eriously depleted,
and the French were now enabled to advance along the whole front.

The day was calm on both sides of the Meuse, but farther south, in the
right center of the French attack, after gaining Hooge village and
Sanctuary Wood, their first objectives, they fought their way forward
and carried the village of Westhoek, against very obstinate
resistance from the enemy. In this neighborhood there was stiff
fighting throughout the day, and still continued. The French had
penetrated the German defenses to a depth of about a mile. A number of
violent counterattacks were repulsed. South of the Zillebeke-Zandvoord
road, on the extreme right, French troops at an early hour in the day
had succeeded in winning all of their objectives, capturing the
villages of La Basse Ville, and Hollebeke. The French claimed to have
suffered few casualties in these important operations, and by
nightfall of July 31, 1917, over 3,500 German prisoners had been
passed behind the lines.

The German Government having industriously circulated reports that
the French armies had suffered such a wastage of men that in a short
time they would prove a negligible factor in the war, the French War
Office announced that there were a million more troops in the fighting
zone than were mustered to stem the German flood tide at the Battle of
the Marne. It was also declared that the Republic had more men under
arms than at any time in her history. Nearly 3,000,000 troops were in
France alone, exclusive of the interior and in the colonies.

PART VIII--THE UNITED STATES AND GERMANY

CHAPTER LXI

THE INTERIM

The cessation of diplomatic relations between the American and German
Governments was an inevitable consequence of the latter's submarine
decree abrogating the undertaking it gave in the _Sussex_ case. The
world knew it. Germany knew it. Her ambassador at Washington, Count
von Bernstorff, knew it best of all, and accepted his dismissal in a
fatalistic spirit. The rupture had to come. He had done his best to
avert it, and his best had availed nothing.

The long-feared break having become a reality, the American people
looked wide-eyed at the unexampled international situation. What now?
When two parties enter into a bargain and one breaks it, there is
usually a parting of the ways, a personal conflict perhaps, when there
is not also a lawsuit. But no court could settle the differences
between the United States and Germany. The nati