethincourt to the river) was that the 
enemy, having deployed over it upon various occasions, 
at least four di\isions— from which lie has lost exceedingly 
heavily — has accpiired the irregular triangle shaded upon 
the sketch, is still live miles from Charny ridge and is 
opening in this situation upon the west of the Mcuse 
the fourth week of the great battle. 
Remember that the west of the Meuse can be 
made as decisive a battle ground as the east, that it 
threatens the general French line even more, and that 
hitherto only four divisions — only from a 6th to a 7th 
of the force already disclosed — ha\e been used against it. 
To put it another way, the density of attack on these 
five miles has hitherto been but a quarter (or less) of 
that on the east of the river. 
Note on the German False News. 
The false news spread in the course of these attacks 
by the Ciermans has been widely noted in the Press of 
this country, especially since the detailed expo.sition of a 
part of it in the French wireless of last Friday. 
We shall do well, however, to distinguish between 
the different types of falsehood published by the enemy 
in this connection. 
The exaggeration of the number of prisoners taken 
and the counting of trench mortars as field guns is a very 
(jld trick with which many months of the war have 
rendered us familiar. This sort of falsilication is not 
without a military object, and that object has been 
pointed out in these cohunns more than imc:'. In the 
confusion of an action where very much smaller forces 
are pressed back by very much larger ones, it is not with- 
out value to give the commanders of the retiring force 
an imjMession, however soon dispelled, that they have 
suffered more severely than is really the case. They 
know that they have been hard hit. It is impossible to 
get accurate statistics in the difficult business of the 
retirement, and exaggerated reports are bound to come 
in. The worse the situation is made to appear to his 
opponent the greater the fruits the enemy is likely to 
gather from his operation, since there will not be time 
to establish the truth until long after the affair is con- 
cluded ; and if the distant commanders of the retiring 
force think it is in a worse way than it really is, they may 
hesitate to order it to stand where, had they known the 
truth, they could easily have detained it. 
But falsehoods of such a type as that which announ- 
ced the capture of the Fort of Vaux upon the morning 
of Thursday last, are quite other. They cannot con- 
ceivably affect the French command even in its regir 
mental units, for everyone on the spot knows that they 
have no relation to reality. A German wireless, for 
instance, announcing the occupation of the town of 
Ypres on the nth of November, 1914, would have been 
\alueless for such a purpose as that described above, 
because every British soldier in Ypres and in front of it 
W(juld have known it was nonsense. 
Not only, therefore, is stuff of this kind valueless 
in a' military sense, but it has not hitherto appeared in 
the (ierman accounts. Falsehoods equally grotesque 
have been spread among neutrals, but only with regard 
to general matters and not with regard to the occupation 
of particular points. 
Why, then, has this novel feature appeared? 
Wfi can only guess at the reason and our guess must 
Ix' that the news was really believed in Berlin, and 
believed because a certain feverish expectation, the result 
of jjrevious disajipointment, affected those in charge of 
the publicity bureau in the capital, it sliould be par- 
ticularly remarked that the mythical exploit was set 
down to the credit of two Pohsh regiments, their brigade 
commander bearing (perhaps by a coincidence) a Pohsh 
name. 
A single point of the sort nnist not be pressed too 
far, but I take it that the thing was an error rather than a 
piece of cunning, and an error due to the state of mind of 
those who were eagerly waiting for news in Berlin, and 
who particularly desired to control or prevent certain 
forms of. disaffection. 
If one is asked how such an error should occur, it 
would seem from the nature of the case natural enough. 
A very large body of men is launched by night against 
the base of hills roughly corresponding in height and 
steepness to the Surrey Downs above Dorking and Rei- 
gate. There is a most furious cannonade lighting with 
llashes all the sloDCS of the hills, and the summit on which 
