of
the French troops.

Once before, in the earlier days of the war, the French had reached Metz
and Strasbourg, but had been hurled back by overwhelming numbers of the
enemy and forced to retreat well into France. Then the German line in
Alsace and Lorraine had been weakened to hurl denser masses of Germans
upon the British and Belgians in the north.

The French had not been slow to take advantage of this weakening of the
southern army of the Kaiser, and, immediately bringing great pressure to
bear, had cleared French territory of the invader in the south.

But the French commander did not stop with this. Alsace and Lorraine,
French soil until after the Franco-Prussian war, when it had been awarded
to Prussia as the spoils of war, must be recaptured. The French pressed
on and the Germans gave way before them.

Meantime, in the Soissons region the French also had been making
progress; but the Kaiser, evidently becoming alarmed by the great
pressure being exercised by the French in Alsace-Lorraine--in order to
relieve the pressure--immediately made a show of strength near Soissons,
seeking thereby to cause the French to withdraw troops from
Alsace-Lorraine to reenforce the army of the Soissons to stem the new
German advance there.

Taken somewhat unawares by the suddenness of the German assault upon
their lines near Soissons, the French were forced to give back. They
braced immediately, however, and the succeeding day regained the ground
lost in the first German assault.

Then the Germans made another show of strength at Verdun, southeast of
Soissons. General Joffre immediately hurled a new force to the support of
the French army at that point.

Meanwhile, as the result of the German assaults upon Soissons and
Verdun, in an effort to lessen the pressure being brought to bear by the
French in Alsace-Lorraine, there had been a lull in the fighting in the
latter regions.

Word from the eastern theater of war brought the news that Russia had a
new big army advancing upon the Germans in Poland from the east,
threatening to outflank the army that had penetrated to within fifty
miles of Warsaw, the capital and chief city of Poland. This, it was
taken, would mean that Germany would either have to retreat within her
own borders into East Prussia, or else that troops would have to be
dispatched from the west to reenforce those in the east.

In this event there was little doubt that General French and General
Joffre woul