n this soon proved
too wide. The German losses were so great that the attack could not be
kept up at all points; and at the end of the seventh day the offensive
dwindled to fragmentary attacks,--but only to be renewed with added
vigor after a brief period of rest for the infantry on both sides, while
the artillery kept up its daily and nightly duel without ceasing, until
the entire terrain became an earthly inferno, thickly scattered over
with the dead and the dying."

THE DEADLY MINE IN CAURES WOOD.

Frightful in result, too, was the tragic stratagem played on the Germans
in Caures Wood, near the village of Beaumont. The whole wood had been
mined by the French, and was connected electrically with a station in
the village. When the Germans had advanced, fully a division strong, to
attack the wood, the French regiment holding it ran, as if seized with
panic, back toward the village. The Germans pursued them with shouts of
victory. Soon the last Frenchman had emerged from the trees, but the
French commander waited until the Germans were all in the mined area.
They were just beginning to debouch on the other side when he pressed
the button. There was a tremendous roar, drowning for a moment even the
boom of the cannon. The wood was covered with a cloud of smoke, and even
on the French trenches in Beaumont "there rained a ghastly dew." When
the French re-entered the wood, unopposed, they found not a single
German unwounded, and hardly a score alive.

GERMAN LOSSES AT VERDUN.

The German successes during the weeks of fighting in the vicinity of
Verdun, consisting of a series of advances along the front, without
any decisive result so far as the strength of the defense of the main
fortress was concerned, were gained at the cost of enormous losses in
killed and wounded. These losses were estimated on April 7 to have
reached the huge total of 200,000--one of the greatest battle losses in
the whole range of warfare. During the period from February 21, when the
battle of Verdun began, to April 1, it was said that two German army
corps had been withdrawn from the front, having lost in the first
attacks at least one-third of their force. They subsequently reappeared
and again suffered like losses, the German reinforcements being
practically used up as fast as they were put in line.

Declarations gathered from prisoners and the observations of the French
staff led the latter to estimate that at least one-third of the total
num