our left
from the Ypres-Langemarck road to a considerable distance east of St.
Julien. The fumes did not carry much beyond our front trenches. But
these were to a great extent rendered untenable, and a retirement from
them was ordered.

No sooner had this started than the enemy opened a violent bombardment
with asphyxiating shells and shrapnel on our trenches and on our
infantry as they were withdrawing. Meanwhile our guns had not been idle.
From a distance, perhaps owing to some peculiarity of the light, the gas
on this occasion looked like a great reddish cloud, and the moment it
was seen our batteries poured a concentrated fire on the German
trenches.

Curious situations then arose between us and the enemy. The poison belt,
the upper part shredding into thick wreaths of vapor as it was shaken by
the wind, and the lower and denser part sinking into all inequalities of
the ground, rolled slowly down the trenches. Shells would rend it for a
moment, but it only settled down again as thickly as before.

Nevertheless, the German infantry faced it, and they faced a hail of
shrapnel as well. In some cases where the gas had not reached our lines
our troops held firm and shot through the cloud at the advancing
Germans. In other cases the men holding the front line managed to move
to the flank, where they were more or less beyond the affected area.
Here they waited until the enemy came on and then bayoneted them when
they reached our trenches.

On the extreme left our supports waited until the wall of vapor reached
our trenches, when they charged through it and met the advancing Germans
with the bayonet as they swarmed over the parapets.

South of St. Julien the denseness of the vapor compelled us to evacuate
trenches, but reinforcements arrived who charged the enemy before they
could establish themselves in position. In every case the assaults
failed completely. Large numbers were mown down by our artillery. Men
were seen falling and others scattering and running back to their own
lines. Many who reached the gas cloud could not make their way through
it, and in all probability a great number of the wounded perished from
the fumes.

It is to that extent, from a military standpoint, a sign of weakness.
Another sign of weakness is the adoption of illegal methods of fighting,
such as spreading poisonous gas. It is a confession by the Germans that
they have lost their former great superiority in artillery and are, in
any c