. Foiled in this direction, the next attack
was delivered against the five-mile front. Some 40,000 men took part
in the charge. But the powerful French "seventy-fives" tore ghastly
lanes in their ranks, and few lived to reach the wire entanglements.
Crawling through the holes made by the bombardment, they captured 300
yards of trenches. A portion of this the French regained. The British
lost four aeroplanes on January 12-13, 1916. Two German aviators
accounted for one each, and the other two were brought down by
gunfire.

The Prussian Prime Minister, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, who is also
Imperial Chancellor, opened the new session of the Prussian Diet on
January 13, 1916. In reading the speech from the throne, he said: "As
our enemies forced the war upon us, they must also bear the guilt of
the responsibility if the nations of Europe continue to inflict wounds
upon one another."

By the 13th the German offensive in Champagne had collapsed.
Operations in the west resumed for the time a normal state of
activity, in which artillery duels were the main features. In the
middle of January the British opened fire on the French town of Lille,
near the Belgian border and inside the German lines. According to
German authority, the damage done was negligible. Little of import
happened till January 23, 1916, when two squadrons of French
aeroplanes, comprising twenty-four machines, bombarded the railway
station and barracks at Metz. They dropped 130 shells. The aeros were
escorted by two protecting squadrons, the pilots of which during the
trip engaged in ten combats with giant Fokkers and aviatiks. The
French machines were severely cannonaded along the whole of their
course, but returned undamaged, except one only, which was obliged to
make a landing southeast of Metz. On the 24th the Germans made another
strong feint, this time in Belgium, that had all the appearance of the
expected attack in force. They began by bombarding the French lines
near Nieuport, but the infantry charge that was to have followed was
smothered in the German trenches, before the men could make a start.
Another German attack north of Arras was held up by French rifle fire.
The chief result of the offensive seems to have been the destruction
of Nieuport cathedral.

Toward the end of January, 1916, activity became more and more
intensified all along the western front in every sector except that in
which the Germans were preparing for the big coup--Verdun.