ricts. Shock troops are rarely sent into the trenches, but
when not actively engaged in conducting or resisting an attack, are
kept in cantonments well to the rear. Here they can get undisturbed
rest at night, but by day they are worked as a negro teamster works
his mule. As a result, they are always "on their toes," and in perfect
fighting trim. In this way mobility, cohesion, and enthusiasm, all
qualities which are seriously impaired by a long stay in the trenches,
are preserved in the attacking troops, who, when they go into battle,
are as keen and hard and well-trained as a prize-fighter who steps
into the ring to battle for the championship belt.

The most striking feature of the new French system of attack is the
team-work of the infantry, artillery, and airplanes. The former
advance to the assault in successive waves, each made up of several
lines, the men being deployed at five-yard intervals. The first wave
advances at a slow walk behind a curtain of artillery fire, which
moves forward at the rate of fifty yards a minute, the first line of
the wave keeping a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards, or, in other
words, at a safe distance, behind this protecting fire-curtain. The
men in this first line carry no rifles, but consist exclusively of
grenadiers, automatic riflemen, and their ammunition carriers, every
eighth man being armed with the new Chauchat automatic rifle, a
recently adopted weapon which weighs only nineteen pounds, and fires
at the rate of five shots a second. Three men, carrying between them
one thousand cartridges, are assigned to each of these guns, of which
there are now more than fifty thousand in use on the French front. The
automatic riflemen fire from the hip as they advance, keeping streams
of bullets playing on the enemy just as firemen keep streams of water
playing on a fire. In the second line the men are armed with rifles,
some having bayonets and others rifle grenades, the latter being
specially designed to break up counter-attacks against captured
trenches. A third line follows, consisting of "trench cleaners,"
though it must not be inferred from their name that they use mops and
brooms. The native African troops are generally used for this
trench-cleaning business, and they do it very handily with grenades,
pistols and knives.

When the first wave reaches a point within two hundred to three
hundred yards of the enemy's trenches, a halt of five minutes is made
to re-form for the f