ry bombardment, taking the enemy by surprise.

On October 15th the news from Flanders showed that the victory was
growing in extent, the Allied armies were advancing on a front of about
twenty-five miles, and in some places had penetrated the enemy's
positions six or seven miles. The Belgians had captured seven thousand
prisoners and the British and French about four thousand. In French
Flanders the British advanced to a point about three miles west of
Lille.

The battle was carried on in a heavy rain which turned the battle-fields
into seas of mud; while this hampered the Allied troops it hindered even
more the Germans in trying to move away their material through the mired
ground of the Flanders Lowland.

On the next day dispatches indicated that a retreat on a tremendous
scale in northern Belgium was under way. The Germans were retreating so
fast that the Allies lost touch with the enemy. The gallant little
Belgian army, assisted by crack British and French troops, had driven
the despoilers of its country from a large section which the Germans had
occupied since the early days of the war, and had gained positions of
such importance as to make it probable that the Germans would have to
abandon the entire coast of Belgium.

Moreover, on the south, the city of Lille, with the great mining and
manufacturing districts around it, was being left in a salient which was
growing deeper every hour and which the enemy could not hope to hold. At
certain points the resistance of the Germans was extraordinarily fierce.
This was especially true in the region of Thouret. The battle here was
from street to street and from house to house. The Germans had placed
machine-guns in the windows of houses and cellars and fired murderous
streams of bullets into the advancing Belgians but were unable to stop
them.

The Belgians fought with a dogged determination such as only troops
fighting to regain their outraged country could display. Nothing could
stop them. At other points, especially in the northern part of the
battle area, the Germans surrendered freely. Many civilians were rescued
from the towns and districts captured, and little processions of these
were straggling rearward out of range of the guns, and out of the way of
the fighting troops. At times liberated Belgian women could see their
sons, brothers or husbands going forward into battle. On October 17th
the German retreat in Flanders became a rout. The enemy were fleeing
rap