Vimy heights was an item
of the highest importance, for to the eastward of them all the ground
was commanded by their fire, and the chances were that the Germans
would fall back on Douai and on the line of the Lille-Douai Canal,
once they were pushed off the high ground. In the Argonne the German
Crown Prince carried out desperate attacks against the French
first-line trenches at La Fille Morte and Bolante. These the French
repulsed with heavy losses to the Germans, whose dead lay piled in
heaps in front of the positions.

One result of the British attack was the hurried recall of the active
Corps of Prussian Guards from the eastern front--an important relief
to the hard-pressed Russians. This famous corps was at the time split
up into three groups; the active corps was with Mackensen in Galicia
and in the advance upon Brest-Litovsk. It was transferred to the Dvina
after the fall of Brest, and had since been engaged before Dvinsk. The
Reserve Guard Corps was in the central group of the German armies, and
the other, the Third Division, was still in Galicia. The British and
the Prussian Guards had made each other's acquaintance in the Battle
of Ypres.

[Illustration: The French Gains in the Artois Region, September,
1915.]

At the end of the month Haisnes, on the northern flank of the new
British line, was still for the greater part in German possession; on
the right flank the British were across the Lens-La Bassee road. The
British had captured not only the first position of their enemy, but
also a second or supporting line which ran west of Loos. They were now
up against the third line. Sir John French reported having taken so
far over 3,000 prisoners, twenty-one guns, and forty machine guns. The
French in Artois had taken a matter of 15,000 prisoners and a number
of guns. After obstinate day and night fighting they had reached Hill
140, the culminating point of the crests of Vimy, and the orchards to
the south. The crown prince still plugged away on this front with
heavy artillery and aerial torpedoes. Columns of flames began to issue
from his trenches on September 27, 1915--the inflammable liquid
appeared to be a composition of tar and petrol--and the smoke and
flames, carried by the wind blowing from the German trenches, soon
reached the French line and made the atmosphere intolerably hot and
suffocating for the French troops. Then suddenly out of the thick
fumes began to appear German infantry with fixed bayone