in the general situation. The British still held Neuve Chapelle and
their intrenchments threatened Aubers. On Friday morning, March 12th,
the Crown Prince of Bavaria made a desperate attempt under cover of a
heavy fog to recapture the village. The effort was made in
characteristic German dense formations. The Westphalian and Bavarian
troops came out of Biez Wood in waves of gray-green, only to be blown to
pieces by British guns already loaded and laid on the mark. Elsewhere
the British waited until the Germans were scarcely more than fifty paces
away when they opened with deadly rapid fire before which the German
waves melted like snow before steam. It was such slaughter as the
British had experienced when held up before Aubers. Slaughter that
staggered Germany.

So ended Neuve Chapelle, a battle in which the decision rested with the
British, a victory for which a fearful price had been paid but out of
which came a confidence that was to hearten the British nation and to
put sinews of steel into the British army for the dread days to come.

The story of Neuve Chapelle was repeated in large and in miniature many
times during the deadlock of trench warfare on the western front until
victory finally came to the Allies. During those years the western
battle front lay like a wounded snake across France and Belgium. It
writhed and twisted, now this way, now that, as one side or the other
gambled with men and shells and airplanes for some brief advantage. It
bent back in a great bulge when von Hindenburg made his famous retreat
in the winter of 1916 after the Allies had pressed heavily against the
Teutonic front upon the ghastly field of the Somme. The record is one of
great value to military strategists, to the layman it is only a
succession of artillery barrages, of gas attacks, of aerial
reconnaissances and combats.

One day grew to be very much like another in that deadlock of pythons. A
play for position here was met by a counter-thrust in another place.
German inventions were out-matched and outnumbered by those coming from
the Allied side.

Trench warfare became the daily life of the men. They learned to fight
and live in the open. The power of human adaptation to abnormal
conditions was never better exemplified than in those weary, dreary
years on the western front.

[Illustration: SCENE OF THE BLOODY BATTLES OF THE SOMME

The tide of war swept over this terrain with terrific violence. Peronne
was taken by the B