the Germans recaptured the Le Pretre woods near St.
Mihiel, and next day the belligerents fought a fierce engagement in the
Vosges without advantage to either side. Prince Eitel, the second son
of the Kaiser, commanded an attack upon Thann in Alsace on January 25,
1915, but was repulsed by the French defenders.

On January 28, 1915, the Germans made some gains in the Vosges and in
Upper Alsace, but in their attempt to cross the River Aisne on the 29th
they were unsuccessful.

January 30, 1915, brought some successes to the Germans in the Argonne
forest, where throughout the month the most savage fighting was going on
in thick underbrush and from tree tops.

PART II--NAVAL OPERATIONS

CHAPTER XXXII

STRENGTH OF THE RIVAL NAVIES

Sea fights, sea raids, and the hourly expectation of a great naval
battle--a struggle for the control of the seas between modern
armadas--held the attention of the world during the first six months of
the Great War. These, with the adventures of the _Emden_ in the waters
of the Far East, the first naval fight off Helgoland, the fight off the
western coast of South America, the sinking of the _Lusitania_, and the
exploits of the submarines--held the world in constant expectancy and
threatened to involve neutral nations, thus causing a collapse of world
trade and dragging all the peoples of the earth into the maelstrom of
war.

This chapter will review the navies as they gather for action. It will
follow them through the tense moments on shipboard--the days of watching
and waiting like huge sea dogs tugging at the leash. Interspersed are
heroic adventures which have added new tales of valor to the epics of
the sea.

The naval history of the great European conflict begins, not with the
first of the series of declarations of war, but with the preliminary
preparations. The appointment of Admiral von Tirpitz as Secretary of
State in Germany in 1898 is the first decisive movement. It was in that
year that the first rival to England as mistress of the world's seas,
since the days of the Spanish Armada, peeped over the horizon. Two years
before the beginning of the present century, Von Tirpitz organized a
campaign, the object of which was to make Germany's navy as strong as
her military arm. A law passed at that time created the present German
fleet; supplementary laws passed in 1900 and 1906 through the Reichstag
by this former plowboy caused the German navy to be taken seriously,