art of
the war the Germans there have had no rest.

On July 28, 1915, Nancy was visited by a flock of Zeppelins and a
number of bombs dropped which did considerable damage in that
war-scarred city. Eleven or twelve persons were killed.

During the night of July 29-30, 1915, a French aviator shelled a plant
in Dornach, Alsace, where asphyxiating gas was being made. Several of
his bombs went home and a tremendous explosion took place that almost
wrecked the machine. But the driver returned safely. An air squadron
also visited Freiburg, so often the target of airmen, and released
bombs upon the railway station.

French airmen were extremely active on July 29, 1915. One flotilla
bombarded the railroad between Ypres and Roulers, near Passchendaele,
tearing up the track for several hundred yards. German bivouacs in the
region of Longueval, west of Combles, also were shelled from the air,
and German organizations on the Brimont Hill, near Rheims, served as
targets for French birdmen. A military station on the railway at
Chattel was shelled, and the station at Burthecourt in Lorraine
damaged. Forty-five French machines dropped 103 bombs on munition
factories and adjoining buildings at Pechelbronn, near Wissemburg.

PART III--THE WESTERN FRONT

CHAPTER V

SUMMARY OF FIRST YEAR'S OPERATIONS

The first anniversary of the war on the western front fell on August
2, 1915. It was on Tuesday, July 28, of the previous year that Count
Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, had pressed the
button in "the powder magazine of Europe"--the Balkans--by declaring
war on Serbia.

For two days the world looked on in breathless, wondering suspense.
Then, like a series of titanic thunderbolts hurled in quick
succession, mighty events shaped themselves with a violence and a
rapidity that staggered the imagination.

On July 31, 1914, "a state of war" was proclaimed in Germany; the next
day (August 1) that country declared war on Russia; on August 2, 1914,
Germany delivered her ultimatum to Belgium and invaded both France and
Luxemburg, following up these acts with a declaration of war against
France on the 3d of the same month.

Before the sun had risen and set again there came the climax to that
most sensational week: Great Britain had thrown her weight into the
scales against the Teutonic Powers. This occurred on August 4, 1914,
the same day that the German frontier force under General von Emmich
came into con