ecial Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES and The London Daily
Chronicle.]

A TOWN IN FRANCE, Oct. 7.--Arras has been the pivot of a fierce battle
which, commencing Thursday, was still in progress when I was forced to
leave the citadel three days later.

In that period I was fortunate enough to penetrate into the firing line,
and the experience is one that will never be dimmed in my memory. Like
the movements of so many pawns on a mammoth chessboard was the feinting
with scattered outposts to test the strength of the enemy.

I saw the action open with skirmishes at Vitry-en-Artois, and next
morning one of the hardest battles which make a link in the chain flung
right across France of the gigantic battle of rivers was being
prosecuted before my eyes.

The days that ensued were full of feverish and hectic motion. Arras
rattled and throbbed with the flow of an army and all the tragedy which
war brings in its train. There were moments when its cobbled streets
were threaded by streams of wounded from the country beyond. Guns boomed
incessantly, a fitting requiem to the sad little processions which
occasionally revealed that some poor fellow had sacrificed his life for
the flag which accompanied him to his grave.

I reached Arras on Sept. 29. The Germans had occupied it a fortnight
earlier. Now it was placid, sleepy, and deserted, and bore no outward
signs of having suffered from their occupation. I learned, however, that
although they had refrained from demolishing buildings, there had been
scenes of debauchery, and private houses had been ransacked.

It was declared that the only German paying for anything during the
whole of the fortnight's occupation was a member of the Hohenzollern
family, an important officer who had made the Hotel d'Univers his
headquarters.

I decided to pass on to Vitry-en-Artois, twelve miles distant and six
kilometers from Douai, where I had heard the Allies were in force. Here
I obtained a room in a hotel.

Within a short while I saw armed cars. There came many warriors in many
cars, cars fitted with mitrailleuses, cars advancing backward, cars with
two soldiers in the back of each with their rifles rested on the back
cushions and their fingers on the triggers, and with the muzzles of
mitrailleuses pointing over their heads. Several cavalry scouts, too,
are in the streets.

Once I ventured my head a little outside of the door and was curtly
warned to eliminate myself or possibly I would ge