that the
number of British killed before this German division alone amounted to
8,000 to 10,000. The fourth line of attackers, however, finally
succeeded in overrunning the decimated front line of Germans, who
stood by their guns to the very last; those of them who had not fallen
were made prisoners. Not one of them returned to tell what happened in
this terrific fighting. The British are stated to have attacked in an
old-fashioned, out-of-date manner that made the German staff officers
stare in open-mouthed wonder. "Eight ranks of infantry, mounted
artillery, cavalry in the background--that was too much! A veritable
battle plan of a past age, the product of a mind in its dotage, and
half a century behind the times! Splendidly, with admirable courage,
the English troops came forward to the attack. They were young, wore
no decorations; they carried out with blind courage what their senile
commanders ordered--and this in a period of mortars, machine guns
and the telephone. Their behavior was splendid, but all the more
pitiable was the breakdown of their attack."

[Illustration: The Battle at Loos.]

Connected with the Battle of Loos there was one little person who
deserves a chapter in history--all to herself--and that is Mlle.
Emilienne Moreau, a young French girl who lived--and probably still
lives--with her parents in the storm-battered village of Loos. She was
seventeen years of age at the time she became famous, and was studying
to be a school-teacher. She was "mentioned in dispatches" in the
French Official Journal in these terms:

"On September 25, 1915, when the British troops entered the village of
Loos, she organized a first-aid station in her house and worked day
and night to bring in the wounded, to whom she gave all assistance,
while refusing to accept any reward. Armed with a revolver she went
out and succeeded in overcoming two German soldiers who, hidden in a
near-by house, were firing at the first-aid station."

This, however, was not a complete list of the exploits of la petite
Moreau. She shot two Germans when their bayonets were very close to
her, and later, snatching some hand bombs from a British grenadier's
stock, she accounted for three more who were busy at the same
occupation. Furthermore, "when the British line was wavering under the
most terrible cyclone of shells ever let loose upon earth, Emilienne
Moreau sprang forward with a bit of tricolored bunting in her hand and
the glorious words