now talking of 100,000 aeroplanes! Not bad, for seven weeks!

* * * * *

For the Allies also those seven weeks have been full of achievement. On
Easter Monday, April 9th, the Battle of Arras began, with the brilliant
capture by the Canadians of that very Vimy Ridge I had seen on March
2nd, from the plateau of Notre Dame de Lorette, lying in the middle
distance under the spring sunshine. That exposed hill-side--those
batteries through which I had walked--those crowded roads, and
travelling guns, those marching troops and piled ammunition dumps!--how
the recollection of them gave accent and fire to the picture of the
battle as the telegrams from the front built it up day by day before
one's eyes! Week by week, afterwards, with a mastery in artillery and in
aviation that nothing could withstand, the British Army pushed on
through April. After the first great attack which gave us the Vimy Ridge
and brought our line close to Lens in the north, and to the
neighbourhood of Bullecourt in the south, the 23rd of April saw the
second British advance, which gave us Gravrelle and Guemappe, and made
further breaches in the Hindenburg line. On April 16th the French made
their magnificent attack in Champagne, with 10,000 prisoners on the
first day (increased to 31,000 by May 24th)--followed by the capture of
the immensely important positions of Moronvillers and Craonne.
Altogether the Allies in little more than a month took 50,000 prisoners,
and large numbers of guns. General Allenby, for instance, captured 150
guns, General Home 64, while General Byng formed three "Pan-Germanic
groups" out of his. We recovered many square miles of the robbed
territory of France--40 villages one day, 100 villages another; while
the condition in which the Germans had left both the recovered territory
and its inhabitants has steeled once more the determination of the
nations at war with Germany to put an end to "this particular form of
ill-doing on the part of an uncivilised race."

During May there has been no such striking advance on either the French
or British fronts, though Roeux and Bullecourt, both very important
points, from their bearing on the Drocourt-Queant line, behind which lie
Douai and Cambrai, have been captured by the British, and the French
have continuously bettered their line and defied the most desperate
counter-attacks. But May has been specially Italy's month! The Italian
offensive on the Isonzo, a