luded five strongly fortified
villages, numerous heavily wired and intrenched woods, and a large number
of immensely strong redoubts."

The villages captured were Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, La Boiselle, and
Contalmaison--the latter captured on July 10th, after particularly fierce
fighting. Every observer dwells on "the immense strength of the German
defences." "All the little villages and woods, each eminence and hollow,
have been converted into a fortress as formidable as the character of the
ground makes possible." The German has omitted nothing "that could protect
him against such a day as this."

Yet steadily, methodically, with many a pause for consolidation of the
ground gained, and for the bringing up of the heavy guns, the British
advance goes forward--toward Bapaume and Lille; while the French press
brilliantly on toward Peronne--both movements aimed at the vital German
communications through France and Belgium. Every step of ground, as the
Allies gain it, "is wrecked with mines, torn with shell, and watered with
the blood of brave men." The wood-fighting, amid the stripped and gaunt
trunks rising from labyrinths of wire, is specially terrible; and below
the ground everywhere are the deep pits and dugouts, which have not only
sheltered the enemy from our fire, but concealed the machine-guns, which
often when our men have passed over, emerge and take them in the rear. The
German machine-guns seem to be endless; they are skilfully concealed, and
worked with the utmost ability and courage.

But nothing daunts the troops attacking day and night, in the name of
patriotism, of liberty, of civilisation. Men from Yorkshire and
Lancashire, from Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland, the heart of
England's sturdy north; men from Sussex and Kent, from Somerset and Devon;
the Scotch regiments; the Ulster Division, once the Ulster Volunteers;
the men of Munster and Connaught; the town-lads of Manchester; the youths
of Cockney London:--all their names are in the great story. "There were no
stragglers--none!" says an officer, describing in a kind of wonder one of
the fierce wood-attacks. And these are not the seasoned troops of a
Continental Army. They belong to regiments and corps which did not exist,
except in name, eighteen months ago; they are units from the four-million
army that Great Britain raised for this struggle, before she passed her
Military Service Law. The "Old Army," the Expeditionary Force, which the