ine. In this they failed. Over a
twelve-mile front they gained depths varying from one-half to three
miles; and altogether, with the British, they took some 25,000
prisoners and 160 guns. Both the numbers of prisoners and of guns
were small compared with the "bags" on the eastern front. But the
character of the fighting, the heavy volume of artillery fire and
extraordinary coordination of the first-class fighting units by the
most skilled armies in history, make this action memorable in
military annals in the same way as the German attack on Verdun in
the following February. The ground lost in no wise endangered the
German tenancy of their line.

Along the Italian front the summer had developed something of the
same kind of stalemate that had existed in France. Fighting in the
Alpine country so favored the defense that the Austrians did not
have more than three or four hundred thousand troops engaged in
holding the Italians in position. Therefore it had been easy for
anyone taking a superficial view to exaggerate the military value of
Italy's entry into the war. The Austrian troops had fought with
extreme tenacity, for naturally the Austrian staff had sent against
the Italians all those troops in Franz Josef's heterogeneous empire
who had any racial antagonism against the Italians, including those
who had been lukewarm in fighting against the Slav.

Unquestionably, honors at the end of the campaign in 1915 were with
Germany. She had held her line solidly in the west. She had stripped
the country of northern France and Belgium of all the machinery of
its factories which would be useful to her. She had been relieved of
any necessity of feeding the Belgian population, or of the menace
that would have come from the threat of a famine in either Belgium
or northern France by the American Food Commission which at first
had received supplies from America to carry on their work, and later
had depended almost altogether upon grants from the French and
English Governments and upon large voluntary contributions from
England. In the east she had gained territory almost equal in area
to that of Prussia itself. All Poland was hers. Her governor general
ruled Warsaw. Her situation as to food supplies was improved by the
occupation of immense productive areas. She had made war with all
her energy, and in want of able-bodied men to gather her own
harvests, she had used the hosts of prisoners which she had taken
from Russia. But, despi