o fight foes capable of raining destruction upon
them from the air as well, and it may well be believed that the leaders
of the invading hosts would be the first to admit that without this
enormous advantage not even the progress that they have so far made
would have been possible.

"The glories of Albuera and Waterloo, of Inkermann and Balaklava, have
over and over again been eclipsed by the whole-souled devotion of the
British soldiery, fighting, as no doubt every man of them believes, with
their backs to the wall, not for ultimate victory perhaps but for the
preservation of those splendid traditions which have been maintained
untarnished for over a thousand years. It is no exaggeration to say that
of all the wars in the history of mankind this has been the deadliest
and the bloodiest. Never, perhaps, has so tremendous an attack been
delivered, and never has such an attack been met by so determined a
resistance. Still, having due regard to the information at our disposal,
it would be vain to deny that, tremendous as the cost must have been,
the victory so far lies with the invaders.

"After a battle which has lasted almost continuously for a fortnight; a
struggle in which battalion after battalion has fought itself to a
standstill and the last limits of human endurance have been reached, the
fact remains that the enemy have occupied the whole line of the North
Downs, Aldershot has ceased to be a British military camp, and is now
occupied by the legions of Germany, France and Austria.

"Russia, in spite of the disastrous defeat of the united German and
Russian expedition against Sheerness, Tilbury and Woolwich, is now
preparing a force for an attack on Harwich which, if it is not defeated
by the same means as that upon the Thames was defeated by, will have
what we may frankly call the deplorable effect of diverting a large
proportion of the defenders of London from the south to the north, and
this, unless some other force, at present unheard of, is brought into
play in aid of the defenders, can only result in the closing of the
attack round London--and after that must come the deluge.

"That this is part of a general plan of operations appears to be quite
clear from the desperate efforts which the French, German and Austrian
troops are making to turn the position of General French at Reading, to
outflank the British left which is resting on the hills beyond
Faversham, and, having thus got astride the Thames, occupy