reports had been received in
Paris that the devastation of the rich city of Lille by the Germans was
well under way, indicating that they contemplated a reluctant evacuation
of the most important center in northern France. At all events, an
immediate ebb in the German tide was necessitated by the British
successes of April 9 to 16. The momentum of Field Marshal Haig's advance
and the successes of the French on their share of the western front
appeared to make a further retirement of the whole German line
imperative--and the great Allied drive had scarcely begun.

SCENE OF THE CANADIAN VICTORY.

An exploration on April 13 of Vimy Ridge, carried by the Canadian troops
in a series of historic charges, showed that the British artillery
virtually blew off the top of it, and the German stronghold which had
resisted all efforts of the French and British during more than two
years of war, was finally forced into such a position by high explosives
that it could no longer resist infantry charges. Walking on the top of
the ridge was a continuous climb from one shell crater to another. Two
surmounting knobs, known only on military maps as numbered hills, had
attracted the fire of the heaviest British guns and had been shattered
into unrecognizable buttes on the landscape.

It was little wonder the Germans made such desperate efforts to hold the
Vimy ridge and to retake certain portions of it by counter attacks which
failed miserably. The ridge stood as a natural barrier between the
Germans and their opponents and was a great protective chain of hills
shielding invaluable coal, iron, and other mineral lands that Germany
had wrested from France in the first onrush of the war in 1914. The city
of Lens, within sight of the British lines, from the ridge, is a great
mining center.

THE FRENCH VICTORY AT SOISSONS.

On April 16 the "big push" of the Allies in France flared into a
continuous battle covering nearly every mile of the long line from the
North Sea to the Swiss border. Between Soissons and Rheims the French
engaged in a terrific struggle, driving forward in a solid mass against
the German lines on a front of twenty-five miles. Their way paved by ten
days of "drum fire," the troops of Gen. Nivelle swept forward, carrying
all of the first line of German positions between Soissons and Craonne.
They also took the second line positions, south of Juvincourt, east of
Craonne, reached the outskirts of Bermericourt, and advanced up