yd-George, Minister of Munitions,
and Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The
French participants were Premier Briand, General Gallieni, Admiral
Lacaze, Minister of Marine, and General Joffre.

At the beginning of November a temporary lull had set in on parts of
the western front, and the center of interest was for the time shifted
to the Balkans. The French and British seemed unable to continue their
offensive operations and were, for the most part, confined to their
trenches and such territory as they had wrested from the Germans
during September and early October. On October 30, 1915, the Germans
had again begun a series of determined offensives in Artois and
Champagne. They met with considerable success in the initial stages,
for on the morning of the 31st they had gained about 1,200 yards of
the French trenches near Neuville-St. Vaast and on the summit of the
Butte de Tahure, capturing 1,500 French soldiers. The struggle for the
Neuville trenches continued for days, during which the positions
changed hands at short intervals.

In Champagne the Germans, after a fresh artillery preparation, with
the employment of suffocating shells of large caliber, renewed their
attacks in the region to the north of Le Mesnil. They delivered four
successive assaults in the course of the day--the first at 6 a. m. on
the extreme east of La Courtine; the second at noon against Tahure;
the third at 2 p. m. to the south of the village, and the fourth at 4
p. m. against the ridges to the northeast. The French artillery,
however, checked their progress and compelled them to retire to their
trenches, leaving 356 unwounded prisoners with the French. Beyond
occasional artillery duels in the Dixmude-Ypres district, nothing of
importance happened on the Belgian front.

In the middle of November hard fighting was resumed on the Artois
front in the region of the Labyrinth, north of Arras, and continued
day and night, conducted chiefly with hand grenades. Artillery actions
raged in the Argonne forest, near Soissons, Berry-au-Bac, and on the
Belgian front. German activity in the Arras-Armentieres sector was
regarded as prognosticating a big attack. While the Germans collected
men and munitions at one spot, the French and British, adopting
worrying tactics, suddenly descended and harassed them in another. A
successful little enterprise was carried out by a small party of
British troops during the night of November 16-17, 1915