ns, wrongly interpreted, before. The great Allied attack on
the West--was it ready, _at last_?

Then--with the 27th of June, along the whole British battle-front of 90
miles, there sprang up a violent and continuous bombardment varied by
incessant raids on the enemy lines. Those who witnessed that bombardment
can hardly find words in which to describe it. "It was an extraordinary
and a terrible spectacle," says a correspondent. "Within the dreadful zone
the woods are leafless, chateau and farm and village, alike, mere heaps of
ruins." Ah! _ce beau pays de France_--with all its rich and ancient
civilisation--it is not French hearts alone that bleed for you! But it was
the voice of deliverance, of vengeance, that was speaking in the guns
which crashed incessantly day and night, while shells of all calibres
rained--so many to the second--from every yard of the British front, on
the German lines. The correspondents with the British Headquarters could
only speculate with held breath, as to what was happening under that
ghastly veil of smoke and fire on the horizon, and what our infantry would
find when the artillery work was done, and the attack was launched.

The 1st of July dawned, a beautiful summer morning, with light mists
dispersing under the sun. Precisely to the moment, at 7.30 A.M., the
Allied artillery lifted their guns, creating a dense _barrage_ of fire
between the German front and its support trenches, while the British and
French infantry sprang over their parapets and rushed to the attack of the
German first line; the British on a front of some twenty-five miles, the
French, on about ten miles, on both sides of the Somme. The English
journalists, who, watch in hand, saw our men go, "knowing what it was they
were going to, marvelled for the fiftieth time at the way in which British
manhood has proved itself, in this most terrible of all wars."

But though it was a grand, it was an anxious moment for those who had
trained and shaped the New Armies of Britain. How would they bear
themselves, these hundreds of thousands of British and Imperial
volunteers, men, some of them, with the shortest possible training
compatible with efficiency--against the famous troops of Germany--beside
the veteran, the illustrious army of France?

Four hours after the fighting began, Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed: "Attack
launched north of River Somme this morning at 7.30 A.M. In conjunction
with French, British troops have broken int